Feature requests: Time tracking, Online Interface, Gant charts, Planning actions
madnificent
First of all, thank you for building OpenLoopz! Integrating GTD
closer to a person's life has been a very good choice.
There are some features which I would like to suggest:
- A basic form of time-tracking which would allow users to see what
action they are currently working on and how long they've worked on
it. By enabling/disabling actions the user would see how much time
(s)he actually spent to perform the action at hand. David Allen
mentions this in his book for short actions but it would probably
allow users to deduce a whole number of things. This could be
implemented in a variety of ways. At first sight, the simplest would
be to create a time-tracked context (this assumes that the context
knows about the actions which are assigned to it in your internal
model). Users would set this time-tracked context to a project when
they start working on it. This context would then track the time
spent on the action for that context by seeing how long it was
assigned to the project at hand.
- An open interface to the online portion of your future web
application. The web application has been mentioned before, but I
have seen no mention of an open interface to the online portion of
OpenLoopz. In essence, this interface shouldn't be all too much work
from your side as you'll need to build some interface for the Android
application to synchronize with the web-app. Having such an interface
would allow users to write their own little scripts at home (or at a
third-party vendor could host them) which synchronize OpenLoopz with
other applications the user uses. The same interface could be used by
the OpenLoopz team itself to write support for third-party
applications which they would like to support themselves (eg: google
tasks, emacs's org-mode, redmine, trac, some email format, ...). Loose
coupling ftw \o/
- Gant charts allow users to specify the order of the actions within a
project. They allow for the correct planning of projects at one time,
thus minimizing the total time which needs to be spent on the
planning. The Gant-chart, implementable by a directed graph, should
allow users to see which next-actions are possible. It may seem a bit
far-fetched, but I think that a correct implementation (being a good
way to define and interpret the Gant-chart) could greatly reduce the
amount of time spent on planning projects.
- Next planning allows users to plan actions for a particular date but
don't contain the implications of a deadline. In many occasions I
plan to do something on a particular date even though it doesn't
really _have_ to happen that day. It is not right to use a deadline
for such occasions, as the deadline implies that an action _must_ be
done before that day (at least under David Allen's interpretation).
Some way to say "I'll do this action at that day/time" would be very
nice. Although not absolutely perfect, an exact clone of what is
currently called a deadline would do 90% of the job.
Thanks for a great app,
the madnificent
Paul Drummond
madnificent
I'm looking forward to the API, is there a target date for it to
become available?
> I am not sure I understand your last item about deadlines. Can you
> elaborate? Is it just the term "deadline" that you are uncomfortable with
> or it is more to do with the behaviour of the deadline in OpenLoopz?
Sometimes you plan an action to be done by a certain date even though
the deadline is set to a later date. A deadline implies that a certain
action _must_ be done by that date, a planned date implies that you
hope to get the action done by that date. For instance, I may want to
select which actions I would like to have done by the end of the day.
The same action may have a real deadline too, that deadline serves as
a hard time-limit. Planning actions that way reduces the time you
need to search through the applicable contexts to find the next action
you'd need to do.
Kind regards,
the madnificent
Paul Drummond
Hello Paul,
I'm looking forward to the API, is there a target date for it to
become available?
Unfortunately, no. We are working hard on OpenLoopz Web at the
moment with a "it'll be ready when it's ready" approach to scheduling.
Once the website is launched, the next priority will be making the API public.
Sometimes you plan an action to be done by a certain date even though
the deadline is set to a later date. A deadline implies that a certain
action _must_ be done by that date, a planned date implies that you
hope to get the action done by that date. For instance, I may want to
select which actions I would like to have done by the end of the day.
The same action may have a real deadline too, that deadline serves as
a hard time-limit. Planning actions that way reduces the time you
need to search through the applicable contexts to find the next action
you'd need to do.
I understand what you mean but it is unclear to me would you like OpenLoopz do differently with the extra information?
Would you expect to see a different section in the home screen for "planned due actions" or maybe a separate list in the review list?
Paul.
