One of the things I loved about Ecoo is that like so many other aspects of task management, the designers actually understood (IMHO) the "nature" of tasks, in this instance they understood that tasks and calendar events were just ITEMS, i.e. just items with slight different properties. i.e. just as everything in IQ is just an "item" with different properties, as opposed to Outlook where a task item is different than a contact with is different than a note etc. any item in Ecco could be a calendar item and so on. That being said, here is how I am hoping IQ implements the calendar:
1. ANY item should be able to show up on the calendar simply by assigning the nessecary calendar attributes to it (date, start time, end time etc.). For lack of a better term I will call these scheduled tasks.
2. Non-scheduled tasks (i.e. items that are just "to-do's") should be able to show up on the calendar based on the users preferences as follows:
A. On the start date.
and/or
B. On the due date
and/or
C. On the period in between the start date and due date/
Additionally there should be an easy way to spot on the calednar that a task is a task and not a "scheduled task".
or
D. Not at all.
Theoretically an item should be able to be both a task and a calendar event, if someone were to assign the necesary attributes to it. Though I can see no reason anyone would want to, and if they are mutually exclusive I think that would be OK. My point simply is that an item should easily be able to be changed from one to the other simply by changing the item atrributes, as it's not uncommon to suddenly decide to schedule time against a task.
3. I would like to be able to tag a calendar event for a particualr dayt as "timeless", meaning that it should be performed on that day but at no specific time (i.e. call Jane and say hello). Every other software application such as Outlook forces me to either make it an all day event, or assign a time to it even if it is a 5 minute call and I see no need to asign a time to it.
4. I would like gantt items to be able to show up, precisley as I mention in number 2 above. This assumes the gantt chart dates are different than task start and due dates, perhaps they are the same.
5. I would like to be able to selectively decide what "level" of tasks from an outline shows up on the calendar. For example, let suppose the design phase lasts 2 weeks and has 25 tasks "underneath" it. I may want the top task "design phase" to show up on the calendar, but not any of the 25 tasks underneath it. I guess that would simply require a field with a check mark such as "show on calendar"? And if so I think the default for that field should be "yes" as soon as someone selects a date and time and it should take a purposeful effort to unceck it (i.e. to protect the user from forgetting an important even because they did not check it).
6. There should be some other way to "tag" items for appearnace on the calendar, so that they can easily be identified for what they are. For example, a "tickler" or "reminder' or whatever. Just something to easily tell at a glance that the item I see on the calendar on Friday is a "tickler" versus a scheduled event versus a task due date.
7. This relates to the program as a whole but certains fields should be able to be made "required" so that they must be given a value, this will be particularly useful with calendar items.
That is all I can think of right now. I read that there is, or is going to be the ability to define tasks as conditional and not have them show up on a task list until they are ready to be completed. I have not gotten that far into the program yet, but that is also awesome.
Thanks, and would like to hear comments as well as any suggestions I missed.