I'm just starting to get into GTD (David Allen's "Getting Things Done") and I am already an entrenched, happy user of activeCollab. As I learn more about GTD, I'm trying to think of ways that I can make activeCollab work better for me. I've had some ideas but I am also finding some shortcomings, and I was hoping that there might be others with more experience who could share some ideas with me.
The biggest thing I see missing is the ability to quickly mark an object (ticket, sub-task, project, checklist, task...) as being a "Next Action", "Waiting", "Tickler", etc. There just isn't really any built-in concept of "status". There's categories and tags, but neither of these truly work for these purposes:
- Both categories and tags are non-user-specific. So if I applied the "next action" tag to a ticket, everyone would be able to see that, including clients, employees, and contractors. The tag would make sense for my own personal productivity system, but it would be nonsense to them. My "next action" is another person's "waiting".
- Both categories and tags are clumsy to apply; tags moreso. You have to click a ticket's name, click Edit, manually enter the tags and click Save. *Way* too much movement if it's part of a daily review where I'm shuffling statuses around from "waiting" to "next action" on 50+ objects.
One thing that could be useful is the Star. I could equate Starred Items as being Next Actions. However there would be no equivalent to Waiting or the other lists I might want to create. Also, there's no pre-written RSS feed for a user's Starred items, although creating that myself wouldn't be a huge deal; there's already a static method in StarredObjects{} that pulls up a user's starred items.
That's all I have for now, if anyone has some other ideas or experiences I would love to hear them. Thanks!
The biggest thing I see missing is the ability to quickly mark an object (ticket, sub-task, project, checklist, task...) as being a "Next Action", "Waiting", "Tickler", etc. There just isn't really any built-in concept of "status". There's categories and tags, but neither of these truly work for these purposes:
- Both categories and tags are non-user-specific. So if I applied the "next action" tag to a ticket, everyone would be able to see that, including clients, employees, and contractors. The tag would make sense for my own personal productivity system, but it would be nonsense to them. My "next action" is another person's "waiting".
- Both categories and tags are clumsy to apply; tags moreso. You have to click a ticket's name, click Edit, manually enter the tags and click Save. *Way* too much movement if it's part of a daily review where I'm shuffling statuses around from "waiting" to "next action" on 50+ objects.
One thing that could be useful is the Star. I could equate Starred Items as being Next Actions. However there would be no equivalent to Waiting or the other lists I might want to create. Also, there's no pre-written RSS feed for a user's Starred items, although creating that myself wouldn't be a huge deal; there's already a static method in StarredObjects{} that pulls up a user's starred items.
That's all I have for now, if anyone has some other ideas or experiences I would love to hear them. Thanks!