Update: 18 June 2010 – GTDinbox was recently renamed ActiveInbox for legal reasons. There have also been new features added. \u00a0I’m not \u00a0going to rewrite this review but \u00a0check the GTDinbox\/ActiveInbox home page for details. \ufeff<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n For the past two months, I’ve been using a task management tool called GTDinbox<\/a>. I installed GTDinbox based on the recommendation as a colleague. Overall, I’ve been pleased with GTDinbox and plan to continue using it but it’s not a perfect tool. I installed GTDinbox based on the recommendation as a colleague. Overall, I’ve been pleased GTDinbox and plan to continue using it but I would not say that it’s a perfect tool.<\/p>\n GTDinbox is implemented as a FireFox add-on. Its rather ambitious goal is to turn “Gmail into a unique task manager to effectively manage your inbox, reduce email overload and maintain inbox zero.”\u00a0 Unlike services such as RememberTheMilk which, has it’s own cloud backend, GTDinbox builds on top of Gmail. This is a somewhat unusual approach but Gmail has a number of features making it a good basis for a task manager.\u00a0 Gmail offers free network accessible secure cloud storage that can be accessed through any web browser or less eloquently through any IMAP client.\u00a0 Additionally, many tasks begin life as emails. Thus integration with Gmail means that these tasks don’t have to be reentered into a new system.<\/p>\n Once you download and install the GTDinbox FireFox add-on, GTDinbox modifies the Gmail UI.\u00a0 When you view an email, 4 buttons appear at the top of it allowing you assign the email a status by marking it is as either Action, Waiting On, Some Day, or Finished.\u00a0 You can also assign emails to a contexts\u00a0 — e.g. “home”, “work”, etc.\u00a0 –, projects, or references. GTDinbox adds a box to the side bar that allows you to view tasks by Project, Context, or Status. Once you have categorized the email, you can safety archive it to clear up your inbox and then use GTDinbox to track it.<\/p>\n Internally, GTDinbox works by assigning labels to emails.\u00a0 Context labels start with C\/ e.g. C\/Home or C\/Work. Project labels start with P\/. And status labels start with S\/.\u00a0 While these labels have special meanings to GTDinbox they are also regular Gmail labels.\u00a0 When viewing a message, the GTDinbox label will show up just like other labels. This approach is simple yet it works surprisingly well. I also really like the transparency that comes from using Gmail labels as the basis of the system. When you view active tasks within a context or project, GTDinbox simply displays a Gmail search page using the labels as search criteria.\u00a0 For example, the following search string is used for the home context “label:c-home (label:s-action OR label:s-some-day OR label:s-waiting-on) -label:s-finished”.\u00a0 This means that you have less reason to worry about losing your task data.\u00a0 Even if GTDinbox stopped working, you could still access your tasks directly by viewing labels within Gmail. It also means that you can manipulate your tasks from any mail client.\u00a0 Obviously accessing and manipulating your tasks this way is a lot less fun but at least it’s possible. For example, I will often manually move order shipment emails to the S\/Waiting-on label using my smart phone.<\/p>\n Want to enter a task that doesn’t come from an email? GTDinbox adds a “Compose Personal” link. This is like the standard “Compose Mail” except that it adds the email directly to your inbox.\u00a0 You can then label the email as a task just like an outside email. “Compose Personal” is also useful for sending notes to your smart phone.\u00a0 Now instead of writing down an address or room number, I’ll often just use “Compose Personal” so I can access it by viewing email on my smart phone.<\/p>\n GTDinbox requires that you use Gmail.\u00a0 Most people use Gmail as at least one of their personal email accounts so this is not a huge burden. However, when tasks originate as emails to other accounts such as a work email, some of the convenience of GTDinbox is lost. You must forward the email to Gmail or enter it manually using “Compose Personal” — much less eloquent approaches.<\/p>\n GTDinbox is a FireFox add-on so you must use FireFox to access Gmail in order to use it. This may not seem like a big deal — everyone uses Firefox — but it means that you can’t use tools such as PRISM with GTDinbox. I’ve found PRISM to be a more streamlined way to access Gmail than Firefox, however I stopped using it in order to use GTDinbox. Additionally, you must have permissions on the computer you’re using to install add-ons into Firefox. This may be a problem if you frequently access your email from public computers in places such as school computer labs or Internet cafes. There, it is likely that you will either be unable to install the GTDinbox add-on because Firefox is locked down or you will have to reinstall it every time you access Gmail. For security reasons, I no longer access Gmail from untrusted computers so this has not been an issue for me.<\/p>\n Often, the same task involves multiple emails.\u00a0 For example,\u00a0 a single online order may involve 3 or more emails: order confirmation, payment confirmation, and shipment confirmation. I usually mark all emails related to an order as Waiting-On until I receive the item. Unfortunately GTDinbox provides no way to combine multiple emails into a single meta-task. Thus these three emails will show up as three unrelated tasks.\u00a0 This limitation is compounded by the fact that you can’t manage tasks within the message list view.\u00a0 You must click through to the full message to mark a task as finished or assign it to a project or context.<\/p>\n Using a tickler file to defer tasks until a certain data and then process them in your inbox is one of the core pieces of GTD. My biggest complaint, about GTDinbox is that there is no way to tell it that you want to defer a task until a certain day and have it hide the task until that time. The closest thing that GTDinbox offers is marking a task as “Some Day” but “Some Day” tasks still show up in context and project views.<\/p>\n This is one of the things that tripped me up when I first started using GTDinbox. GTDinbox will not track an email unless you must assign it a status — by marking it is as either Action, Waiting On, Some Day, or Finished. Assigning the email to a project or context is not sufficient. Once I became aware of this limitation, it wasn’t a big deal. Still it seems like something that could be fixed.<\/p>\n GTDinbox is based on Gmail and thus inherits its limitations.\u00a0 Gmail does not let you edit emails and for normal email this makes sense. However, if you enter a task using compose personal and want to add a note or correct something there is no way to do this. The best you can do is to reply to the email or mark the email task as finished and then create a new task with the changes.<\/p>\n GTDinbox relies on editing the html of Gmail to add it’s enhancements. Although, Google does not do anything to overtly block GTDinbox, it does occasionally change Gmail. Sometimes these changes are enough to break GTDinbox.\u00a0 When this happens, the creators of GTDinbox are usually quick to release a version that fixes things.\u00a0 I’ve only been without a working GTDinbox briefly. To minimize down time, install GTDinbox from the Firefox add-on page rather than the GTDinbox<\/a> site so you get auto-updated.<\/p>\n I’ve tried various methods of task management and so far GTDinbox is the best I’ve found. But it is not a perfect tool. Piggy backing off of another service means that it’s less polished. I get the sense that GTDinbox could be truly amazing if it was acquired by Google and baked into the fabric of Gmail.\u00a0 Still there is much to be said for the simplicity and transparency of it’s design. It’s a great tool for taming your inbox and managing tasks. Some people swear by paper task lists or local text files.\u00a0 But if you’re looking for a cloud based task management system, GTDinbox is well worth trying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" GTDinbox review Update: 18 June 2010 – GTDinbox was recently renamed ActiveInbox for legal reasons. There have also been new features added. \u00a0I’m not \u00a0going to rewrite this review but \u00a0check the GTDinbox\/ActiveInbox home page for details. \ufeff For the … Continue reading Other features<\/h2>\n
Downsides<\/h1>\n
Software Environment<\/h2>\n
Functional Limitations<\/h2>\n
NO Tickler<\/h3>\n
Emails Not Assigned a Status Are Untracked<\/h3>\n
Can’t edit Email tasks.<\/h3>\n
Not maintained or endorsed by Google.<\/h3>\n
Conclusions<\/h1>\n