I retired from personal blogging in July 2008.
But you can find me over at http://blog.xero.com.
Frequent commenter Dermott has just gone public with his new task management product ezidoesit.
Great to see another slick looking software product come out of New Zealand.
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I’m not that convinced about this one - at least, not on how slick it is (or isn’t).
As a .Net solution going to market, I would expect those little things like a product icon on the performance gauge form or a bit more polish on the “Elevator” rendering (e.g. some gloss to the colours and perhaps integrating the “elevator” form into either the shortcuts pane or to-do bar).
Am I just being picky?
Fantastic to see another NZ company following in the footsteps of others (like Aftermail), producing great productivity add ons for products like MS office. well done and good luck
Hi Phil, thanks for the comments, all of which are gratefully received and will be considered.
While this software is a .NET application the business model is SaaS based. This means regular and free updates to not only deal with issues but to roll in enhancements of which we have a number to add over time.
Once the user has installed the software and got the .NET Framework installed subsequent installs of Ezidoesit take under 30 seconds.
Not sure if you have looked at the actual product or just the website.
The Elevator Bar is resizable and sits on top of your Outlook inbox. It can be resized, moved around etc. You can position it over the To Do Bar. From our experience of using the software for the last 4 months or so, people position it in different places.
The slickness is in how the product works which from my experience is always the bottom line acid test for business users, and that’s the target market.
I like the idea of branding the various forms with the logo though, that’s a good point.
Feel free to download a trial though, I would welcome your feedback.
Dermott,
Do you use any scheduling & optimization algorithms in the product? (You don’t have to say if it is a commercial secrets).
There is a nice open source Scheduling software API (advanced) here , but it is written in Matlab, which is called TORSCHE Scheduling Toolbox. I don’t use the toolbox myself, but I have ported the Quadratic Programming (QP) algorithm into Java, which is available from the toolbox. QP is the algorithm used in Financial Portfolio Management (ie, with the aim of minimizing risk and optimizing returns simultaneously of multi-assets portfolio), which I have written.
Perhaps, you can download the TORSCHE software & user-guide and read thru , about the capability of the toolbox, which would give you some ideas. I am not sure if there is any open-source .NET scheduling API out there, which you can use. Otherwise, the Auckland University, Department of Engineering Science, they do consult on these areas (Scheduling & Opmtimizations) via Uni-services. They can consult to you (such as developing a scheduling API) if you need further product development in the future.
Falafulu, I will find out and come back to you but these are good points you raise.
What we do is this -
By dropping an email onto the Elevator Bar, depending on Ezidoesit Settings rules, the email contents and attachments are copied to the Ezidoesit Task and a dialog window opens where you can enter the time you estimate the task will take, day and time you want the task to start and save the task. The task is automatically scheduled into the Outlook Calendar. It starts on your start date and time and schedules it where it can according to these rules -
- critical tasks push in before all other tasks
- it schedules around appointments entered into the Outlook calendar
- if there is not enough time in one block, then the task is scheduling in multiple time slots over more than one day
- of course you can click on Show Schedule in the task and start it where their is a larger block of time
This process from email requiring action to task to scheduled takes 15 seconds or less, depends on how fast you can make a decision.
One of the really neat things is that if you move tasks around in the Outlook calendar, increasing or reducing time, moving to a different day then the Ezidoesit task times are updated automatically. Its a smart tool.
If you compare what it does and how fast and easy it does then I think it really leads to increased productivity. We say it can save you 15 minutes a day, in reality I think it saves much more.
There is a Calculate Time Saved option on the website where you can work out how much you can save in a year using the product.
Some of our staff have ended up with empty inboxes through scheduling their emails daily. Many users today arrive at work, look at their inbox and then stare at the screen like a possum in the headlights - Cognitive Overload. It helps with this.
Sorry long answer to short question - I will pass your information onto the developers.
What about http://www.proworkflow.com as another slick example of task management in NZ?
Yes Pro Work Flow looks slick but I think it and Ezidoesit target different markets.
Ezidoesit is not a web based product, it only works in Outlook 2003 and 2007 which is the number 1 email client for businesses worldwide. As it works in Outlook you can schedule email requests for action while sitting on a hile working on your notebook.
Ezidoesit is designed to not have to enter task information (although you can enter a task manually), neither is it targeted at project management although you can link a task to a project code.
Its main purpose is to schedule tasks from emails, empty your inbox and actually do work.