Update: 0.9.1 with iCal Fixes
Thank you for the great response to Monday’s 0.9 release. This quality feedback has made possible another release that addresses the reported issues with iCal syncing.
Download Actiontastic 0.9.1
(Mac OS X Tiger Required)
Also included in this release is a menu item for cleaning out all completed actions in one shot. See “Delete Completed Actions” under the File menu. One other minor change is to the wording in the preference pane regarding iCal sync unregistering.
If you noticed any quirkiness with syncing running 0.9 and notice any continued issues after this update, a reset may be in order. To reset, simply click the button labeled “Unregister iCal Sync Client” under the “Update” pane of the Preferences window. Then, be sure to delete all of the calendars in iCal that correspond to your Actiontastic contexts. After that, you can sync again and iCal will repopulate with everything in Actiontastic.
Joel wrote:
A fix already! Awesome!
It sure is good to have a dev that’s focused (pun intended). ;)
Posted on 17-Jan-07 at 2:51 am | Permalink
Fernando Garcia wrote:
I would welcome a easy to do addition: That the get info of an action would show the context and project associated to that action.
When I create an action for a project I usually write “fill memo”, “send email remembering”, etc. but without knowing the associated project is dificult to understand the action, so I must put “fill memo re project X”, ” send email remembering project X”.
Thanks for this great program
Posted on 17-Jan-07 at 4:18 am | Permalink
cmy wrote:
this looks great and I’m eager to start using. I’m curious how people are dealing with seeing what’s due, overdue, etc.
Posted on 17-Jan-07 at 6:43 am | Permalink
Ian wrote:
Thanks for the quick fix.
Suggestion: place a high iCal priority on “next” actions, so that they appear at the top of the list in iCal when sorted by priority.
Cheers,
:ian
Posted on 17-Jan-07 at 8:05 am | Permalink
Jake wrote:
Thanks for the fast fix!!!
Posted on 17-Jan-07 at 9:01 am | Permalink
Shig wrote:
Love the newest update. With iCal support I can now start actually using this program.
I have one feature request, and don’t know if this is already in the works for the final version: recurring tasks. I’d like to be able to set up, say, Monday as my “mop the kitchen” day, or Wednesday as “try to take over the world” day, and have the task come up again the following week after it’s completed this week.
That and being able to set priorities are the only things EasyTask Manager has that Actiontastic doesn’t. Priorities aren’t such a big deal for me, since they can be set just as easily in iCal, but recurring tasks is the one reason I’m still using EasyTask. If they showed up in Actiontastic, I’d be in heaven.
And let me just say how much I’m looking forward to the final release. This is easily the best app of its kind I’ve yet come across. The simplicity of the interface is its most powerful attribute. Thanks for all your hard work in developing this app.
Posted on 17-Jan-07 at 11:13 am | Permalink
TubbyMike wrote:
Thanks for the quick fix. I’d just started using your app, thanks to publicity on Merlin Mann’s 43 Folders. This will allow me to sync tasks on my (not so smart) phone via iCal. Excellent!
I have to echo the request for recurring tasks made by Shig above. However, your interface is the real winner for me. It knocks other GTD apps into a cocked hat. I especially like the Quicksilver plug-in. It really does make the “capture” part of GTD very easy and immediate.
Best wishes and thanks for the hard work.
Posted on 17-Jan-07 at 11:27 am | Permalink
Bushford wrote:
I am impressed by the quick fix !!
Everything going smoothly sync-wise now between iCal and AT…
I have dug out an old Palm Zire from the bottom of my old-gadgets-box and synced it with iCal. While the actions do end up on the Zire, they have no associated category. I guess that’s an iSync & Palm issue, because I also have it with non-AT ToDo’s.
On the other hand, I have created a category @Inbox on the Zire and the stuff entered there neatly ends up in AT’s Inbox via 2 sync’s. Brilliant…
I welcome the “Delete Completed Actions”, but I do find it a bit harsh. How about “Archive Completed Actions” & saving them in a file that you can re-load later for review, if needed.
I agree with others that the UI is by far the most sleek of all GTD apps (or would-be Apps) around, but I have some suggestions to make it even more effcient:
It should be possible to have keyboard-only navigation for the whole UI, or at least for all the core GTD stuff of entering stuff, turning into an action/project, assigning contexts, start and due dates, ticking off as completed. In particular, I think the action start and due dates should be in the table next to the context or project, so it is easy to see and navigate to. Perhaps we could sort the actions by these dates or by project/context depending on the view?
Anyway, Actiontastic is looking better all the time. Other GTD app developers are going to need to hurry to beat it.
Incidently, I noticed that Omni just set up a web page for their GTD app under development. Still no Beta though. Are they getting nervous?
…
Posted on 17-Jan-07 at 3:57 pm | Permalink
yann wrote:
I wish you could add due date / project / context in one shot - right now you have to go through 3 different interface component to do that. I’ll keep an eye on this but with omni working on a cocoa version of kGTD, if this app doesn’t mature faster, it might be difficult to compete, unless it’s freeware? didn’t look at the license… Still great to see GTD and OS X together though!
Posted on 17-Jan-07 at 5:29 pm | Permalink
KevinL wrote:
I’m having difficulty with an existing calendar - I have a “Sales” calendar, that holds all my “must contact this person” notes. It already exists in iCal. When I create a “Sales” Context in Actiontastic and sync to iCal, it adds a new “Sales” calendar in iCal. If I delete the new Sales calendar, leaving the old sales calendar, it disappears from Actiontastic on sync.
How do I import an existing Calendar into Actiontastic as a new Context?
Posted on 17-Jan-07 at 7:02 pm | Permalink
Corby Kissler wrote:
how about printing capability - or should we get that out of the iCal? I’m really liking the PDF PagePacker that Hillegass put together and would like to put AT items into that format.
Am trying to put together an automator script to print iCal ToDo’s to PDF, which would be a first step. Thanks for the great tool - keep it simple!!!
Posted on 17-Jan-07 at 9:04 pm | Permalink
Thoeun Uch wrote:
I’ve just install this wonderful software, for some strange reason I can’t seem to create a project or even a context???
Help please, Thanks in advance
Posted on 18-Jan-07 at 6:40 am | Permalink
Shig wrote:
Maybe I’m just being dense here–and admittedly I haven’t read all of GTD yet–but could someone explain how the Next Action viewer is supposed to work? It seems to show all items marked as single actions but only one item that has any project set at all. In other words, if I have three actions from three different projects under the Computer context, Next Action shows only one of them. I would have expected it to show the next action for every project. Was this intentional?
Posted on 18-Jan-07 at 9:30 am | Permalink
Derek wrote:
I’m loving Actiontastic, especially the Quicksilver plugin! I have a feature request, and this may be in the queue already, but I’m getting a lot of irrelevant/undoable things showing up in my list, and I’d love to see a checkbox to hide actions so they don’t get synced to iCal. Or, better still, so that I could choose projects where only the first next action shows.
Keep it up, and thanks for all your hard work!
Posted on 18-Jan-07 at 9:56 am | Permalink
Art wrote:
I can not get Actiontastic to sync with my ical. I’m wondering if I f’d something up. I was all ready to sync, the phone rang, a message came up asking about syncing with ical, etc., I hit the “Don’t Allow” button to get the phone call. Now when I try to sync with ical, the sync indicator simply spins forever and nothing happens. Any suggestions on how to fix this would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
Posted on 18-Jan-07 at 2:59 pm | Permalink
Jane wrote:
Great app - simple, looks good and will be wonderful when it’s a little richer. One suggestion for getting there quicker - make the app scriptable, then we can set up scripts / automator actions to send items to the inbox. This could be used to address the request above (that I’d love too) for repeating items - they could be sent to the inbox on the required day.
Posted on 19-Jan-07 at 2:14 am | Permalink
Jason wrote:
I love this tool. The simplicity makes it easy to leearn and adopt. Of course there are features that will be nice when they ready but realizing this is still a development app I’m excited for it.
Has anyone played with reading the contents of the iPod output as a source for Exporting the data and using it in another app? I know this will eventually have an export feature but I was thinking this might be a workable hack in the meantime for those of us who don’t use iCal (not by choice). It would be nice if the iPod dump could write to a local disk as well but that only makes sense in the short-term.
Posted on 19-Jan-07 at 6:59 am | Permalink
Kylee wrote:
Great program!
I have one quick suggestion. Would it be possible to have only the Next Actions appear on my Context lists when I export to iPod or iCal?
Posted on 19-Jan-07 at 11:14 am | Permalink
Andrew wrote:
Just picked this up, and it looks great! I’m wondering how the paused or future start date feature is supposed to work. I would have assumed that it wouldn’t show actions that match either of these criteria in my contexts…
I tried setting it for both a whole project and an action, but either of these still show the item when it’s irrelevant to me. Am I missing something?
Posted on 19-Jan-07 at 1:25 pm | Permalink
Gilbert wrote:
In the left-side light blue column, I’d like to see count badges for each item. Not sure if that runs counter to the GTD philosophy but it sure would be handy.
Posted on 19-Jan-07 at 6:58 pm | Permalink
Steve L. wrote:
Using the program–very nicely done! Let me second the notion of printing–some of us aren’t yet with the iPod generation. And it would be nice if there was a way to archive finished projects–click “archive,” and they disapear off your lists, but they’re available in an archive area.
Posted on 20-Jan-07 at 10:56 am | Permalink
Anders Betnér wrote:
The whole essence of GTD is in the name, it is a way to get things done. Actiontastic in its current incarnation is very lean and has very little clutter that gets in your way when dealing with your todo items. To me archiving projects and having item counts on the lists is nice if you want to fiddle and cuddle with your todos, but wouldn’t it be better to just do whatever is on the list instead of playing with things I’ve already completed or pondering over whether I should work on project Y that has 56 items or project Z that has 34 items.
I do realize that people have different needs and this is just my opinion. Gilbert and Steve please don’t take this as an offence.
I would like Actiontastic to stay lean, very lean. People craving for features could always turn to Midnight Inbox and it’s likes.
Posted on 20-Jan-07 at 1:05 pm | Permalink
Moses wrote:
Seems that the *No Context category should be synced to a similar calender in iCal. This way the uncontextualized actions are always with you as well.
Since Actiontastic can sync the context changes back from iCal, this would make it possible to contextualize such actions on a PDA for instance when you have some time, knowing it will sync back to Actiontastic.
Posted on 20-Jan-07 at 4:44 pm | Permalink
Moses wrote:
Also, the ability to exclude certain Projects and Contexts from syncing to iCal would be very helpful in keeping out actions that don’t need to be carried around all the time.
Posted on 20-Jan-07 at 4:52 pm | Permalink
Gilbert wrote:
No offense taken Anders.
My want for item counts actually ties into Steve’s archive request. I don’t delete projects the second I’m done with them, for future reference. Therefore I end up looking at a list of items, in project and context mode, that may or may not have todos in them.
But I’m with you in that the lean-and-mean approach is what makes Actiontastic so appealing. Midnight Inbox takes the complete opposite approach and as a result I’m using Actiontastic. There is always the preference pane to enable these features while keeping simplicity as the default.
Posted on 20-Jan-07 at 11:51 pm | Permalink
Jane wrote:
OK, I’ve managed to get repeating entries in my inbox using a combination of QuickSilver actions and launchd (actually an app called Lingon which provides a GUI to launchd). It’s quite geeky, but if you’re desperate like me then it makes a good interim solution.
First save your daily (or weekly, or whatever) task as a QuickSilver action.
- enter the command in the usual way (. then type the text, then tab & type whatever you type to get the verb “send to actiontastic”. Then, instead of hitting enter, hit control enter, tab, and choose the verb “save to file”. Tab again, and choose a directory to save your command in. You will get a file ending in .qscommand.
Test this command by double-clicking it. You should get the text you entered in your actiontastic inbox.
If all is well, launch Lingon, and create an agent in MyAgents to run your command whenever you wish.
On the Basic sheet, you should have the following in ProgramArguments
/usr/bin/open
the full path to the file you just created
On the miscellaneous page, I just put 3 in the Hour field to run my command at 3am every day. Look at documentation for launchd to do more complex timings.
Save and reload, and all should be well.
Posted on 21-Jan-07 at 2:27 am | Permalink
Obyor wrote:
Oh Dear!
@Jane: Thank you for this great tip!
Posted on 21-Jan-07 at 3:36 am | Permalink
Mic Edwards wrote:
Loving Actiontastic!
Two suggestions:
1. Could we have a way to convert a project to an action (the reverse of the ‘Convert Action to Project’ under the Item menu). I make mistakes, and it would be great to be able to do this without copying and pasting into a new action.
2. I just migrated between machines, and I manually moved the Actiontastic foler in Application Support. I made a bunch of changes, and came back the next morning to discover I’d messed-up the permissions and none of them had been written out. Perhaps a little warning (like Yojimbo does) when you are unable to write to the database file … I won’t be the only one …
Thanks again!
Posted on 22-Jan-07 at 5:12 am | Permalink
Mark wrote:
I’d like to add my voice to those who are really impressed with Actiontastic — it’s very well designed, and does nearly everything I need in the GTD arena. Congratulations, and thanks!
Here’s my list of suggestions, drawn from my past few days of using the program:
1. I like the program’s icon, but at smaller sizes it gets fairly cluttered and nondescript. Maybe a streamlined version would be a good idea?
2. The ability to create subprojects would be really, really, really nice! :)
3. Whether or not some sort of project hierarchy is implemented, I’d love to have the ability to color-code a project — that way, you could assign related projects the same color coding, and give them some visual association.
4. I would love to have a default item added to the left-hand pane of both the “Projects” and “Contexts” views that says “View All.” Selecting that would let you view a list of all actions, regardless of project or context. That would be extremely handy.
5. And finally, mine is another vote for eliminating the drawer and replacing it with another pane in the main window. Alternatively, would it be possible to add a badge to project/action labels that have dates or notes hidden in the drawer? I tend to forget that the notes field is there. :)
Again, many thanks for a great app! I’m looking forward to seeing (and using) future versions.
Posted on 22-Jan-07 at 12:13 pm | Permalink
Omar wrote:
Wonderful application! Like everyone else, I do have a few suggestions (some easy, some not so easy):
1) Notes: Is there a way to have notes that have been entered on the iCal side sync into AT? I find that I’m having to copy and paste notes into AT that have been entered on the iCal side…
2) Widget: How about a Dashboard widget that allows us to enter a new task into the Inbox for later processing? Something simple so that you can capture a thought in the Inbox as it occurs to you.
3) Reading Existing Calendars For Import: I use Basecamp for project management (http://www.basecamphq.com). Basecamp has an iCal feature where it will sync down your to do list from the website into a read-only calendar in iCal. I’d love to be able to have AT copy those tasks into the Inbox so that I can process them and add contexts. The Basecamp to dos also have URLs in the notes field which allow you to go directly to the website to mark a task as complete (another reason why I’d love AT to pull over the notes fields from iCal).
4) Search Box!: I’m sure that you’ve heard this many times before, but a search box embedded in the AT menu would be incredibly helpful.
Thanks for listening!
Posted on 22-Jan-07 at 4:09 pm | Permalink
Tom wrote:
@Shig: I’m with you — the Next Action view doesn’t seem to work as intended.
Another quick comment — it seems to me that, from time to time, the order of actions for a particular project seems to get shuffled. For example, today I entered in the following actions for a project:
1. Wait for meeting responses
2. Schedule meeting
3. Conduct meeting
And now I’m looking at it and the order is 1-3-2.
Posted on 22-Jan-07 at 5:41 pm | Permalink
josef Lieck wrote:
I love the idea and simplicity. I am test using it and would be very happy paying for it if some issues were resolved and maybe some things added.
Issue:
-It deletes the notes, when importing from ical - the other way works.
- Has a tendency to crash on me…
wishes:
- easier due date setting (pop-up calendar?)
- option to select, move, edit more than one item at the time.
- ideally option to have less contraines place for notes etc (note as item, rather as sub function of task)
- ideally the option to have folders WITHIN a project (somewhat of a 4th layer) - a little like in MacJournal…
BUT IN GENERAL A GREAT, GREAT PRODUCT - CAN’T WAIT FOR THE RELEASE!!!
Posted on 22-Jan-07 at 9:04 pm | Permalink
tdc wrote:
Brilliant implementation of the GTD concept. I am finding it helpful managing a busy studio.
I would love to see a way to sync between computers, preferable a WebDAV system over .Mac
Many thanks,
tone
Posted on 23-Jan-07 at 4:19 am | Permalink
Ben Smith wrote:
First off, thank you. Actiontastic is awesome for GTD.
Now since this is in Beta, I assume you’re interested in suggestions.
And I’m sure mine are not original, so we’ll call it a vote in favor of… ;)
-Auto save on quit.
-Auto sync on quit.
The only other thing is I have Actiontastic set as a login item so it will open as soon as I turn my PB on. And then I always have to reload it because it causes a failure after the Feb 28 warning box is displayed. Maybe this will go away after we no longer have to ‘ok’ the warning… but I thought you shoud know.
BTW, great product. Keep up the good work!
Posted on 23-Jan-07 at 10:04 am | Permalink
Pierce Wetter wrote:
Would you be willing to share your iCal syncing code with me?
Note that I have my own freeware GTD app, Frictionless, which is very similar to yours, though less polished but with the feature that Projects/Actions are stored in outline form ala Kinkless. So we’re somewhat competitors, but given that both our products are freeware.
Note that I want Frictionless to be open source eventually…
Posted on 23-Jan-07 at 10:33 am | Permalink
Gerry Percy wrote:
I prefer having the Notes Drawer closed unless I need to enter or refer to information there. Have you thought about adding some kind of indicator to the Action line that would let you know there is information in the Notes Drawer? As it is, I type (Note) at the end of the Action text. Also, it would be nice to have a user preference for the font and font size of the text inside the Notes Drawer. The current default is too small for my eyes and screen resolution. In fact, someday it would be nice to have font user prefences for the Inbox, Projects, and Contexts main windows. Really like working with Actiontastic. Have switched over from kGTD.
Posted on 23-Jan-07 at 5:25 pm | Permalink
Steve wrote:
Command-i should open and close the Action Details drawer.
Posted on 25-Jan-07 at 8:10 am | Permalink
Steve wrote:
When entering a new item I should be able to tab over to the context or project column and change its value without reaching for the mouse.
Posted on 25-Jan-07 at 8:16 am | Permalink
Andrew wrote:
I wish it wouldn’t quit every time I close the window…
Posted on 25-Jan-07 at 6:16 pm | Permalink
Bob Sloan wrote:
The handling of completed projects needs more thought. Right now I guess the only thing to do is to delete them.
I’d like to have some way to mark a PROJECT as completed, and then have it not show up when I ask for current projects.
Posted on 26-Jan-07 at 5:25 pm | Permalink
Approximate Norm wrote:
Thank you for this smooth app.
BUG REPORT: after syncing to iCal, items in a project may have had their order changed, especially if they are in different contexts
FEATURE REQUEST: can the inbox button show a flag of some sort to indicate there are unprocessed entries in it?
Again, many thanks for your hard work — you seem to be Getting Things Done very nicely.
Posted on 27-Jan-07 at 3:45 pm | Permalink
Approximate Norm wrote:
oh, another
FEATURE REQUEST - would it be possible to sync only the next actions to the iCal calendars? That way the actions further down a project (which can’t really be done until the next actions are done) don’t show up futilely in the to-do lists.
and a
NOTE TO ALL - I am using the widget DoBeDo in my Dashboard, which shows in a very tidy way the “to-do” list of any particular calendar. Since each Actiontastic Calendar = a context, this means there’s a nice To-Do list of my particular context in my Dashboard. BIG speed boost!
Posted on 27-Jan-07 at 9:06 pm | Permalink
Michael wrote:
I just had an occurrence where I thought I had an old snyc of AT with iCal, so I wanted to delete the ical calendars and do a fresh sync. Deleting the calendars deleted the contexts in AT. I would think this shouldn’t happen?
Posted on 28-Jan-07 at 2:26 pm | Permalink
Jason wrote:
Great job. This app rocks. I’d love to see what you can do with the UI and to provide a great way to see all the information easily and quickly.
Some suggestions (inline with GTD I think and won’t make the app too complex)
1. Sync to http://www.tadalist.com/ - Would give the ability to share lists out to others.
2. Showing due dates in the list is a good thing.
3. Being able to give time estimates (quick, short, day, week) would be good.
Posted on 28-Jan-07 at 4:37 pm | Permalink
Ben wrote:
It would be nice if it were possible to select more than one todo at a time for project and context assignment.
Posted on 30-Jan-07 at 8:33 pm | Permalink
Zack wrote:
Just wondering if anyone has figured out how to get AT contexts to carry through iCal to a Treo 650 without using Missing Sync?
Posted on 30-Jan-07 at 10:22 pm | Permalink
A Hat full of Sky wrote:
Software: Actiontastic…
Of all the GTD software out there Actiontastic from Kaboomerang is the only one I didn’t throw in the Rcycle Bin.
Actiontastic is simple, yet powerful little program that works pretty much in the background on your computer all day. (With the he…
Posted on 31-Jan-07 at 5:15 pm | Permalink
Steven wrote:
Any chance we could get full .Mac synchronization? That would also work with synctogether which seems like a cool tool.
Posted on 02-Feb-07 at 9:28 am | Permalink
Chris wrote:
Love it, love it, love it, clean and easy!
The problem is I can only use it home - my work machine is Windows. I’d love to put my office stuff on it as well, instead of using GTD GMail.
Any plans for a web based version?
Posted on 02-Feb-07 at 1:14 pm | Permalink
David Knell wrote:
I know paper is evil, however, it would be nice to have a “print” function for projects/actions/etc.
I would also like to see a file attachment function or at least some kind of file reference. I have a lot of files that are related to certain projects or workflows and it would be nice to have a reference to them in actiontastic.
Posted on 05-Feb-07 at 10:47 am | Permalink
Timmo Gierke wrote:
As Steve wrote:
“Command-i should open and close the Action Details drawer.” (show / hide information window)
Posted on 09-Feb-07 at 6:56 am | Permalink
Candice Cossel wrote:
Love this app.
I am new to GTD and I have one issue. If I have an action that is either paused or has a specific start date it is still showing up in my next action list and there is no “current” for actions.
Posted on 13-Feb-07 at 12:01 pm | Permalink
ElRod wrote:
I want to thank you for developing the very tool I have hoped to find. I have one request. Is there a way to have this fabulous program work with Backpack?
I would love to be able to send these tasks to backapck and use the reminder function. I think you’ve made the exact tool I’ve been looking for.
Maybe some kind of interaction with the backpack widget?
Thank you again I will begin blogging about this tool now.
Posted on 13-Feb-07 at 1:54 pm | Permalink
Bruce T wrote:
Love the simplicity and I haven’t even started syncing with ical/treo. Looking forward to it.
I have been looking through the posts and can’t seem to find anything regarding archiving completed projects and task (which I assume would be grouped toegether).
Archiving completed projects is very important for reference and the typical CYA BS.
Keep up the great work and am looking forward to puchasing 1.0. Thanks.
Posted on 28-Mar-07 at 10:14 am | Permalink