Tech2All | Gadgets, Web 2.0, Reviews

Would you like to use a productivity application, to organize your activities, in work, business, or personal? Such as GTDAgenda web based productivity development tool. It’s a web project and task management application based on David Allen’s GTD (Getting Things Done), pretty obvious though. It has the usual features like Projects, Contexts and Next Actions. But also other unique features: Goals & Vision Wall. What are the Goals? Goals are bigger outcomes you want to reach, with a deadline. A goal can be accumulation of multiple projects. On the other hand the Vision Wall is formed of inspiring pictures that you can link to your goals, and have them delivered to your e-mail daily so you are motivated to take action. Pretty neat. Checklists – For the repetitive tasks that you have to do, on a regular basis – take it as a to-do list. In fact GTDAgenda is not that new, it came out beginning of 2008 and still improving itself along the way.

GTDAgenda is available in few price flavors excluding the free version. There are subscription plans starting from $4.45 / month (or $39.45 / year), up to $7.95 / month (or $69,95 / year). So what is the free and paid plans offer? The Basic plan, which starts at $4.45 / month (or $39.45 / year) gives you 10 goals, 30 projects, 30 contexts and 30 checklists, it also includes the Schedules and Calendar sections and doesn’t include any third-party ads. The free version is supported through advertising. The Premium plan, which starts at $7.95 / monthly (or $69,95 / year) gives you unlimited goals, projects and checklists along with all other features described above.

Feature Set:

• Active workflow object interface
• Vision wall, an image oriented display of your visions which actually consists of your goals. It’s not dynamic but it’s motivational
• Goals Archive feature
• Calendar view
• Highly configurable Checklists or to-do lists
• Daily email to motivate you with your goals, projects and tasks compilation
• Goals can contain multiple projects
• Projects can contain multiple tasks
• Create tasks based on contexts or you can say by topics
• Daily and weekly scheduler
• Calendar Events, appointments and meetings
• Immediate display of upcoming actions/tasks
• Total mobile version is available for hand held devices such as iPhone

Lets take a look at the pathway of using GTDAgenda. GTDAgenda consists of Goals as I’ve said it’s the bigger picture. Lets take a look at a scenario for Instance. I named the goal as “Increase Online Revenue”. So to complete this goal I will need to sort out my projects, as example one of my project under this goal is “Build Loyal Readers” and I’ve set it as a approximate 1 months long. The projects are contains of various tasks, for example I’ve few tasks called “Build Contacts in Facebook”, “Build Contacts in Twitter” and “Interaction with Online Contacts”. These three tasks are part of my project. Now I’ve to sort out the to-do list or checklist I need to do in a recurring basis which will help me to build the tasks I am going to achieve. This is also the same with Schedules and Calendar events. Well schedules are defined into 2 types which are “Daily Schedule” and “Weekly Schedule”. Think of it as the tasks needed to be done in a daily or weekly manner, on the other hand Calendar Events such as appointments and meetings which are specific to date and may tie to specific context or project. Ok, Now I have checklists/to-do list which i need to accomplish, for example “Publish new Blog Entry”, “Share Blog Entry with Twitter Contacts” and “Share Blog Entry with Facebook Friends“, so I fill up specific details for all this to-do lists. Then I’ve created a daily schedule called “Check Google Analytics Data”. Moving on to the Calendar events, I’ve added a meeting calendar event with my local facebook friends called “Hangout with Local Facebook Friends & Share thoughts about your blog”. So this is the stuff basically I need to accomplish to achieve the goal of “Increase Online Revenue” because I need loyal readers for my blog, and the more readers I will increase my online revenue. To do so I need to build a loyal reader base by building, interacting and socializing with online contacts and if possible offline contacts too. Also I need to build interactions via my check listed items by doing them in the regular cycle. And last but not least I need to check my Analytics improvements too.

Now as you see the project pathway, you can see it in real example screen cast below.

Goals management screen allows you to define, process and set parameters to your Goals

Projects management screen allows you to manage and perform specific actions to your projects

Creation of a task which might associate with a project and Context

The task management panel, allows you to perfrom modification and actions

Checklists are like to-do lists but in GTDAgenda checklists are highly configurable and comes with a checklist performance chart

Schedules are actions that you need to perform daily or weekly, also allows you to perform actions on the scheduled items

Calendar events helps you to setup meetings, appointments or events

So far I’ve described the benefits of this product but as usual not all products have only benefits. So lets talk a little bit about the future expectations from this product:

Features that should be there:

• More usability, general users might find the interface a bit too complex to operate
• User Interface improvement, fancy Icons and more web 2.0 look, css optimization and re-organize color palette is seriously necessary. I’ve notices serif and sans-serif font types and size mixes. Need a overhaul of typography sizes too
• More spacing between objects and make the important objects focused
• Ajax implementation, implementation of Ajax frameworks which can dramatically improve the user experience and peace of mind
• Step by step interface model might help a novice user to accomplish their goals easily
• More generous prices would be really nice

GTDAgenda is a really featureful, useful and promising web application for productivity. I would love to see more out from this application in future. I definitely want to use this application in a everyday basis but as I said I would like to see the Interface improvement for sure.

Maybe you might have different points about the application. Why not share it with us. Get a free account from GTDAgenda and feel free to share your thoughts. It also helps the developers of the applications to make their application better.

Alternative reading about this product:

• Online tool review: GTDagenda
• Gtdagenda.com – an online GTD application reviewed