Google calendar integration: when?

[Roberto Penzo]

Today I received a mail announcing that Todoist app got this integration.

It is a signal: more and more we need to place some activities as timeslots on the calendar among the appointments to correctly plan things to do.

I hope that the team of the developers evaluate this big feature.

Thank you.

[robisme (Olivier R)]

I would prefer that some of my appointments appear in my todolist, rather than having tasks that overload my calendar.

[Roberto Penzo]

It should be a way to add to the calendar only the tasks that you want (those that you are focusing on for today or for some next days) as to get a reasonable plan, and also to have the appointments appearing on the todo list, just to be able to evaluate the plan also on the todo list.

Very simple, but very effective.

[Alyona (MLO Support)]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. We are thinking about a better implementation of the calendar view.

Alyona

[MG]

I totally agree with those who think calendar integration is a need.
For me, for example, this feature would be necessary if we could view on it what only we want to focus on.
Cause if I have a calendar view of the tasks it's better to plan than a merely list of tasks where I can't have an overview of the: week, day, month, year.
If MLO is flexible, why not a calendar integration?
It is to say: out of site, out of mind.

[Elizabeth Lindsay]

The question is about how you use the product. I follow Getting Thing Done methodology.  This means a calendar is only valuable when the due date is a hard date; not a soft target date. Personally, I will not find value in a calendar. I review my next actions daily.

[Wallace Gilbraith]

Me too.

Calendar for appointments, not for tasks.

- sent from my phone,  please excuse brevity  -

- always mail me at ho...@gilbraith.co.uk -

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[MG]

If MLO is flexible why not?

Everyone have their own methodology to accomplish tasks.

The development of software, sometimes is according to life dynamic and users feedback and needs (in a reasonable way).

I accomplish tasks in a daily basis, but used to manage them in a weekly basis to overcome surprises, I mean, the week is in my head but if I forget something I cast my attention to the timeline so that important tasks must be reviewed next (days), and even be canceled due to, a probably, antecipation.

Being flexible is like @Roberto Penzo says "to add to the calendar only the tasks that you want (those that you are focusing on for today or for some next days)" - the underline is mine.

I would say, if calendar view will be a feature, why not having the possibility to enable/disable it as a desire of everyone?

[Wallace Gilbraith]

MLO already has the Due Next 7 Days view (which I have set to show 30 days); that let's me see what's coming up

- sent from my phone,  please excuse brevity  -

- always mail me at ho...@gilbraith.co.uk -

Sent from BlueMail

[Philip Parker]

The loose GTD method of letting the next thing appear in the correct order creates even more work for me.  When the dental APPOINTMENT takes too long, other TASKS get delayed and that sets off a chain tasks that get further and further behind… or you find yourself in the wrong place to accomplish as much as possible.

 

No matter how soft the task dates are or how much coordination and padding you build in, there is an excessive, ongoing (not weekly or scheduled) amount of planning, re-planning  and adjustment required between your tasks and your calendar when they violate a MAJOR GTD PRINCIPAL.

 

Keep all your activities in ONE PLACE!!

 

I may be old school but a proper calendar on any device (or paper) is visual and easy to manage.

[b.ca...@gmail.com]

Perhaps slightly off topic, but maybe not. The Today view in the android app incorporates Google calendar. It's read-only, but extremely useful to be able to see scheduled events from within MLO. I'd like to see that on the desktop.

[Holmes245]

I'm all for a 2-way sync with Google Calendar. If anything, add it as a feature that can be turned on for those who want it because it does work well in some people's workflows. With me, I time-block projects in the coming week so I don't date tasks in MLO so those wouldn't show up on the calendar and make it messy. However, not everything I do is part of a project and there are times where, say, I need to run two errands in the morning before I start work on a project. I not only would like to see that in a day view on my calendar but in the same view as well, not disassociated from it. I don't mind switching back and forth between my calendar and task list when I'm working on a project but the Day View in the calendar shows me visually not only what needs to be done when but where I am time-wise with the day's events.  Simple lists IMO don't really work. If I'm going to use a task manager alongside a calendar, the tasks that are due in my task manager with hard dates needs to reflect on my calendar in the workflow I use.

Joel

[Holmes245]

I meant to say that I don't date tasks in my projects in MLO because I time-block them in my calendar. I didn't mean to say that I don't date any tasks in MLO because I do when needed.

[Grant]

I dont get people who do not want a solid calendar (integration) solution for MLO - what ever it be. Even GTD purest know a calendar is key - and a calendar item is still a task.  I have noticed that a lot of people do not have many calendar entries, but me, working in a corporate world with WW responsibilities, I can have much of my day filled with calendar items (eg conf. calls) and being able to include these and coordinate with the time I have to work on results (non calendar tasks) is mission critical (to my sanity too), so items with hard dates, and especially duration that affect my time to work on results output tasks really do need to be in any ' task management ' tool I (and I am sure many many people out there) use.  I would even say there should be an option to register something as a ' meeting' so the start and due (end) time have a serious weight in the auto prioritization, and impact on other items maybe.  Its complicated, I know, but a integration with a calendar and its type of tasks is a must. 

Lastly, its a bit frustrating that this has been a high priority for many many MLO users for many many years, but never gets the serious attention it deserves (esp for windows users).  With a good, creative solution, that indeed does integrate with other calendars out there, it would put MLO again on the map as one of the task tool elite.

Grant

[Mark Partous]

I have tried the new Todoist feature, and I must say I like it. 

People who do not want to use it, just don't make a connection with their Google Agenda and for them nothing changes.

In my case, however, it would be very nice if MLO would have such a feature. 

My Google Agenda is connected with an online service via which clients can make an appointment.

So if I decide to accomplish a task, I can give the task a due date/time in Todoist, which makes it appear in Google Agenda, where I can

drag it to the time slot where I want it to be in. By doing so, that period is blocked for making appointments, without the need to re-type

the information that was already written in Todoist (other people simply see the period is not available, not why it isn't)..

If I change something in Google Agenda, it is automatically changed in Todoist, since it is a 2-way sync.

So, yes, please implement this in MLO too!

Op vrijdag 26 mei 2017 07:28:23 UTC+2 schreef Roberto Penzo:

[Joel Fannin]

I'm the same way. Syncing with a calendar works with my workflow. MLO is great for working projects and it's reliable, I just don't like having to look at two different apps to see my whole day. I time-block in my calendar and use MLO for the heavy work of tasks. I still date tasks but only for those that don't belong to a project and must be done that day. Otherwise, I still refer to Active actions. However, seeing both my schedule AND any dated MLO tasks on my calendar using the Day View would work best for my workflow.

Like Mark, I've used the new 2-way sync with Google Calendar in Todoist and it does work great. Your tasks show up and they fall off when you complete them. However, Todoist doesn't handle tasks like MLO does. MLO is lightyears beyond Todoist in that respect.

Joel

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[Holmes245]

I feel the same way Grant. Especially as you mentioned, this has been an oft-requested feature and I feel like MLO just sat on it. Now that Todoist and other app developers are starting to catch on that this is what people want, MLO is going to play catch up (possibly). 

The problem now for me is that I'm considering Andrey's slow development cycle and I don't think I can wait another two or three years for this to happen in MLO. I'm actually moving my tasks over to Todoist as we speak to see if I can get by on using Todoist as my new task system. I love MLO, been using it for years and it's still years beyond Todoist with task management but I need to see dated tasks in my schedule in GCal and I can't do that with MLO and Google Calendar as of right now. Kind of sad, really. I may possibly stop using MLO but if I do, I'm doing it kicking and screaming. 

Now that that's said, part of the problem, I think, is that Andrey's business model is out-dated. I don't think most people want to pay $60 for a desktop version, $25 for a mobile app (which is incredible for what apps on the Play Store normally go for) and $15 for cloud sync today. I personally would rather pay something like $30 - $45 annually to have a system that I could have on my desktop and mobile without creating the same view manually on the mobile versions. This kind of setup may bring in more revenue for Andrey to allow him to hire more developers. That's just my two-cents.

Joel

[Damo Skees]

I just posted a long post describing exactly this requirement, not realising that there are 2-3 recent threads on the same topic!

I'm the same - I just find I can't hit deadlines using MLO. I need to be able to at least selectively schedule some tasks in order to hit due dates, which I currently do by making calendar entries, or using other apps like Asana or GQueues.

I'm sure a calendar UI (and the iOS one is beautiful) would be a major development effort. It might be more straightforward to simply not do this in MLO on multiple platforms, and rely entirely on Google Calendar or native calendar apps to handle the display, drag/drop, etc. If MLO was able to sync with Gcal or other cals using CalDAV, API, etc - then users could use whichever calendar app suits them best.

Damo