Task management and increased productivity: if it were simple there wouldn’t be a gazillion books, apps, and seminars addressing the issue. Often the pursuit of better task management can seem like chasing a unicorn. Through a dense forest. At night. Blindfolded. You get the idea.
We live in a busy world, and although our digital existence continually promises to optimize our time, there are so many things we use to help ourselves that the tools of freedom sometimes become the shackles that enslave us. Yet there are indeed ways to actually increase your productivity. Case in point, the review you are reading right now. This review is not the solution, the application I’m reviewing is, and it’s called VisioTask.
What Is VisioTask?
Visiotask is a productivity tool for task management which allows you to organize your emails, their attachments, and files related to those emails into a visually appealing and easy to read interface. It integrates with Outlook on the Windows OS, but according to the website they are actively working on new features and integration with other email platforms and operating systems.
VisioTask lets you add you emails to your tasks and organizes them in color-coded, easy to read lists which are much easier to sort through than if they are simply placed into folders for organization. A bonus is that, unlike other similar programs, VisioTask promises automation for the sorting, saving you at least one step in your organization and task-building process.
How Does It Work?
- VisioTask gives you a big picture view of all of your projects and their tasks, presenting everything on a single, visually pleasing page, and making it easy to drill down from the big scope to the fine details.
- Using predefined criteria and the software’s own intuitive sorting process, your emails are grouped according to projects and tasks and color coded for a visual layout which is extremely easy to work through and find what you need.
- Each project can have a set of tasks and subtasks, and each task or project can be individually adjusted for importance, urgency, difficulty, and percentage complete, making your task management for each project even more efficient.
- Files can be linked to each project or task regardless of their location. Attachments within Outlook, local files on your computer, or cloud storage files from apps such as Dropbox or Google Drive can all be linked to your VisioTask view, making it truly a central hub for all notes, emails, tasks, and files which are related to your project.
Things We Loved
- VisioTask has a clean and attractive interface, and once up and running the chore of finding what you need in it requires little to no effort. This is a huge time saver for those who receive tons of emails that are work related (isn’t that everyone?)
- The fact that files from all over the place can be linked to the projects and tasks is a big plus. Some software lets you attach files or copy them into the program, but with VisioTask you don’t need to keep an actual copy there, which adds functionality similar to a cloud storage file manager like CloudMagic or Hojoki.
- The indicators for importance, difficulty, and urgency on tasks and projects add a level of sorting that makes the program more concise in the resulting lists, giving you a little extra something when you need to prioritize.
Things We’d Love to See in the Future
- While it does what it does very well, to be a more complete solution it should definitely integrate some charts and reports based on the information sorted. It does have a completion percentage indicator, but that’s really the extent of bigger-picture data
- Right now it’s limited in scope to Outlook on Windows. However, as mentioned before the developers are working hard on both adding new features (addressing my last point) and integration with more operating systems and email programs.
- The site could be clearer in presenting the features for potential new users
Who is VisioTask for?
VisioTask is a solid task management product and should be helpful to anyone who uses email a lot in their work, which, like I said before, is just about everyone. For now however, until they integrate more email services and add Mac and maybe Linux functionality, it’s use is limited to Windows users who use Outlook as well. For that crowd, I would recommend giving it a go.
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