Calendar for MLO
Grant
good tool. However each time I come up against the problem of not
having a visual calendar view. I know this has been discussed several
times, but as far as I could see with no definitive conclusion (unless
you take that to say that a calendar will never happen).
I like Outlook, but its too heavy for just a calendar tool.
Does anyone know of a lightweight calendar that can work with MLO?
While the basics would be a drag and drop relationship, I would like
to have at least the ability to track which MLO tasks are scheduled in
the Calendar - so I don't double book them.
OneAlert is just a reminder tool, with no link to MLO as far as I can
see.
Suggestion: why not dress up OneAlert a bit or add a few views to
MLO. For example, all that is needed is the ability for OneAlert to
see into the MLO database and recognized tasks that have date or a
date/time entry, and be able to display them. Naturally it should
also see if a reminder is set. For the Display, at the lowest level,
all that would be needed is for the 'manage reminders' view to include
a from-to column. Better would be simple graphical view of the day or
week, like Oultook.
CHeers,
Grant
fant
thanks for your input. This is exactly what I miss in MLO in
comparison to Life Balance.
Where or how in MLO can I put the Hardlandscape items (Items which
have to be done on a specific date)?
How can I get an overview an a calender like display?
IMO a built-in calendar would be very nice!
At this opportunity:
A possibility to set a start date without a due date is also on top of
my wishlist and will be a good addition in time-management matters.
Bye, Jens
Dmitry_N
numbers)!!!
Greg.O
but having to rely on Outlook calendar (or other calendar application)
is just plain frustrating and is the exact and only reason I go and
try MLO alternatives every few months. The feature has been requested
many times - could the development team shed some light on whether
there are plans (if so, when) to implement calendar in MLO?
Regards,
Greg
vikram.sjn
Or may be iCal file export may help.
As I know, kGTD on Mac does not have calendar functionality but
integrates with some calendap app (that too probably is called iCal),
and exports calendar iCal format.
Steve Wynn
I may be the single voice of dissent here, but I personally would not like to see a calendar in MLO. Unless MLO is going to become either a PIM or a Task Scheduler. I agree MLO needs some way to display future workload and workload balance. But I don't think the addition of a calendar is really going to make a significant impact.
I think the Development team have the right idea at the moment, by integrating with popular apps like Outlook. To me this is the way forward, unless they want to go head to head with things like Outlook, ACT, Chaos Intellect, Google, etc etc etc. Then the next developments in MLO after a calendar will probably be things like Contacts, Address Books, Group scheduling etc. I don't personally want to see MLO head in that direction at all, because I don't think it will work that well as a PIM and it has a lot of competition if it wants to compete in this area. To me MLO needs to play to its strengths.
I think MLO needs something innovative, with regards to addressing this issue. I don't exactly know what, but I would certainly like to see a different way of addressing this overall. I know that some times the simplest solutions can actually be the best, but I think it really depends on what the vision of MLO is going to be long term. That to me is more of the issue at the moment, because if we understand where its heading, then we might have a better idea of what would suit. If its more Project related for example, then perhaps the additions of Gant Charts, Resources or something along those lines may be preferable to just a normal calendar. If its goal orientated perhaps a more time line based approach, or more journal focussed type of diary may be an option. What MLO is aiming to become I think has a significant impact on what is actually required.
If a calendar is to be included, then I would prefer it to be an additional module to the existing Task Outliner. I personally don't have any requirements for a calendar in MLO so to me I would sooner see development time spent on something else. I would also imagine the addition of a calendar would be quite a significant undertaking, unless some additional 3rd party or existing component can be quickly added. But then if that's the case, where does the support come from if there are issues etc etc.
To me the addition of calendar raises more questions than it answers. I honestly don't really mind either way, but what is ultimately the issue? For me the issue is having a better understanding of future commitments, outstanding workload, forward planning, having some sort of visual representation of how things are looking. To an extent this can be achieved by the addition of a calendar I agree, will it make a significant difference? I wonder. Is there a new method or approach that could be integrated? I don't know. Sciral Consistency has quite a unique approach to routine items, could something like that be integrated into MLO but more based on task due dates? I don't have the answers, but I would like to see something a bit different in this area that really marks MLO as unique. Not just the addition of a simple calendar. Just my opinion.
All the best
Steve
>Regards,
>Greg
>
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scoobie
Outlook Calendar unless a lot of development effort went it. I think
it would be more worthwhile to concentrate on improving integration
with outlook - eg. putting buttons in outlook to sync to MLO and
improving the way tasks get carried over into outlook's calendar from
MLO. I would hazard a guess the majority of users would prefer
seemless integration with outlook to replicating outlook
functionality. Afterall, the majority of the world is using outlook
for a lot of other functionality, so would they really stop using
outlook calendar?
I'm also very interested in the the addition of charts like Steve.
I agree MLO should concentrate on innovative, unique selling points in
my opinion. A prioritised to do list is a unique selling point that
attracts a lot of attention (and presumably sales) to MLO (at least
going by this discussion site). Projects too is proving popular it
seems. I think something along the lines of charts and resources as
Steve describes would be an additional unique selling point - I'm
referring to this point in particular from Steve's post "For me the
issue is having a better understanding of future commitments,
outstanding workload, ...... having some sort of visual representation
of how things are looking." There are few tasks managers (other than
perhaps Life Balance) that put workload into context with graphs, that
angle offers better return on investment for us all in my opinion.
On Sep 19, 11:00 pm, "Steve Wynn" <steve.w...@startupcomputer.com>
wrote:
> >Release Date: 18/09/2007 11:53- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
tomd
> I'll second Steve's comment.
Great post, Steve!
>I don't think MLO could compete with
> Outlook Calendar
I don't think anybody wants MLO to compete with Outlook.
> it would be more worthwhile to concentrate on improving integration
> with outlook - eg. putting buttons in outlook to sync to MLO and
> improving the way tasks get carried over into outlook's calendar from
> MLO. I would hazard a guess the majority of users would prefer
> seemless integration with outlook to replicating outlook
> functionality.
Maybe it would be worth the effort for Andrey to make some official
research about that (percentage of Outlook users).
At the risk of sounding silly, I for one, count integration with
Outlook as a negative, not positive, in any software that I'm going
to try or use. Not major factor, though, but it still influences my
decision making whether or not to get that software.
> Afterall, the majority of the world is using outlook
> for a lot of other functionality, so would they really stop using
> outlook calendar?
Question is, are they the majority of MLO users.
Not judging by the number of posts in discussion group, but by number
of users, as I think these two are not necessarily proportional.
> I'm also very interested in the the addition of charts like Steve.
Hmm....isn't the majority of world using Microsoft Project for charts ?
Sorry for the bait :) - I don't mean it that seriously.
But this I do: to me, charts or calendar, are just another view on
the same data (tasks) that you already store in MLO.
Some have bigger need for charts, others for calendar, yet it's still
all about getting a better grasp of same data.
> I agree MLO should concentrate on innovative, unique selling points in
> my opinion.
I fully agree with Steve and you on this.
The point is, you can implement calendar the innovative way, or you
can do another Outlook clone. It's not about calendar, but about
implementation.
If Andrey thought the same way (the world is full of task lists, why
to make another one), MLO would never see the light. The same could
go for the calendar functionality.
> A prioritised to do list is a unique selling point that
> attracts a lot of attention
It's kind of unique, but not that much. MLO at the start was highly
inspired by Life Balance, and capitalized on innability of the Life
Balance team to listen more to it's users and long development cycles
with little advance. Recently some more unique todo lists started to
emerge, so MLO can't sleep on laurels either.
> Projects too is proving popular it seems.
Accidentally this week I did some downloads and reading on projects
software. My conclusion is, mostly influenced by that reading:
- for most people projects are overkill
- project software installed in some companies isn't used in practice...overkill even for them
It also depends whether we view MLO as personal task list, or corporate task solution.
> referring to this point in particular from Steve's post "For me the
> issue is having a better understanding of future commitments,
> outstanding workload, ...... having some sort of visual representation
> of how things are looking."
I fully agree on that - just that for me visual representation = calendar :)
> There are few tasks managers (other than
> perhaps Life Balance) that put workload into context with graphs, that
> angle offers better return on investment for us all in my opinion.
Graph in LB is just a "child's play", it merges pears with apples and
displays "effort spent", far from the kind of charts you are probably
looking for.
To sum it up: I'm for anything that would improve the visual
representation. Preferring calendar, but whatever step forward is
done with any other way of improving visualization, I'm happy with. I
also fully agree with what Steve posted, we need to know what really
MLO is and what it wants to be, what group of users and which uses
Andrey wants it to target. Though I think I'm repeating myself here,
there was similar kind of discussion not so long ago.
Tom
rickdob
of the wheel, is what is needed in MLO. Development time is too
valuable to be wasted on something like calendaring which can easily
be done with outlook or google cal.
~ Rick
On Sep 19, 6:00 pm, "Steve Wynn" <steve.w...@startupcomputer.com>
wrote:
Stephen J
I also don't think a calender is the answer, but I would like some
forward looking views to enable me to schedule work ahead.
When planning weekly, I set the date in the to do list to a week in
advance and that shows me what items I have in my to do for the next
week, but this always includes everything due up to that day. It would
be good to set a range to see what is coming up in different time
periods so I can determine when can I schedule in to do a job. This
probably requires being able to set a start date without a due date as
someone else mentioned.
I have also started using a work around for keeping a daily log. I
used to use Daynotz when I had a palm but I hate having to use
different programs to include the same sort of information. (plus I
have to do timesheets for work and use the work calender for
appointments).
I set up a TLI called "Daynotes and Appointments". I drag appointments
from Outlook to here and use Rapid task entry to keep any notes during
the day. If they need further action, I can move them in MLO,
otherwise I just tick them off and I have a daily log in my completed
items.
Regards
Stephen Jone
Greg.O
a full-blown calendar module like the one found in Outlook with all
its functionality. What I need is a way of assessing my workload on
any given day / week so I can schedule new tasks efficiently AND
realistically. When scheduling a task I would like to be able to see
that, for example, Monday, Tuesday and Saturday are already "full" but
I can easily squeeze an hour or two on Fri.
Does it have to be in a Calendar form? Probably not but calendar is
what comes to mind first as we are used to this way of representing
time.
I'm sure there are other ways of achieving the goal - for example, how
about an option "When scheduling a new task warn me if the DueDate day
already has over .....X....... tasks (or hours) assigned". This way I
could decide I want no more than 10 tasks on any given day and have
MLO help me achieve this. Even better why not have MLO compute time
required for all tasks scheduled for a particular day and warn me if
adding another one will exceed daily time limit I specified. For
example, I know that Mon-Fri I will only have 2-3 hours available per
day. Therefore there's no point in adding another 1-hour task for
Thursday if I already have 3 hours' worth of tasks scheduled for the
day. If MLO could facilitate this it would be an amazing time saver.
Imagine if the Due date drop-down calendar was colour-coded to reflect
the workload (green - light workload, yellow - nearing your desired
maximum number of tasks/hours, red - over specified target) - when I'm
scheduling a task I drop down the calendar and can see straight away
what day I can add it on to and what days are out of the
question...Simple, elegant and does the job.
I'm sure there are many better ways of doing what I've described
above. Judging from this and earlier threads people need a way of
visualising their workload. Whether it's in the form of a calendar or
something else doesn't really matter.
Regards,
Greg Osimowicz
Grant
I agree with the others we do not need MLO to head off in the
direction of competing with Outlook, or even Google stuff.
All I was urging for was a simple visualization of the data and time I
HAVE SET (thus not all tasks as prioritized by MLO, with with no fixed
date) for any tasks - and a calendar seems most logical.
It really should be kept simple, and should not be a major programing
task.
I would love to hear from the development team if a) they have a good
"principle' reason not to include this visualization, and b) if it
would be easy or hard to program...
Cheers,
Grant
Steve Wynn
Personally to me the issue of a calendar is further reaching than just the addition of just a calendar. It starts to define the direction MLO is heading. MLO is described as a Task Outliner at the moment, and that is what it does. It is predominantly aimed at GTD users, who for the most part shouldn't require a Calendar. The only thing on a Calendar as far as they are concerned should be HardLandscape must do items. All other items shouldn't even be really dated apart from Tickler items in my understanding.
Now I use DIT Closed List, and in actual fact the addition of calendar would make it easier for me to incorporate this working system. Because it would allow me to use MLO as more of a Task Diary, at the moment I am using Chaos Intellect and MLO as a Task Diary, with MLO being utilised more for my Project work. So you could say its similar in a way to GTD as my HardLandscape to a large extent is in another application.
The issue for me is would MLO with the addition of a calendar be able to compete with other applications like Chaos Intellect/Outlook? Again to me it raises more questions that it answers. With a calendar people then may require scheduling of some description, you will probably require a new definition of a task as an appointment, with a duration period, alarms etc. Team Working may require multiple sync'd group schedules. Then if we start to deal with appointments we start to come into the realms of scheduling and Contacts. So does MLO require a Contact Module to store names and addresses etc etc.
The addition of a simple calendar to give a snapshot view of things might be the start, but I really doubt it will be the end. For me I can see the addition of a calendar being the start of a long drawn out process of making the MLO calendar functionality as good or better than applications like Outlook. To me that would not play to MLO's strengths of being a Task Outliner. To me better integration to other calendar applications is really the way forward, but at the same time perhaps MLO can do something a little different. So its not competing, it enhances or adds to existing functionality of applications that do the calendar functionality well.
Personally I would love to see integration with Chaos Intellect, this is Contact Management application with integrated email functionality that competes with things like Outlook and ACT. That to me would add benefit in a two fold way, it may draw people to use MLO from Chaos Intellect and likewise it may draw people from MLO to use Chaos Intellect. Win/Win scenario for both parties. Possible developer collaboration etc. More and more I see software companies like Chaos Software realising other companies can do a better job of specific things. They for example have dropped there own Pocket PC sync and passed it onto Companionlink who have the expertise.
So to me its not so much about just the addition of a calendar, it seems further reaching to me than that. A simple snapshot calendar addition might be the answer. It might even be really beneficial to me, but I think it needs a lot of thought. I also think it depends on the long term vision of where MLO is heading as to what exactly is required. A quick fix scenario in this instance I think might be a mistake. A new approach, something different could also be a disaster. I don't know, but I think it requires a lot of thought and a lot of discussion.
What sort of calendar definition are people requesting for a start? Daily, weekly, work week, monthly, quarterly, yearly views? Anniversary items, birthday entries? 5, 10,15, 30, 60 minute time slots? Colour coding? Reminders, start/finish? Free Busy/Time? Conflict checking? Week numbers, day numbers? Moon Phases? Sunrise? Nightowl Support? Group Scheduling? Outlook Calendar sync? Pocket PC calendar integration? I could go on and on.
I certainly wouldn't like to see the addition of a calendar in the way LifeBalance added the functionality, to me that was quite appalling. You could tell it was after thought, and it didn't really fit that well overall in my opinion with the whole application. Though perhaps it has improved since last time I used it. Again, to me to a certain extent you develop functionality around a calendar as your main lynch pin. Not necessarily the other way around.
Anyway, just my thoughts.
All the best
Steve
----- Original message ----------------------------------------
From: Grant <gran...@gmail.com>
To: MyLifeOrganized <myLifeO...@googlegroups.com>
Received: 21/09/2007 20:46:55
Subject: [MLO] Re: Calendar for MLO
>Cheers,
>Grant
>
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rickdob
After your comment the request makes more sense in my mind. I agree
that a forward-looking method of seeing what tasks were schedule for a
certain day is helpful. It sounds to me like you and Grant are not
looking for an Outlook competitor. Maybe a way of creating queries
within the program to list tasks for you with certain characteristics
would be helpful. Then you could set up a simple query of tasks due
next Tuesday that would give you a list. Although I'm sure
incorporating a query into the program would be quite a lot of work
for the developer.
~ Rick
metroboy
viewing how many tasks are scheduled on each day or week).
For a long time I synced MLO and Outlook each morning, but it consumed
too much time, and the occasional glitches never went away.
One substitute that I have been trying is AcePlanner. In a way its
interface is very crude (and the user documentation is a little hard
to decipher). But it has a good example of a "workload visualizer"
that isn't a calendar.
On the top of the screen, there is a row of squares for each
successive day. Each task scheduled for that day is represented by a
small numbered block. (If you highlight a task in the task outline,
its numbered block also highlights -- so you can quickly assess what
day its scheduled for and how many other tasks are scheduled for that
day.)
What I especially like about this scheme is that you can quickly use
the timeline to drag tasks from one day to another. (this wouldn't be
possible in MLO unless you were able to manually drag-and-drop the
order of the tasks to fit your real situation...but that gets into my
pet peeve with MLO, and that's another post entirely!)
Anyway, the AcePlanner visual workload paradigm might be a good model
for MLO -- check it out if you get a chance..
best,
Nick
James Murphy
> It really should be kept simple, and should not be a major programing
> task.
Hmm, sadly the former does not always imply the latter - in fact one
has often found that that things though to be hard are surprisingly
easy to achieve whereas its the "simple" things that tie one up in
knots for huge amounts of time.
A Calendar - even a "simple", read only calendar is NOT a trivial piece of work.
A timeline however might be manageable.
--
Murph
river76
What if integration can be done with open source Gantt Project
http://ganttproject.biz/index.php
I am thinking of moving some of my planning to this system. I've
realized it's been hard to see the big picture and this will help I
believe.
The above software does export xml in ms project format.
On Sep 24, 1:12 am, "James Murphy" <jtcmur...@gmail.com> wrote:
Swifty
into the MLO product. I would much rather see development effort put
into much tighter integration with products such as Outlook and
MindManager with the eventual goal being seamless two way
synchronization between these products and MLO.
Personally I find that the calendar view in Outlook 2007 is really
excellent when syncing with MLO because tasks show up under their due
date below the calendar. I can't think of a system that improves on
this. And, yes, most people do use Outlook in my experience.
I spent considerable time testing MLO in conjuntion with the GTD Add-
in for Outlook and found there to be multiple problems that can really
only be overcome if the developers of MLO take a much more focused
approach to Outlook integration in general. How about creating a MLO
Add-in for Outlook that improves integration and provides the kind of
mail processing functionality that the GTD Add-in for Outlook does. I
would pay extra for a product like this. To me this kind of effort
would improve the functionality of the product more than any other
feature that I have seen planned. I'm surprised that more people don't
see the need for better integration of the MLO/GTD process with email
processing.