REVIEW: Vito Task2Gather
Introduction
Task2Gather, from Vito Technology, is a rather unusual application within the Windows Mobile arena. Indeed, it's a rather specialised application – albeit one with potentially more general uses. It is primarily a tool for managing projects amongst small teams. Vito actually developed the full web-based version as a tool for controlling the development of Vito software.
So, the question is, how does Task2Gather work for its intended use and is it of any use to the wider public as a task management tool?
 | Supplier Vito
Product Task2Gather
Cost $4.99 (14 day full-feature trial available)
Supported OS WM5 PPC or later
Supplier Web Site Task2Gather |
4WinMobile would like to thank Olga Shtaub at Vito for providing a copy of Task2Gather for review purposes.
Feature Highlights
Task2Gather is a graphically Rich Task Management application that allows small groups of people to collaborate on projects.
| Create Projects, Create multiple levels of tasks within a Project |
| Share Projects with others via Windows Mobile or the Web |
| Assign tasks or whole projects to others |
| Manage tasks status, set deadlines and assign colours |
Installation
Installation of Task2Gather is pretty standard Windows Mobile fare; you can choose from either a desktop installer for the PC (.exe), or a .cab file for direct installation on the device itself. I personally favour the .cab file route, as I can then keep the cab files of my most important applications on the storage card in my device, safe in the knowledge that should I find myself needing to do an emergency re-build whilst on the road, I have everything to hand.
The .exe download is 1.8MB and the .cab file is 1.55MB. Once installed, the program consumes 1.54MB of storage space and it takes up 1.83MB of program memory once it is all up and running.
Getting Started
| I suppose, as we are getting started, the first thing I should mention is that Task2Gather is very much a “Cloud” application, in that all the storage takes place on the Internet. So, you need to have a Windows Mobile device with some kind of a data connection and, if the data connection you are relying on is GPRS/EDGE/3G then you are probably going to want some kind of a Data bundle from your supplier. That said, the data requirements aren't huge (I used about 200k of data in an evening of fairly intensive usage) but you still don't want to be limiting your use of the application because you are worried about running up a bill. |  |
| Task2Gather requires you to have an account on the Task2Gather site. If you have already used the Task2Gather web interface, as I have, then this same account is also used for the Windows Mobile client. If not, you can create one when you first log in to the Windows Mobile application. You need to choose a username and password and then Task2Gather goes off and creates an account for you and logs you in. Subsequently, when starting the Application, it remembers you username but, annoyingly, there is no option to ask it to also remember your password. This is highly secure, but my device is pretty secure any way so I'd like the option not to have to enter my password every time I start it up. |  |
Managing Projects
| Once you have your account created and have logged in you are presented with the Projects Screen. From here, you can create new projects, change the details of an existing project or assign a project to people. Task2Gather gives plenty of options for defining a project. The name of the project, who it is assigned to, a colour code (although there is nowhere to define which colours mean what), whether or not the project is complete, how long the project is going to take, how much progress has been made so far and when the project is due to be completed. |  |
| Creating a project is stupidly simple. Click the “+” button on the Projects screen. You are then asked to provide a name. After that, you are presented with a screen asking you to define everything else. Once you are done, tap create and you are taken back to the list of projects where you can see the one you just created. To change any of the Project parameters you can tap on the little information icon next to the project name. This screen also allows you to view comments from participants in the project in an “Instant Messaging” format along with a change history. |  |
| I should also add that, if you were to now log in to your account on the Task2Gather website, you would be able to see the new Project, as would others who have been assigned to share that project. The system really does just push data out into “The Cloud” and you can use either the Windows Mobile client or the web-based client to access and manipulate all the data. |  |
Managing Tasks
| Just creating a project title and assigning a deadline isn't particularly useful though. With a little thought you could easily do all that using the built-in Windows Mobile calendar application. The real power of Task2Gather comes when you start breaking that project down into tasks, and sub tasks and...well, you get the idea. The good news is, that by the time you have created your first project you have already learnt how to create a task, because it is exactly the same process using the same screens and with the same parameters. You can choose to assign a task to a different person to the overall project manager if you wish but, other than that, it's the same thing. Just select the project, click the “+” symbol, give it a name and you are presented with the same parameters screen as before. |  |
| I quickly adopted an approach of creating tasks (and projects) in red. I would then move them into blue once I had started work on them and mark them as green once completed but you are free to use the colours as you wish. I also decided that, when setting up the progress (which uses a really neat spinning widget to set up), that I would use units as hours. If I thought a task was going to take more than a day (8 hours) I would break that task down into sub-tasks so that each was less than 8 hours. This seems to work really well either for something like creating this review (which I used Task2Gather to control and keep “The Boss” up to date on my progress) or for more in-depth tasks like a major piece of software development I am undertaking at the moment with hundreds of tasks taking several months. |  |
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| And that is really all there is to it. It's very simple, very effective and very flexible. The graphics and interface are the usual slick Vito affair. They don't bother with the Windows Mobile interface, preferring to construct their own finger-friendly buttons, menus and widgets instead. All the screens and menus can be scrolled by dragging the finger across the screen and it has that TouchFlow style momentum. I was using a Touch Cruise and didn't once feel a need to use a stylus. The widgets for setting dates and numbers are particularly impressive, as I mentioned earlier. In particular, the date, by default, was set to today (the 31st of October). Wanting to set a date for tomorrow, I grabbed the day roller and scrolled it round to “1” and the month auto-magically moved onto November. It was one of those really nice touches that makes you realise that this has been developed and tested by people who really plan to use it themselves. |
Sharing
| I should probably mention the process of assigning people to projects and/or tasks in a bit more detail as this is the only part of the system that doesn't involve just adding a bit of text or selecting a value from an on-screen widget. Each Project or Task has a “Share” button in the parameters page. If you tap on this you are taken to a screen with two sections. One lists all the people you have shared any project or tasks with on any other project, with a marker next to their name if they are already assigned to this project/task. The other part of the screen has a box for you to enter an email address and invite someone new to take part. Simply type in an email address and tap add. That person will now receive an email inviting them to take part and with a link to the “Task2Gather” website. From there they can create their own account (if they don't already have one) and see details of the Project they have been invited to. Simple. |  |
Practical Uses
So what use is this software to your average Windows Mobile user? After all, not many people manage development projects or write reviews for websites. Well, for a start, there is the obvious shopping list example. By having a project called “Shopping” and inviting my wife to share in the project, she can add items to the shopping list from home, either through the web-based interface or a Windows Mobile device, and these are automatically added to the shopping list on my device.
A similar use would be to sort out the Christmas presents between us. Create a project called Christmas. Have tasks representing each person we have a gift for. Then add sub tasks when (if) we think of something to buy that person and mark each sub-task as complete if we buy it. You can even add comments (“Are you sure we want to get Aunt Ethel a pair of socks?”) to present ideas. It's the pure simplicity of the Project->Task->Sub-Task->Etc model that makes it so flexible and suitable to most organisational tasks.
Other Versions
Just to give you an idea, I've included screenshots of both the Web Interface and Task2Gather on the iPhone. As you can see, the iPhone and Windows Mobile versions look very much alike and the general look and feel is also maintained within the Web Interface. The Web Interface offers two enhancements over either of the mobile versions. You can create project progress reports and you can also generate iCal subscription links. I tried the iCal feature and it's very good. Any projects or tasks for which you have set deadlines appear as events in an iCal compatible calendar such as Thunderbird&Lightening or 30Boxes.com. The iPhone version suffers only from the inability to set deadlines for Projects and tasks (although it will display them if they were created, for example, through the Web Interface) but benefits from having "sticky" passwords, so you don't have to enter it each time you log-in.
Licensing
Vito use an on-line activation process to register its products. There is a fourteen day free trial period, after which it is necessary to purchase the product or remove it. On purchase, the user is sent an activation code. Entering this into the registration screen then causes the device to go on-line to complete the activation. Currently, Vito allow a limited number of reactivations per license. A hard reset should be able to reuse the existing code, but a ROM update or new device will require the assistance of Customer Support to transfer the license.
Pro's
The usual beautiful interface from Vito
Incredibly simple – you will
not need a manual
Very flexible
Scales easily from small to enormous projects
Integrates very well with the web-based interface
The price
Con's
You have to enter your password every time you run it
It would be nice to be able to define what the colours represent
No reports (these are in the free web-based product)
Conclusion
As you can probably tell, I really like Task2Gather. I've been using the Web version for a little while to plan and manage my own software development projects and the Windows Mobile interface adds a new level of convenience to the whole thing. I still find myself primarily using the Web – after all, my development work takes place at a web connected PC – but frequently find myself making updates and changes from my Touch Cruise.
For $4.99 it's an absolute bargain and well worth the cost of a pint of beer to anyone who needs to be able to create, manage and share lists on the go.
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