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We’re Back
Author | Message |
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Anant G. |
Okay everybody, we’re back! This is Anant Gupta the acting CEO.
I am so sorry for our lack of communication—I feel so badly. We had some management changes, and I came in to get things back on track. You see I am a technology guy and not accustomed to attending to communications, and our entire focus in the last months has been on getting a new dev team in place with all work directed to our new Toodledo iPhone and Android apps. And we’ve succeeded! We now have a 6-person dev team in place, and we’ve started making progress on the apps. They’ll be released soon. So, I’ve come up for air, I received some much-needed prodding on reaching out to customers, and just now checked our neglected forums and blogs… and boy… do we have some catching up to do… yikes! So I assure you, from now on you’ll see a steady stream of communications and updates from us, starting with this month’s blog update (see link). And you’ll see a steady stream of app updates too. Again, my deepest apologies. I know a lot of you have hung in there with your long-standing commitment to the superior features and technologies that the Toodledo product offers, and I sincerely appreciate it. I won’t let you down going forward. So tell me, what does Toodledo need to do next to regain our customer focus and momentum? What information do you need? What technology changes do you want? I’ll see what I can do. Anant |
J O D |
This is a personal opinion from a very disappointed "ancient" (as in - cca 5 accounts created/deleted over time) customer: Any suggestions are pointless at this time, until any progress goes live. The 10 month silence is not a thing that can be undone without any evidence and your recurring presence on these forums, Anant, with any post you make, is no longer an evidence of anything, I am sorry to say.
This message was edited Mar 04, 2020. |
pawelkaleta |
I totally agree with J.O.D.
|
jzamoras |
My sub is good until November... I hope there are noticeable changes before that.
Anant, why didn't you offer lifetime subs to old users first? This message was edited Mar 04, 2020. |
greginfla_ |
well..... at least there is some communication. He didn't have to post.
(edited post) well on second thought...... I didn't read the last sentence. "What information do you need? What technology changes do you want? I’ll see what I can do." that is a little concerning. I would hope you would know what Toodledo needs, or what was in the development stages/pipeline. Is it that bad at HQ? assuming the best; that you all are working on stuff...... just communicate... be forthright. most of us have been supporters for years. This message was edited Mar 04, 2020. |
Corentin_3 |
My three main pain points are:
1°) Ease of creation of a new Folder. Especially important on the mobile app. 2°) Manual ordering of tasks within a list. Even if it's only within a folder (probably simpler to implement than if you have to manage a 'global rank' for each task across the several lists it is a member of:: folder, saved searches, context, tags etc.). 3°) Task dependency. There are undoubtedly many kinds of dependencies and many ways to implement this. A simple one, that would leverage the previous feature (i.e. manual ordering of tasks within a list) and meet my need is sequential dependency within a folder: Whenever a task is done in a folder, the next task in the folder becomes automatically identified as the 'next actionable task'. The identifier could be the Star, or a status or else. Because the Star is ergonomic on web and mobile, I'd either go with the Start or a similar icon (colored lozenge or circle for example) with the same ergonomics as the start. Various remarks: - Please don't focus on looks first. Focus on usability. Looks isn't in Toodledo's culture, therefore not a reason of adoption by the current user base, and an uphill battle in the current market. -- Keep your unique features. The Web grid/table views are ugly but a pleasure to work with, given that there's no equivalent in the market. - Unless you have to do a complete rewrite of mobile apps and/or web for technological reasons, I'd rather see new features being rolled out on the current mobile / web, than brand new looking apps with no real new feature and have to wait again to see significant new features delivered. - Personally, I'm not interested in collaborative/enterprise features but then, it might be where you see growth? At least it looked that way last year. Cheers, |
JPA_2 |
Posted by Anant G.:
Okay everybody, we’re back! This is Anant Gupta the acting CEO. I don't believe anything you say - this product is vaporware
I am so sorry for our lack of communication—I feel so badly. We had some management changes, and I came in to get things back on track. You see I am a technology guy and not accustomed to attending to communications, and our entire focus in the last months has been on getting a new dev team in place with all work directed to our new Toodledo iPhone and Android apps. And we’ve succeeded! We now have a 6-person dev team in place, and we’ve started making progress on the apps. They’ll be released soon. So, I’ve come up for air, I received some much-needed prodding on reaching out to customers, and just now checked our neglected forums and blogs… and boy… do we have some catching up to do… yikes! So I assure you, from now on you’ll see a steady stream of communications and updates from us, starting with this month’s blog update (see link). And you’ll see a steady stream of app updates too. Again, my deepest apologies. I know a lot of you have hung in there with your long-standing commitment to the superior features and technologies that the Toodledo product offers, and I sincerely appreciate it. I won’t let you down going forward. So tell me, what does Toodledo need to do next to regain our customer focus and momentum? What information do you need? What technology changes do you want? I’ll see what I can do. Anant |
jdreed99 |
I abandoned Toodledo after ten years, during which time I recommended the product to many others.
How can we possibly trust this company with all the promises that we've heard? As other posters have said, we will believe it when we see it. Even if you make good on all the things you're saying now, I feel Toodledo completely burned us long-time customers when you jacked up the cost for us but offered bargain lifetime subscriptions to new customers. I will not even consider returning to doing business with this company without some kind of similar deal. |
SABiltongHunter |
Yes, another long time user and fan that recommended Toodledo to dozens of people, only to ultimately be embarrassed by what it became. My subscription ran out in December, I moved on, and haven't looked back other than to see if the URL even still worked :( I would also suggest you explain who's who in the zoo, is Aaron still there, etc. There are many old users here that go back before many of you were probably part of Toodeldo and while the promises make us feel good, sort of, it would be nice to understand the structure etc. I see in the blog you have good cash flow, I guess that's good but the proof of the pudding will be in the eating if you can deliver the product the customers have been asking for for 3 plus years now.
This message was edited Mar 04, 2020. |
Anant G. |
Posted by Corentin_3:
My three main pain points are: 1°) Ease of creation of a new Folder. Especially important on the mobile app. 2°) Manual ordering of tasks within a list. Even if it's only within a folder (probably simpler to implement than if you have to manage a 'global rank' for each task across the several lists it is a member of:: folder, saved searches, context, tags etc.). 3°) Task dependency. There are undoubtedly many kinds of dependencies and many ways to implement this. A simple one, that would leverage the previous feature (i.e. manual ordering of tasks within a list) and meet my need is sequential dependency within a folder: Whenever a task is done in a folder, the next task in the folder becomes automatically identified as the 'next actionable task'. The identifier could be the Star, or a status or else. Because the Star is ergonomic on web and mobile, I'd either go with the Start or a similar icon (colored lozenge or circle for example) with the same ergonomics as the start. Various remarks: - Please don't focus on looks first. Focus on usability. Looks isn't in Toodledo's culture, therefore not a reason of adoption by the current user base, and an uphill battle in the current market. -- Keep your unique features. The Web grid/table views are ugly but a pleasure to work with, given that there's no equivalent in the market. - Unless you have to do a complete rewrite of mobile apps and/or web for technological reasons, I'd rather see new features being rolled out on the current mobile / web, than brand new looking apps with no real new feature and have to wait again to see significant new features delivered. - Personally, I'm not interested in collaborative/enterprise features but then, it might be where you see growth? At least it looked that way last year. Cheers, Thanks so much for your list of pain points. We agree and all these are good points. Some of them are top in our priority list for eg mobile apps. As I said in my original post, we will be creating a thread for iOS and Android separately and work with our community to make it very much user friendly. Task dependency was rolled out in beta last year but it was not rolled out in production because that would have caused conflicts with our mobile apps. That's why we prioritized working on mobile apps first and roll out a bug free release and later come back to all the feature requests. And in general I agree, the strength of Toodledo is not in pretty looks, it is in high-functionality and we’ll always prioritize that. |
jimk222 |
Thank you Anant! I appreciate the work you've done, despite the lack of communication. I look forward to the updates that are forthcoming. Given the cash flow you mentioned which will support the development, it would be helpful for long-timers if there could be some consideration for the sudden price adjustment with little change in app features and an absence of communication. In other words are there credits that could be issued to long-time users or extensions provided to subscriptions, or access to premium plans above current subscription?
Jim |
Mark H |
First priority is to get the iPhone app working again under iPhone 11. The add outline or add list buttons are not even show up!
|
kenckar |
Hi Anant,
Welcome back. I am hoping that you can deliver what you say. For me, job 1 is to make the app physically work again in iOS. All screens except the tasks page have lost controls at the top. I'm guessing that is a trivial fix. This is a minimum deliverable in my mind. I will personally hold that as a standard for progress. If you can't or won't deliver even that somewhere around March 31, I will renew my focus on switching out. I have suspended the search pending that. In the meantime, I have parallel systems going. I am hoping I can reasonably drop the other one. Show us you're real. Regards, Tony |
OPMNOW |
I Agree!! I am OUT!!
Posted by jdreed99: I abandoned Toodledo after ten years, during which time I recommended the product to many others.
How can we possibly trust this company with all the promises that we've heard? As other posters have said, we will believe it when we see it. Even if you make good on all the things you're saying now, I feel Toodledo completely burned us long-time customers when you jacked up the cost for us but offered bargain lifetime subscriptions to new customers. I will not even consider returning to doing business with this company without some kind of similar deal. |
Rui Simoes |
Show work and do not neglect the forums again, if you don't have time find someone to do it.
|
samrwalker |
Ugh - Just checked and I accidentally allowed my subscription to renew in January - is there any way to get a refund.
No development whatsoever for over a year - and now this: "you'll soon see a big new shiny thing!" I just want some progress on the stuff promised in the roadmap. I'll make a prediction now. There'll be no sign of this, there'll be no progress on any smaller features, and in 6 months there'll be another, equally vacuous post like this. |
samrwalker |
Forgot to ask other posters - what alternatives to ToodleDo have you switched to in the year or so since development stopped and the company went AWOL?
I've stopped using ToodleDo - but I miss the Scheduling function, and the ability to list by "Importance Level" - the combination of Deadline proximity, and Priority - if I could find a still-supported alternative product with these features that'd be great. |
Ummagumma |
Posted by Anant G.:
And in general I agree, the strength of Toodledo is not in pretty looks, it is in high-functionality and we’ll always prioritize that. The ugly and overly complicated 90s style interface is what kept many people from even considering Toodledo in first place back when it was reasonably priced. Now it’s not. Not with all the issues. There’s been zero new functionality added in the last couple of years, and some important functionality actually removed - like Apple Watch app. Toodledo’s presence on mobile devices, where most people spend most of their time, is pitifully limited and at a mercy of 3rd party apps. As far as I - and many other people - am concerned, Toodledo has been in agony for a long time. You’ve posted a development roadmap some time back in 2018, IIRC. None of it ever materialized and there was zero feedback and zero response despite multiple attempts by your users to establish at least some way of communication with you. Now you’re acting as if it never happened and you’re starting with a clean slate and asking the remaining user community for their input of what they would like to see in the upcoming great releases... deja vu all over again.... sorry but it’s hard to take this seriously. This message was edited Mar 06, 2020. |
Mark H |
Anant G:
Just want to say that you should ignore all those Naysayers. First make it functional, then improve. People will be back. Peace, - Mark |
oletros |
Posted by Mark H:
Anant G: Just want to say that you should ignore all those Naysayers. First make it functional, then improve. People will be back. Peace, - Mark In your dreams Another "naysayer" |
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