GTD Wannabe

FusionDesk: The Tool That Almost Was

September 10th, 2007 | by GTD Wannabe |

When I was waxing poetic over why exactly I like Tracks, specifically GTD Tracks, I mentioned that the main reason for my big search for a new GTD tool was caused by another tool that I had become smitten with.  Some of you are wondering, “what could possible smite GTD Wannabe?”  (Hmmm, maybe “smitten” and “to smite” don’t actually have the same root ;) )

Anyway, today I want to talk to you about the “Tool That Almost Was”.

The Tool That Almost Was

Way way back in May of this year, I was reading through my RSS feeds.  One of them mentioned an intriguing piece of software being offered by the Give Away of the Day site, specifically, a program called FusionDesk.  I was intrigued by the look of the software - very gooey - and the price was right - free for a mid-level version.

Remember, this was back when I was still using my todo.txt files and hand-rolled perl scripts.  I was so smitten with FusionDesk’s look at supposed functionality that I actually moved all of my data over and started using it.  I ended up using it for almost a month, before the honeymoon was over.

The Good

There are many things to like about FusionDesk.  Now, I was using a free version, called FusionDesk Deluxe, which is not actually offered at the FusionDesk web site.  Instead, there you can get either the free Starter Edition, or the not-so-free Professional Edition.

Here’s what I liked about the Deluxe version:

• love the look; you can even change the tinge - in the screenshot below, I’ve chosen a spring-like green
• you can have folders (for projects), contexts (even with their own @ tab), and tags for any action
• you can have deferred start dates, and due dates on items
• it’s actually possible to do most of your work with the keyboard only, as many, if not all, of the fields are accessible by shortcut
• there’s even the ability to set estimated times for a task, and then time your task
• you can set up specific views on your data, tweaking any and all of the following categories at once:
• status (e.g., not started, deferred, in progress, done)
• priority
• start date
• due date
• tag
• context
• assigned to
• you can associate files, folders, or URLs to an action, and add notes
• it’s possible to run the program from a USB key
• there’s even a way to set up a URL protocol in Windows, so that you can use the address bar (or say, SlickRun) to enter an NA without leaving your current application.

Not all of these things are available in the free version, but they are all available in the pro version, plus a little.  For a difference between the two versions, see the comparison page.

The Bad

Sounds good, eh?  Well, there are a few things that annoyed me a little:

• At least in the Deluxe version that I was using, you can create all sorts of interesting views, but you can’t move them around in the list.  A minor point, perhaps, but I like to keep my most interesting/important views at the top.  Or at least have the ability to sort them, just a little.  Instead, I would have to delete each and every view, and then recreate them, in the order I wanted.
• I couldn’t get the filter for priority to work.
• I couldn’t keep folders closed in the folder view, e.g., keeping unimportant projects closed.  Whenever I went back to that view, all the folders were open.
• No auto-archiving in this version.
• I would have liked some kind of count beside the folders, tags, and contexts, depending on the view.  That way, when I looked at the context tab, I would see right away which context had the most NAs in it.  Even better would be to grey-out those contexts/tags/folders with no Next Actions.
• Although you can filter by date, the options are kind of limited: yesterday, today, tomorrow, or some specific date.  No filtering by week, or month, which I would find really useful.

The Ugly

None of these things, in itself, was enough to sour me on FusionDesk.  But I’ll tell you what did kill the romance.

First of all, I’m all about customer service, especially with the price tag that the FusionDesk Pro commanded.  Yes, this is the application that is asking you to pay $89 USD for the privilege of using it.

So, given that price tag, I expect some customer service.  Freeware, shareware, dontationware, whateverware - I expect to have to wait for service.  I expect that the user forum will be sparsely populated.  (That’s what makes finding gems like EverNote such a treasure.)  In this case, if I was about to shell out $89, I wanted to be sure I wasn’t throwing my money away.

I checked out the support pages.  Not much there - a link to the forum, a newsletter, which I don’t think I ever received, a blog (a total of 7 posts, the last one being in Apr) and “articles”, which leads to an empty list - well, to be honest - there are two titles on it, but they don’t like to articles.

So, I checked out the user forum.  And let me tell you, it’s a ghost town.  There was one post in August.  June was a rocking month, with 10 posts.  Not much help happening there. 

As far as I can figure, the owner/coder/proprietor of FusionDesk is named Boris.  At least, that the board admin, and he sounds like he’s running things.  But I must admit, he’s not very responsive.  I sent him two emails in the month I was using FusionDesk, and never got a response, not even a “sorry, can’t help you out” response.

That alone was *almost* enough to kill it for me.  After all, I didn’t have to actually buy the pro version, I could just keep using the deluxe version.  But this would only last until the next time I reformatted my hard drive.

But I’ll tell you what really killed it for me.  It’s a minor thing really, but it drove me crazy.  It turns out that, while you can view your data in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways, e.g., by project, by context, by status, by tag, by whatever, you cannot, repeat cannot add a new next action, or even delete an action, unless you are in the folder view.

This severely hampered my review process.  I review by looking through each context.  As I see a next action that can be marked complete, I’ll get an idea for what I want the next action to be.  I would try to add the action in the current view, but it was not permitted.  It’s like the majority of the views were read-only.  So, I’d have to move to the folder view, then create the next action, then go back to where I was, if I could remember where I was.  After a few weekly reviews, this irritated me so much that I decided that the software definitely wasn’t for me.

Conclusion

Normally, even when I find an application not exactly right for me, I’ll often recommend for you to try out.  After all, we all have different needs, right?  In this case, I cannot in good conscience to that.  It’s not so much the little things, like not being to add an NA in any view, or sort your filters as desired.  It’s more the feeling I get of this application just being something really really pretty, but with nothing solid backing it up.  I found the lack of activity in the support forum, and the non-response of the creator (?) to be less than inspiring.  If you’re interested in a really nice looking application, you could check out the free version.  But I wouldn’t be throwing $89 at anyone.