Enterprise Collaboration and Virtual Teams Report (September 25, 2007)

I have tried seventeen dozen apps to help manage work: maybe more. I have recently bumped into two apps that some some interesting features.

Todoist

The first, Todoist, I am actually using as my primary work management tool these days. At first glance, the app (at www.todoist.com), looks like just another todo list manager with the usual Remember The Milk features.

But, the integration with Firefox and Gmail make it a standout.

There is a Firefox hack that takes a bookmark to todoist.com, and opens it as a sidebar:

You can select various projects to work with, or — using the ‘controller’ — you can select today’s tasks, overdue tasks, or all sorts of combinations. Likewise, Todoist supports tags, so you can pull all tasks tagged ‘@hot’ for example.

There is a ‘Delegate to Todoist’ bookmarklet that integrates with Gmail in a great way:

Once I hit the bookmarklet, while looking at a piece of mail in Gmail, Todoist creates a task in the project of my choice, allowing me to link to the email, tag it, add more info to the title, whatever. Later on, when I take care of the task, I can bring the email back with just a click, and reply to it, or reread it for critical information.

I find that I have moved away from using the Gmail ‘labels’ (really are tags) to organized mail since adopting Todoist. The tags are really only relevant for the lifetime of some project or activity — like a trip to London, for example — but in Gmail I often never get around to cleaning them up. In Todoist, however, the addition of notifications and the time dimension means that I clear things up as a matter of course. And when the trip to London is over, I delete the project and the links to associated emails. Of course, the best would be an actually integration with Gmail’s tags, and Gmail itself. This is an obvious candidate for Google acquisition and could be the bridge that shows the obvious points of integration between Gmail and Google Calendar. Todoist could be the missing task manager for Gcal, and demonstrates that email needs integrated reminders.

One missing side of Todoist is the social: there is no sharing of Todoist tasks. I can’t assign a task to another party, so this makes it a totally solitary tool. This is an area that the Todoist folks need to focus on.

Huddle

Huddle is a social media-based project management tool, one that lines up against Basecamp and Goplan. A user creates projects into which you can place files, posts (they call them ‘whiteboards’ for all the wrong reasons), tasks (but not events like meetings or milestones?), and other users. A slenderized Basecamp, basically.

Personally, I generally only use Basecamp for the posts, tasks, and file sharing. I find the ‘writeboards’ too rudimentary and the snags in the mark-up language annoying. So Huddle is a convenient (and free) replacement for me (at least until something revolutionary comes along. Hint. Hint.)

Here’s the blog post interface:

Here’s the task creation interface:

Note that Huddle does not support automatic SMS or email notifications of tasks, but manual email notification is supported, and a generalized RSS feed is supported for each project. And the RSS is *not* secure, which makes it more attractive to me: I have found Basecamp’s secure RSS a real pain in the neck. But then, I am relatively unconcerned about security, in general.

Here’s the file upload interface:

I really like the built-in document review notion, since 99% when you upload a file you want various people to look it over. But the notion of putting files into ‘drawers’ is too retro for my tastes, and only serves to remind me there is no notion of tags in the app. What I would want (and expect) is tags across the board: for files, posts, and tasks. Then I could select everything tagged ‘conceptual design’ or ‘finance’ within a project.

I also found it strange that I could attach a document to a task but not to a post. Why not?

Huddle also incorporates an across-the-board comments model, where comments can be attached to tasks, posts, and files. Strangely, though, the comments do not show up in the project dashboard or the RSS feed, which is dumb, and should be fixed.

So, I intend to wean myself away from Basecamp as quickly as is practical, since Huddle is minimal, cleanly designed, and free. And I have hopes that when I make product requests there is some likelihood they could find their way into a new version.

Final Thoughts

I would like to see these apps integrated, honestly. The Gmail integration of Todoist makes it almost seem like Google has finally implemented task management, which is likely at some point, anyway. How should Huddle integrate with that? There will obviously need to be some sort of sync between Google Tasks and other apps that create and publish tasks. I hope that Huddle and Todoist contact each other to get that working, right away!