Phi To Do

It’s been an exciting two months since the release of the first version of Phitodo, the application that initially started as an in-house experiment turned out to be quite a success with a considerable amount 3rd party reviews a constantly growing number of users and an all around good ascending trend.

In response to the feedback we got from our users we are happy to announce that we’ll be launching a new version release as early as the 11th of January 2010. This new version comes to correct some of our mistakes and brings a set of new features requested by you. Below you will find a few of the new features which will be included in this new version.

As with the first version we focused on keeping the application as clean and simple as possible while packing as many features as possible into an easy to use interface. The first thing we did wrong in the first version was the screen real estate as Phitodo would not fit properly on smaller screen resolutions especially on our netbooks.

The main focus of the new release is “flexibility”. The new version of PhiTodo is divided in two areas “Filters area” and “Display area”. This will allow you to select a lot of filters and display the tasks in the way that fits you best.

1. The filters area

Has now three views:

1. Default view
2. Projects view
3. Friends view

In the future this area will have “Labels view” and a lot of more views to make you live easier.

The “Default view” allows for filtering of the tasks by date, star and others. All filters are cumulative meaning selecting a new filter will let you combine two or more filters for example this new filtering component will allow you to filter task from today which are starred and pertain to a certain project and are shared with a chosen user thus giving you total control over the displayed tasks.

The “Projects view” holds the list of projects along with the ability edit an existing project. Adding a new project is now more visible as per your request.

The “Friends view” offers the same filtering capabilities as the two above plus the ability to a new friend to share tasks with.

2. The display area

Has now two views:

1. Details view
2. Simple view

The “Details view” will include all the information available for a task along with the user that shares the task and the new “Simple view” will have just a running list of entries for readability and access. The “Simple view” will have a “Quick add” feature. You can see more in the screen shots at the end of this post.

In a future rendition this area will add further views of the same tasks some of which include a “Calendar view” and “Gantt Chart view”.

3. Other new features

Add tasks from email

As we’ve all seen adding tasks to any task manager is quite a hassle, in order to meet this need version 2 comes with a major improvement for adding tasks – the ability to add tasks from emails so after the launch sending an email to “tasks@phitodo.com” from the email address used for registering for an account will automatically add that email as a task in your to-do list.

The idea came after some of you requested a Gmail plugin for adding tasks to Phitodo, our thinking is why restrict usage only to Gmail but rather leave the system open enough so it can be used from any emailing system including mobile phone clients.

This is our first effort to move Phitodo closer to the handheld devices as needed. In the first quarter of 2010 a full suite of mobile options will be available to bridge the gap between desktop and all the different phones available.

Date formatting settings

As Phitodo gets global recognition the need for setting the time format was dire so we are launching it with the new version.

Time spent on project

Another request which we are happy to answer to is the ability to visualize the time spent on project by cumulating all the tasks in the said project.

History

The tasks history (completed tasks list) receives further updates including the ability to clear it and small redesign.

Development is nearing the end for this new version both for the online version and the desktop version and we are confident it will bring an all around better experience to our users.

We would like to thank everybody for their feedback and help in bringing this together and promise to stay true to our believe that software should be clean, simple and easy to use furthermore we make a commitment to continue development based on your feedback and needs. We are glad that after just 2 months from launch we can provide an updated version with a lot of new features that hopefully you’ll love.

4. Screenshots

Simple view + Friends view:

Default view + Details view

Projects view + Share

As the winter holidays approach we would like to extend our best wishes to all that made this possible and especially our users.

A Happy New Year and all the best,
The Phitodo Team