Anti-functions in Outlook

At work my team and I are finalising a long and complex document. We are all working on it: reading, commenting, suggesting amendments, you know the deal. Ideally we'd all be working on the one copy of the file, but having different server access, this cannot work. We could use TRIM our quite useful document management system, but that only allows serial sharing: it can't handle concurrent editing of the one document.

So, the author uses Outlook, our corporate groupware product, and e-mails the document to all of us; we comment in Microsoft Word's tracked changes mode and the author compiles the changes.

I started work on the document soon after I received the e-mail, but couldn't complete. To block out the time I needed, I copied the e-mail to the Outlook calendar.

Next day, I opened the calendar entry for the document, opened the now embedded email, then opened the attached document, and got back to work.

After some time I discovered that my work of the day before was not included in the file. Of course, it was a copy, a different file, now! Oh great, an anti-feature of Outlook strikes again.

My constant irritation with Outlook is that, despite its very useful functions, it has a major anti-function. It copies, instead of allowing another instance of a single document.

I guess I've been spoilt by InfoQube and Zoot which replicates items, it doesn't copy them, unless of course you want to copy them. So one can work on any instance of an item, and every other instance of it will show the work done.

In Outlook e-mail has the same problem. I can only put an e-mail in one folder, even if it relates to a number of folders I have. What I'd really find productive would be if I could put the one e-mail in multiple folders, and see it searchably with multiple categories (in Outlook 2003, the one we use at work, you can't search on categories: anti-feature #2), reflect it in Tasks and Notes as well as the Calendar. Then we'd be talkin' computing, and not electronic card filing!

Info Select

In a clean out I came across an old 3.5 in. floppy disk box. It still had some disks in it, including backups of my InfoSelect install disk. There were also upgrade disks for Datacad 6 (released by Cadkey in the mid 1990s), an application called 'Squiggle' which made CAD drawings look hand-drawn, and a patch for the single user version of Alpha 4 database.

I decided to see what the disks revealled.

The Alpha 4 disk was readable, so I copied its contents to the HD; neither Squiggle, nor Datacad could be read, but I think I've already got them onto CD; but the InfoSelect! I'd forgotten about this. So I loaded it up: first disk: much grinding of drive, then a 'not formatted' message. Trash that one. Second disk: I got a directory list out of it; but couldn't copy the files due to a failed 'read'. However, they did copy one at a time, so, up and running in a DOS box!

Info Select does one thing really well. It quickly enters and stores text notes, and has a fabulous search function. I used to use it as a memory resident application in DOS, and it was great at what it did.

More recent versions, from the first Windows version, went Baroque, however: too much unnecessary elaboration around the great core functionality, and it got bogged down in 'featureitis.

Task Managers

One of the software 'tools' that seems to have proliferated in the shareware world is task 'managers'. I'll not bore you with a long list of links. but a few that I've come across lately are:

• TreeDBNotes
• Swift To Do List
• otak

Some of the features of otak seemed useful, but not useful enough, so I emailed the author (as his website invites), only to discover that the product has been inactive for some time, with the author off on other things.

The failing of  task managers, to my mind; and I refer mainly to my experience of Microsoft Outlook, is the very restricted view of what a 'task' is.
If the task is something like 'get some milk', or, 'post letters today', then they are probably fine; but for business use, its useless. Imagine a task 'take over Extrata'. Useless.
A task manager would become useful to me if it had features such as:

• Place tasks in groups (otak does this), and see what other tasks are in the group, with their assignees
• Sequence tasks; not as a fully fledged project scheduler, but simply to be able to relate a group of tasks, and ensure that when one goes late, the others' start or finish dates are adjusted
• Set task durations or lead times (or both): Outlook seems to think that a due date is sufficient, but when a 5 week task pops up on the due date, one would be at a loss to do it (maybe this means I need shorter tasks, but grouped, or linked)
• Link tasks to people (so one can see who has what tasks.
• Identify when a task's advancement awaits work by someone else (a 'contact')
• Attach documents to tasks by file location
• Have a calendar view of tasks
• Show dependencies: other tasks or people's work that is dependent on this task, and other activity upon which the task itself depends, with capability to track the 'input' tasks.