I would also like the ability to create a task directly from an email, with the email attached to the task. This is very handy in many different situations, ie. when I receive an invoice via email I can create a task when that invoice is due, and have that email attached to the task. Or when someone sends me a list of things to do for them, I can create a task and have the email (with all the information about what to do) attached to that task. Haven’t found any ways to do this, but I’m quite new to Solve360 so any feedback on this is appreciated.

+1

Thanks for your feature request and feedback. We understand your points and they seem to be more about productivity rather than managing projects and people. Just a few thoughts:

If the contact’s email address was inserted into the original email (e.g. in the body), it would show on the contact record

The gadget is a useful way to manage tasks in context, and a snip could be added to the task, either as detail, or even as a comment

We don’t manage tasks independently of a project or contact, here we want things to have context

Often you need more information that just a snip to understand the story

Thanks SpecOps,
Let’s say I get an email about a certain client or project.  I want to notify someone (whether it’s me or someone else on the team) that some action needs to be taken.  It’s more than just a history item, there’s something that needs to happen.
How do I make this transition from “information” to “action”, since all emails show up with the contact (or project) whether they require action or not?  That’s what I was hoping to accomplish with this feature request.  Quite possibly there’s already a way to do that and I simply don’t understand.  (I just added Webmail in the past couple of days and am trying to move away from Outlook).
Thanks as always for the clarifications.

CherylK - Jun 10, 2011 04:43pm

Thanks SpecOps,
Let’s say I get an email about a certain client or project.  I want to notify someone (whether it’s me or someone else on the team) that some action needs to be taken.  It’s more than just a history item, there’s something that needs to happen.
How do I make this transition from “information” to “action”, since all emails show up with the contact (or project) whether they require action or not?  That’s what I was hoping to accomplish with this feature request.  Quite possibly there’s already a way to do that and I simply don’t understand.  (I just added Webmail in the past couple of days and am trying to move away from Outlook).
Thanks as always for the clarifications.

You could add a task or schedule a follow-up - with the gadget, it can be done on the same screen . Collegues will see it in their Next Actions Report, and optionally receive an email notice.

Engineering SpecialOps - Jun 14, 2011 07:49am

You could add a task or schedule a follow-up - with the gadget, it can be done on the same screen . Collegues will see it in their Next Actions Report, and optionally receive an email notice.

I don’t see this option within Webmail, and don’t see how to assign a “task” to a Solve360 user through gmail… could you please provide additional detail on how to do this and from where?

Thanks!

In Gmail, when you have an email of a contact open, you can use the Google Gadget to quickly open up their file and add a task underneath it.

Now that the Solve360 Gadget allows you to archive emails right away, you can actually just add tasks and archive the email with the important info right then and there.

I’ve been trying this out and it seems a little, well, awkward. You have to create a “Task List” then a “task” under that - and doesn’t solve what I want to solve which is to tell someone else on the team to deal with a particular email.

Any thoughts on how to achieve that? i.e. email comes into “general” inbox - I want to notify someone that they need to contact the relevant customer (and make sure they know about which email)?

Cheers
BC

Tasks in Solve have a field to indicate who is responsible and “Send email notification now” checkbox to tell a team member that they need to act.

Hi,
Yeah, they do, but in order to create a task I need to create a Task List, then create a task in the task list - too many steps and no association with the email. Ideally:
* Select email (or other thing)
* Create task from this
* New task created with a reference to the thing with the same stuff that a task has perhaps - such as who is responsible and email notify them.

Cheers
BC

+1 to Ben’s request.
I’ve tried using a helpdesk system like Mojo and it was ok, but a pain having 2 systems. Then am now trying Podio and love the ability to create the task from within Gmail and that it copies the original email to the task, but alas it does not ‘link’ back to the email and even more it is yet another system and is not in Solve so there is not contextual linking.

Would be nice to have a simple task system in Solve for basic tasking and then contextual tasking for items linked to a project.

Next level for us would be to be able to create tasks or project items from email filters.

The hardest part I’m having right now is working with new leads/clients. There isn’t a project (property) to link them to yet.
We thought about creating a blog for prospects, but that is a manual process and can not be auto-linked via email filtering that we’ve found.

Ben C - Aug 31, 2011 05:45pm

Hi,
Yeah, they do, but in order to create a task I need to create a Task List, then create a task in the task list - too many steps and no association with the email. Ideally:
* Select email (or other thing)
* Create task from this
* New task created with a reference to the thing with the same stuff that a task has perhaps - such as who is responsible and email notify them.

Cheers
BC

“Would be nice to have a simple task system in Solve for basic tasking and then contextual tasking for items linked to a project.”

Exactly! Forcing a task to be associated with a contact is unrealistic for many use cases. A simple example is conducting research of any sort. I just want to assign that task to a colleague, but it has nothing to do with a contact or another.

I’ve analyzed close to 40 CRM and PM systems so far, and Solve360 was one of the top contenders, next to Insightly, WORKetc, and Wrike. Unfortunately we do exactly this kind of customer-less research a lot in my team, so Solve360 didn’t work for us in this scenario.

If Norada is looking for inspiration, Wrike is the PM system that in my opinion does project management best, by far, hands down, for the following reasons:

+ There are only two concepts to manipulate: projects and tasks (just like folders and files, a metaphor that has worked for us for 30+ years). In Solve, there are project blogs, task lists, and tasks. And this still doesn’t cover the case of a task belonging to more than one project.

+ In Wrike, one task can belong to more than one project, mapping real-world overlap. A project dragged over a task “tags” that task as belonging to it. These metaphors are all you need to represent arbitrary complexity.

+ The three-pane view makes it very easy to visualize what’s going on, AND to manage tasks

+ You can simply drag-and-drop tasks to reprioritize, or from one project or another (the latter is not possible in Solve because you need to create task lists to contain tasks - http://norada.com/forums/viewthread/2585/)

+ Tasks don’t have to be associated with a contact, or assigned to anyone

+ Finally, the UI is very pleasant to look at and interact with. Wrike’s Gantt charts are also incredibly powerful and sleek.

Unfortunately, Wrike doesn’t do CRM, so I couldn’t select it for my team. This is where Solve wins hands down. However, much can be learned from Wrike’s implementation of tasks, which seems to be the trend PM systems are following (see also Teambox).

A simple example is conducting research of any sort.

In this case we’d offer creating a project blog to manage the activity of ... conducting research for that something.  The activities provide a range of widgets to not only help manage the tasks, but also help track the resulting information assets too.  That research may then evolve to a broader scope of tasks and information, as in actually creating a plan to do something about it - add a section header, change the title, keep rolling.  Something that is often overlooked is that project blogs are useful for internal projects too i.e. not related to a client or external project.  It’s actually the primary was we use them internally here at Norada.  Development boards (to manage sprints, bugs, changes, etc), Business operations, Accounting, Tablet research, etc.

Solve strives to be less of a traditional “system” and expects more “authoring” (if that makes sense) e.g. dragging a task to the top of the task list (which you can do), or changing its color to orange or red implies it’s more important, should receive attention, be done first or whatever pattern the team feels is useful at the moment.  You can also move activities from one blog (contact or company) to another by dropping it on the associated record.

A lot of “basic tasking” is now taken up with the new activity type called “Follow-up”.

It’s an important element of Solve’s design philosophy that everything relates to a client, or a project (which as mention above can be almost anything).  This method creates hubs to focus activity around keeping the system structure easier to understand as a client’s usage increases (think documents encapsulating large and important stories).  We don’t do folders (or hierarchies).  These are super important to us and we won’t shake them.  Around that there’s lots of room of inspiration / new ideas so we certainly appreciate the feedback.  Thanks for taking the time to share it.

Engineering SpecialOps - Jan 24, 2012 05:49pm

It’s an important element of Solve’s design philosophy that everything relates to a client, or a project (which as mention above can be almost anything).  [...] We don’t do folders (or hierarchies).  These are super important to us and we won’t shake them.  Around that there’s lots of room of inspiration / new ideas so we certainly appreciate the feedback.  Thanks for taking the time to share it.

Alright, how about organizing items in project blogs in type tabs? I was about to post the suggestion, but someone beat me to it: http://norada.com/forums/viewthread/3130/#10801

Pattern #3 “Tabs are evil”, we avoid using them for similar reasons we avoid using folders.

You can organize activities on the page exactly as you want them (right click to save moving them) and you can use section headers to group them as the page gets bigger.