Vitalist - Grouping by Project and Context
April 1st, 2007 / 43 CommentsFirst, thanks for all of the feedback on our latest release of Vitalist. We have worked hard on this update, and it is good to see that people are enjoying the new version.
Many of you have mentioned that the main thing missing from the new release is the ability to group actions by both Context and Project. Honestly, we did not realize that this was such an important feature to all of you, and we felt that the improved filtering would more than make up for this view.
That said, we will be adding back the ability to group your actions by Context, Project, and a new grouping related to Time (Overdue, Today, Next Week, Later, etc).
Again, thanks for your feedback. We will be adding back the grouping feature as soon as possible.
hallelujah, praise the Lord and pass the cornbread….
now i can quit sticking pins in the dolls i made of you.
Thanks Matt. That is great news. Mike
yipee
Wow. How is that for customer service? Fantastic news!
PHEW!!!
Thanks..I guess I can take down the “MAY DAY MAY DAY” signals.
When will the original group actions be back in place.
I am lost without them
Woohoo! You guys rock
I’ve sent you a few rather upset emails about the loss of contexts and projects. This is supposed to be a GTD application, where is the GTD. Allen doesn’t advocate spending time prioritizing and he’s right. that is Covey’s thing, I need my old Vitalist back, with the capacity to make my actions listed by contexts first, and then for my weekly review, by projects. Anything without that simply doesn’t work for me. Please someone reread “Getting things done.” Its a great method and we need our great Vitalist program to help us stay on track. Now hopefully we can help Vitalist stay on GTD track.
Lynn
Lynn,
Vitalist is still very much a GTD application. Contexts are very much a part of Vitalist, and now might even be more powerful with the ability to add multiple contexts to actions.
We have also revamped the filtering. You can easily filter by context, project, priority, or a combination of the above.
And I agree that priority is not GTD specific, but priority can be very powerful in a GTD system if you think of priority more like indicating which actions are “Next Actions.”
Great news, I was really missing this, thanks for listening to your customers - this is great service!
Very relieved. Having spent two and a half days transferring my entire life to Vitalist, the loss of an easy way to group actions by context and / or projects had me tearing my hair out.
Can I also add a request that the resultant lists be made more print-friendly? Would be great to be able to print out a vanilla check-list (just the name of the action and a check-box next to it) by context or project, which seemed to be problematical in the old Vitalist - the notes seemed to insist on printing as well…
Print to txt would be awesome. I would also be interested in a one time donation option. I don’t like having monthly automatic payments and the features of the upgrade aren’t useful to me. I would like to show monetary appreciation for ending my search for an ideal GTD app.
Matt,
I realize that priority may be a “powerful” option, and I think that it should be left on for those who think in priorities. Priorities make my brain hurt. As I start my day, I loved dragging to the top the things that needed to get done for the day, and the things that could wait just stayed at the bottom of my list. Leave priorities, but PLEASE bring back drag and drop.
By the way Lynn… Allen does discuss priorities, in “The Four-Criteria Model for Choosing Actions in the Moment” Pg. 49.
hey maybe i haven’t figured this out yet but i can’t seem to add projects on the fly - for example, i have a new item in my inbox, and it’s not based on an existing project, there’s no link to add new project so i have to go create the project and then
Also the project pull-down menu isn’t in alphabetical order - so if it doesn’t come up right away when i start typing the project name, i have to go hunting for it. This is especially inconvenient if i can’t
remember the exact project name.
I would love to have a “waiting” indicator on the actions page so i can see who i’m waiting for without going to the “waiting” page.
Finally, is there a way on the Projects page to show the related actions? EVERY project is listed so to delete old projects I have to go to the actions page and see what actions are associated with each project.
THANK YOU!!!
Outstanding response, guys!
It’s gotta be tough to reveal your brand-new baby and have so many people clamoring for your old one.
But I think you can see how much passion your app inspires, even in brand-new users like me.
Sounds like you’re going to be able to combine the two, which will attract even more fans.
May the Force be with you!
Sheila
I’m one of those that actually prefer the new approach. Now that you’ve fixed the context filtering, it’s so much easier to focus on just the context that I’m working on….you just need to make the same available for the mobile client.
The quick entry at the top of actions also needs a context drop down….
I really appreciate how responsive you are to your customers.
I second the idea of adding a context drop down in the quick-add bar.
That and being able to edit multiple items at once is really a necessity - e.g., I do the mindsweep into the inbox - but then i have to back and click edit on every single item to move it to ‘waiting’ or ’someday’ or ‘actions.’ This is overly time consuming and could be resolved utilizing ajax (similar to how milestone editing is done in 37 Signals’ Basecamp).
brent wrote: Priorities make my brain hurt. As I start my day, I loved dragging to the top the things that needed to get done for the day, and the things that could wait just stayed at the bottom of my list.
Exactly right, in a sense i loved the super web 2.0 simplicity of the older version. I realize “all good things must come to an end” and this old dog must do new tricks but the prioritization function is a little anti-GTD. I thought I had finally gotten freed from having to decide that at point of entry and could quickly drag and drop daily depending on if anything new hit the page that day that superseded the importance of other things. Looks like the shackles have returned….drats.
Question. When i have done my bit of an action, i want to be able to change it to ‘waiting for X’. That doensn’t seem possible. How does the waiting for bit work?
also wish “save and add another” returned when i enter a new action.
Wish: Move a project to someday. When I am thinking clearer.
also, could the context or project autocomplete when i type in the first few letters of it rather than me having to take my hands off the keyboard reach over to the mouse and click a drop down box (like the older version?) as an option alongside the drop down box. tis slowing me down tons. thanks.
note to self…ALWAYS, ALWAYS BETA-TEST before release….hmmmmm
Couldn’t we add an action right from project view before? Will that be one of the “Options, coming soon” ? How does anyone else add actions during weekly review? How can I view which projects don’t have a next action? Seems like a lot of cracks to fall through.
Seems that I have lost the iCal import into my Google Calendar. When trying to set the parameters again, I’m told: “Failed to import calendar from “webcal://my.vitalist.com/services/ical. Anything happened to the feeds?”
Really appreciate that you will bring back the great functionality that enables grouping by Project and Context. Don’t forget to also enable the drag&drop feature which is the way I rearrange my Projects to focuse on the Next Action.
1. I really liked the ability to slide actions up and down. Is there any way to add this back in, rather than stars?
2. Can you add “save and add another” back in?
I agree with those who are bemoaning the loss of drag and drop reordering of actions. I also miss the way a project’s “next action” was defined as the first action in the list of a project’s actions. Together, these made a very intuitive and efficient interface.
Most people are familiar with making lists of actions which are roughly chronological–steps to follow in order to get the project done. Often, neither “due dates” nor priorities are assigned to these actions and it would be a waste of time to do so; the “next action” simply needs to be completed “as soon as possible”.
When a project’s “next action” was defined as the one at the top of the project’s list of actions, completing one “next action” automatically caused the following action to become the new “next action”–no futzing around with reassigning priorities. A great time-saver.
The drag and drop functionality made it very easy to reorder actions as the environment changed. Again, no need to fiddle with due dates or priorities.
I think one of the most valuable views of my commitments would be to list all of the projects which contained a “next action” associated with a given context. It would list only the single “next action” for each project or subproject. This would allow me to see at a glance the next actions which I need to get to work on in that particular context. I could then decide which specific action to start on given my available time, energy level etc.
It could be formatted this way (not sure if the spacing will be maintained when I post this):
@home
Project 1
Next Action
Project 2
Next Action
Subproject 1
Next Action
Project 3
Next Action
(Again, only the projects whose “next action” had an @home context would show up in this list, since that is the context I am interested in (in this example).)
An alternate display could be:
@home
Next Action (Project 1)
Next Action (Project 2)
Next Action (Project 2: Subproject 1)
Next Action (Project 3)
One other feature request. When I add a tickler, it would be very useful to be able to set up reminders which repeat on the “third Wednesday” of the month etc. This is simply the way many of my commitments happen.
Thanks for an excellent product–and striving to maintain the difficult balance between features/flexibility and ease of use.
Is it just me, or did the button in “New actions” that let you “save and add another action” disappear with the update?
Maybe I’m just slow this morning, but if so, that’s a huge downer. Especially when you have 20 new things to put in at once.
Otherwise, update was awesome, as is your service. Your monthly fee is a steal for what you get (IMHO). Keep it up.
With all the new functionality I seem to have lost the ability to assign new actions to “Waiting”
This is a HUGE issue. Please help as Vitalist is completely useless to me in this state.
Greg- It’s a little more complicated, but still possible. Go to “Waiting” and click “New Action.” Then the “waiting on” option appears. Unfortunately, this is not as good as having it incorporated into the regular “New Action” from the new action’s menu. Still, it’ll keep you from tearing your hair out.
I am checking back on the blog comments and the main site every couple of hours. 80% of the reasons I chose Vitalist are now gone. Do we have any clue when or if these issues will be addressed?
A forum would be great.
Not GTD right now I will tell you that.
I agree with Joe; most of the reasons I moved to Vitalist are now gone.
Considering how hard Vitalist is working to address issues their customers want, I think it will just be a matter of days until everything you guys are having issues with will be resolved.
I say give it a week or two before you drop the service. Give them a chance.
What happened to the alpha listing of projects? I would like to see the alphabetical listing of projects the way it was before. Like on the side bar and the action lists.
time to chill out and give them a chance, before jumping on their backs. Give it some time…unless you want to get behind the wheel and program everything
I think we all need to keep things in perspective. From my view:
- Not having an alpha list of projects is admittedly annoying but is not earthshattering.
- Not having the Context view is very painful
- Not being able to drag and drop is much missed. Not that the priority concept doesn’t work for a next action, it is just that it only allows me to have one Red priority at a time (so I can be sure it sorts at the top).
- Not being able to send an item to Waiting at creation time wastes time (unless you make a context called Waiting).
- Not being able to add a context using the Add Action bar at the top of the Action list wastes time.
- etc.
I don’t agree with Joe that Vitalist is “NOT GTD right now” as I seem to be doing OK with my GTD-centric view of the world. I agree that Vitalist is different that it was last week, it is more flexible which always equates to more complex, and it is wasting some of my precious time right now (which I greatly dislike).
But, I am sticking here until the Vitalist team tells us to pound sand which is effectively what 37Signals group has done to their users with their unwillingness to add the most basic features (like item level tags which Vitalist does great!) In my view, Vitalist is still the best web-based GTD tool out there, even its numerous warts following the upgrade.
I agree with Joshua, I bet it will not be long before we see results from the team.
Have a great one!
For me the new app is a step away from the intuitive feel to the product earlier. Some things that are confusing me are:
1. If I click on the “My Projects’ link it takes me to the list of the projects once I am there I will like to click on the project to see the list of items I need to get done there.
2. On adding a new item on the “Inbox” menu and I assign it to a project, it just remains there instead of moving to the project - so I am now keeping track of it in two places.
There are some kinks that need to be ironed out. If you had your bug tracking system exposed we could file bugs instead of posting comments.
First off, you guys are doing a *great* job. The newest gtd outlook add on was just released and you’re version offers much more then theirs and this isn’t even your full time gig (I think).
I’m in IT and understand just adding a button is *not* as simple as most people think it is so don’t feel pressured to get the changes done by next week.
Perhaps a few bullet points of what is going to return, in the order of what you are working on, would calm some of the chatter.
In the future, would it be possible to have a beta test that runs in parallel so people can give you feed back. It might slow the release process a little but it might be a smother process to have a larger slice of your user population. This really is a NEW version of vitalist, and not an upgrade and some of the features that made it flow so naturally have now been removed.
Thanks again for the great work!
You’ve already added back in the ability to add a new contact or project within a task! It is the little things that make us happy.
Keep up the fabulous work. I agree with Stephen that you shouldn’t feel pressured to get everything fixed right away. Keep us updated, though, on progress. That will keep me coming back.
Already they’ve addressed several of my concerns, barely two days later. That, my friends, is dedicated customer service. Keep the faith and all will be well, folks.
I’m excited about Vitalist, having discovered it a few days ago. I have a few questions - If this is not the place for them, let me know.
What is the inbox for? Does it display Actions due today? Doesn’t the Dashboard do that?
Why the specialized Waiting and Someday folders? Shouldn’t I be able to do the same thing with Actions coded with Someday/Maybe or Waiting For contexts?
Is there a way to move an Action from Someday to Actions when I finally decide to do it?
Why the Ticklers? Isn’t that what an Actions list, sorted by due date is?
Anyway, I’m excited to get my feet wet. I currently use David Allen’s Outlook add-in, which works fine - when I’m in the office. I’m hoping Vitalist can provide more of a web 2.0 type of GTD.
ps, I agree with Lynn O’Connor - Priorities is not GTD. I don’t plan on using them.
You guys rock!
I was adding a project, from the list and I wanted to go back and check on a project. I looked in the drop down list and they were in alpha order!
Great!
Peace people
We love you