Tasks by Google
Newly launched Google Tasks
Earlier this year the was some stir and speculation that Google was launching their own task management product. At that point it was much ado about nothing.
So I was a bit surprised when Google announced their new Tasks feature being made available via Labs last week. And although this ‘launch’ was not on the scale of a major product like GMail or Google Calendar, it was the answer to a lot of Google users’ desires. A task/to-do application has been one of the most popular requests directed at the online giant.
My return to work last week combined with a dash of curiosity lead me to check out what Google was offering in this genre. Here’s a brief summary.
The Good
There were a few nice touches added by the Google Tasks team. First off, Tasks lives within GMail and this seems to be the only place it is accessible. But if you live and breath by the Google suite of apps, this shouldn’t be a problem. Additionally, you can pop out the tasks dialogue into it’s own window (as seen above), making your tasks accessible while you work in any other application. So after a week of usage, I think it’s fair to say that the accessibility is a positive.
Secondly, the design implemented here is simplistic. Using tasks is simple and straightforward. Navigating through your tasks and task lists is fairly intuitive and keyboard friendly. The content of the tasks themselves are straightforward and at the most can consist only of three things: a name, a due date and a note. Average Joe user can start using this tool with no instruction at all.
The last nice feature is the hierarchical organization of the tool. You can nest your tasks within a list, which fits nicely with the concept of areas of responsibility. In any area where you have multiple tasks or projects, you can nest sub-tasks under a parent task with a simple use of the tab button. Shift+tab moves you back a level.
The second aspect of the hierarchical nature is the use of multiple lists. You can easily add/remove lists as well as quickly move from one to another.
Overall, it’s apparent that ease of use was a high priority in the design of this tool.
The Bad
A large list of completed tasks is only somewhat helpful.
But it wasn’t all good.
It’s easy to complain that this is just too simplistic. For people who are looking for context or tag sensitive tools, this is not it. The lack of metadata you can add to each task means you are forced to use the tool in limited fashion.
An example of this over simplicity is viewing your completed tasks. Despite whatever structure or organization you put your tasks into, when they are marked as completed, they are all mixed together in one large list. Simply not very helpful if you need to refer back to what you’ve done.
In the end, it’s a little lacking for my needs.
Overall, I came away from this with the feeling of “too little, too late”. There are so many other good options out there, it’s hard to imagine this competing. It’s not even the best task management tool that can be integrated with GMail—RTM beats out Google in that department.
But if simple is what you are looking for—and when it comes to task management, a lot of folks are—then this is a good choice. Similar to a desktop options like Today or TaskPaper, Google Tasks seems intended to help you focus on your work … and that’s a good thing.
Since the launch of GMail, it appears that Google is attempting to give people a viable, even better, option than what Microsoft offers with it’s Office suite. In that sense, Google Tasks fits right in as a competitor to the the tasks functionality within MS Outlook.
But if you’re looking for a more robust project and task management application, keep on looking.
