Home Forums General Discussion Task Tracker

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    • #5989
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Do people use a personal task tracker at work, so they can track themselves and see how things are going? I’m trying to find a decent way of keeping track of my tasks and what I’ve done in a week.
      I’ve tried:
      – pen and paper; but I keep losing my paper
      – outlook tasks; don’t like it

      What I’d ideally like is something that sits in a window and is quiet small, something like gtalk really, small and unobtrusive and could maybe flash every few hours to tell me to update it. Anyone know if something like that?

    • #36726
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      You use the google homepage? http://www.google.com/ig and if you look for stuff in that I’ve got a ‘To Do List’ thingy, handy out. Simple but effective!
      Can put calculators and other useful gadgets on it, love the homepage

    • #36731
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      If you do use the Google homepage, make sure you don’t put any really important, unmissable stuff up there though, as last week mine got cleared by Google doing an upgrade.

      I still use it myself though, it’s still a great feature :)

    • #36733
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      I often keep a notepad window open, but I find the best todo lists are on paper: they can be added to/edited on the fly in meetings, on the go etc. I dont have the discipline to type them into anything else when I get back to my desk, so I just keep a heavy pad that is hard to lose everywhere I go.

      Dave

    • #36737
      Anonymous
      Inactive
    • #36738
      Anonymous
      Inactive
    • #36741
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      And, as a more geeky alternative, you could buy a PDA and use that for tasks :)

    • #36743
      Aphra K
      Keymaster

      loved my PDA..but it got stolen and would only synch with office…

      would prefer an open source option…and a less expensive gadget!

      thanks for links guys..

      Aphra.

    • #36744
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Google and rainlender are basically calenders, and SlimTimer is a time sheet maker.

      I just want something to create tasks and add detail to them and a way to mark them being done. (notepad fails here cos I can’t even colour the font)

      *sigh*

      Maybe I should just spend a few hours some evening and write a small app to do exactly what I want…

      PS. I like what Outlook does, but hate its implementation

    • #36745
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Omen, maybe your best bet is an excel sheet ;)

    • #36746
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      20 minutes and excel is the way to go.
      Prob find a macro or vb script which does roughly what you want.

    • #36747
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Oh, did I not mention that I hate excel too.
      :)

      (and I’m currently sticking post-its on my monitor)

    • #36749
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      what about one that can be used for a team of 2 or more people?
      Im talking about a simple dev log.

      Any ideas guys?

    • #36752
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      SoonR might do you, it sits on your desktop and your mobile phone and can synchronise between them, and has a few different features for self-organisation.
      Google desktop has a to do list function, a scratch pad, etc…its quite modular too…
      But generally, unless you’ve got more than 7 things on at once, or you’re planning tasks far in advance, I’d go with a (paper) notepad and a pen. You can always use the pen to kill enemy agents…

    • #36755
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Google and rainlender are basically calenders, and SlimTimer is a time sheet maker.

      I just want something to create tasks and add detail to them and a way to mark them being done. (notepad fails here cos I can’t even colour the font) [/quote:c82a85e942]think you should take a closer look at Slimtimer, Damien – it’s much more than a time sheet maker. You can ignore the timing function and simply create a list of tasks to track progress against. Using the Tag functionality, you can add detail to the tasks. You can also share tasks with others, separate active and complete tasks, and run several different kinds of reports. Using Bubbles, you can have it sit in the Sys Tray if you wish. It’s not perfect, but does add some nice out of the box functionality that many similar apps lack.

      Failing that, there’s the two old reliables – the Task function in Outlook (more powerful than it looks) and a customized Excel doc (which can be edited simultaneously by others on your team via the Shared Workbook function)

      You might also like – http://www.tadalist.com/ and http://www.backpackit.com/

    • #36763
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Does anyone know of one that can share and synch certain tasks between different profiles / people, and will allow you to even assign tasks to other profiles ( eg sending "I need X done for Friday", marked URGENT, to Paddy Bloggs profile )?

      Mal

    • #36766
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      I’ll have another look at that Tony (when I get a chance…)
      Bit busy at the moment, so only did a quick look at the different options people suggested. Thanks for all the suggestions btw :)

    • #36770
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Does anyone know of one that can share and synch certain tasks between different profiles / people, and will allow you to even assign tasks to other profiles ( eg sending "I need X done for Friday", marked URGENT, to Paddy Bloggs profile )?[/quote:7e01742715]Can only think of a few – one free and the others pretty cheap

      [list:7e01742715]- RT (http://bestpractical.com/rt) is free but butt ugly, has no reporting features and takes a bit of getting used to. Pretty powerful system though (mainly used for customer support). May be overkill for most small dev houses

      – Fogbugz (http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/) great, lightweight system with lots of nifty extensions but $129 per user. Can also be used for customer support and includes time estimate and very simple reporting functionality. Can be used for small – large organisations easily

      – Jira (http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/) almost as ugly to look at and use as RT, but rich feature-set too. May be overkill for most small dev houses

      – Basecamp (http://www.basecamphq.com/) from same crowd who did the two apps I posted on earlier. Fuller feature set than TaDa List and BackPackIt, but nice, lightweight app without the clutter (e.g. CPM, PERT, Gantt, etc.) of some other PM tools. Free to use on small projects, I think[/list:u:7e01742715]
      All of these can be used for bug tracking, customer support or simple project management.

      For anyone who uses Outlook, I’d advise delving a little deeper into the Tasks functionality as there’s some simple and handy features in there including. re-assigning tasks, assigning tasks to others, progress reporting, etc.

      I’d be surprised if there are aren’t some Open Source apps (e.g. PHPProjekt, etc.) that don’t offer similar functionality, but haven’t really looked into any of them. Be interested to hear what others have used

      BTW, there are a fair few posts on this and similar topics in the Production forums on the IGDA site

    • #36771
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      New Task: Get time to look at all Tony’s links.
      Due: ASAP
      Owner: me

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