ForumsQuestionsThe basics: Creating Birthday, Holiday and Appt tasks
The basics: Creating Birthday, Holiday and Appt tasks
| Author | Message |
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ddvaughn |
All I want to do is put in birthdays, holidays and a doctors appt.
It seems that you cannot put in just a single day event without out reminder It also seems that you cannot specify a time when the task is due....only the day WHERE IS THE HELP SECTION??? |
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PeterW |
The sidebar menu on this site has a link to the Help/News page. Here is a direct link: http://www.toodledo.com/info/help.php
If you're talking about the iPhone/iPad app, Help is accessible via the Settings page. You can create single day events without reminders - just don't set the reminder field. |
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ddvaughn |
I do not find anywhere to specify a time of day
The "Help" section does not have a discussion of how to actually make a task, when the task should be completed by (eg. time of day) and how to have it where it just appears, like a holiday where I dont have to check it off as a task. |
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PeterW |
Toodledo (both website and iPhone app) is a task manager, not a calendar/scheduler. The system is designed for you to create tasks and check them off when complete.
While it provides a start date field and due date field with due time, these are purely for task management purposes and this is not the same as a calendar solution that would provide start date and time and also end date and time with a calculated duration. Many Toodledo users would use a separate calendar solution (e.g. Outlook, iCal, MobileMe, etc) along with Toodledo. They are really two different things. |
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Jake Toodledo Founder |
You can enable the due-time and start-time fields by going into your account settings and looking under "Fields Used".
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ddvaughn |
If what you say is true, then why would I ever need to sync with iCal. You are acting like managing tasks and scheduling have no overlap.
Some tasks are highly time dependent (an appt), some can be done at your leisure (like buying a ladder), and some (like taxes) you have to plan to do in stages. In other words, I need an exact time to manage some tasks. During my day, I need to look and see that I have an appt at 2pm, I need to call Joe, and sometime this week I need to buy a ladder. In business, there are tasks that are assigned to be completed in so many days. It would be helpful to know if the courts are closed some of those days because of a holiday. And, are you really going to tell me that no one out there using toodledo is not adding holidays and birthdays to the task list. |
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PeterW |
I'm just a user so please understand that others may use Toodledo differently.
I do not add holidays or birthdays to Toodledo, nor any set-time appointments (e.g. work meetings, personal appts, etc). They all go onto my calendar. At work I have an Outlook calendar (Exchange-based) and at home I have an Outlook calendar on my personal PC. The latter syncs to the cloud via MobileMe. Both calendars sync to my iPhone and can be viewed separately or together (overlaid). While I agree that tasks and scheduling overlap, and would love to see both in the one view, I operate with tools that don't talk directly to one another. So my calendar and tasks are separate. |
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ddvaughn |
OK
I am trying to understand how to get the most out of the useful app So each day, do you look at both your calendar AND the toodledo list, or do you sync them together and look at only iCal/Outlook. I do not see a way to see the todo list on the iphone...I do see it on the mac iCal. |
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ddvaughn |
I use both mac and pc.
I can see how do it by pc....but honestly, most of the time of am completely dependent on the iphone which does not have an Outlook app. So, again, the idea is to be able to look at one location and see all tasks (time and nontime critical) that are on my list for that day. Right now I have to do this with 2 apps...Notes and iCal. Toodledo is better than Notes, but it has the potential to be much better. |
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ddvaughn |
I am trying this work around
Birthdays: Only assign a due day. Do not fill in start day, start time or due time. Seems like you will still have to check it off as a done task Holidays: Sync to iCal (or Outlook etc) where a pre-existing Holiday calendar is displayed. The result: You can look only at iCal and pretty much see everything that needs to be done that day, week, or month Problem: I have not figured out how to color code everything. Recommendation to Toodledo: Right now you are the best task managing app out there. But you need to hire some people and quickly address all the issues on your Forums page ASAP. Most of these issues are not that difficult to fix. If you dont some other app will, and soon. I'd say you have a window of about 5 months. |
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PeterW |
Posted by ddvaughn:
I am trying to understand how to get the most out of the useful app So each day, do you look at both your calendar AND the toodledo list, or do you sync them together and look at only iCal/Outlook. I do not see a way to see the todo list on the iphone...I do see it on the mac iCal. Yes, I look at both. I don't try to sync them and can't as far as I'm aware anyway without cobbling together some intermediate stuff which would just make life difficult. I have to use the Outlook calendar for work and as I'm a GTD guy, not many of my tasks are date-driven anyway. |
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springchick |
I would agree with PeterW that Toodle-do is really a task manager, not a calendar. On the other hand, I can see gray areas -- places of overlap and instances where something isn't clearly a task or an appt. If I want to call my mother, it is a task... if I tell her I will call at 2:00 p.m., it is now an appointment? There are other times where it would just be nice to see an appointment or event on my to-do list as a reminder. So while I'd like to see some of these things 2 places, I don't want to enter the info twice.
I use Google calendar as my primary calendar online and on my phone. I use color-coded layers -- one for personal, one for occasions (i.e. birthdays) and another that syncs with my work Outlook calendar. I have reminders set for occasions and appointments based on if and when I want this to show up in Toodle-do. The reminders are sent to my gmail a week prior to the date of the occasion. In gmail I have a filter set to forward them to Toodle-do. Because I include the appropriate syntax in the subject line of the calendar item, it comes into the right folder and context in Toodle-do, as well as having a status of "next action" which makes it appear on my daily task list. Once it appears on my Toodle-do task list, I make the decision whether there are any required tasks (i.e. mail a card, buy a gift). If there are, I make the necessary notes and it remains on my task list; if not, I either delete it (don't really care) or I leave it on my task list as a reminder to wish a relative or co-worker Happy Birthday when the day arrives. Once I add the occasion to my Google calendar and set the reminder, the entire process of getting it onto my Toodle-do task list at the appropriate time is automated. Works great! |
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ddvaughn |
I am beginning to understand the underlying problem....
You are not depending on Apple products alone. In fact, it sounds like both of you are primarily PC based. There is no mac Outlook product at this time. The solution seems to be PC + iphone + google calendar. I am getting all bogged down by trying to sync via MobileMe (except for some inexplicable reason there is no Notes app on the Mac, and no way to sync notes from MobileMe to your phone). Of course you can sync all of your contacts... which seems like a similar data management problem. I think apple is intentionally preventing syncing so that people will be obligated to buy another mac app to do it. They have near complete control over the app market. I am not even sure that you even need iphone....doesnt toodledo work on Droid? In any case, I guess I guess my love affair with Yahoo! is over and i will have to start doing the PC Google thing. This is a little rant but bear with me. It used to be that Apple's big thing was that buy apple and you will never have any interface problems. Well I have not found this to be true. If you upgrade your iPhone 3gs to OS 4.0.1 you can no longer access your Microcell. And again find yourself paying hundreds of dollars a month for a phone that is really just a iTouch. I cannot not call from my house or my office. I cannot not store microsoft documents in folders on the iphone. The primitive word editor cannot not be sync down from the mac or MobileMe. And, much to my amazement, Windows7 beats MacBook pro (except for viruses). There are not apps for the desktop for mac, you do have gadgets for windows 7. Used to be Netscape and AOL and compuserve. Dont hear much about them anymore. The paradigm is currently in flux |
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