by Organize (available at the Mac App Store) is a to-do list manager with project management aspirations, but its ambitious feature set tends to be a drag on the experience. Most essentials for a good task manager are present, like task grouping and categorizing, easy item creation, and due dates. It can sync with its namesake apps for iOS devices over Wi-Fi or the Internet. But a multitude of niche features and some missing core functionality can make using the product ungainly.
At the heart of every to-do list is the task, a discrete unit of action that has to be accomplished. In addition to a title and description, each Organize task can also contain a priority (indicated by a series of blue dots), a color, flagged status, start and end dates, repetition intervals (daily, weekly, etc.) a duration, percentage completed, and persons assigned to be responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed.
Tasks can also have three review stages called Action, Information, and Decision. Each of the three review stages has a review date, context, location, and security classification. Setting the multitude of options can be achieved from the task list view, but I found many of the button labels to be useless. Consider that each task in list view has three different buttons labeled with the letter A, but each has a different function and Organize offers no tooltips to guide your selection. Mercifully, an Inspector palette is available that puts all your options in one place and doesn’t use cryptic abbreviations.
Organize’s Foci offer innovative insight to your tasks. This Focus permits you to quickly see which tasks occur at a given time.
Individual tasks can be grouped into Projects, a very logical way to keep related items together. Each task can also be assigned various Contexts. In Organize, a Context is a label that transcends both Task and Project. In a team setting, for example, the same group of people may be working on multiple projects, and any given person in the group is likely to be responsible for several tasks. By creating a Context for each person, it becomes very simple to pull up a list of one person’s tasks across all Projects. The Context concept can be applied to locations, disciplines, or just about anything else. Contexts can be added to a Task by typing in the desired value or dragging a context from the list on the left side of the window and dropping it on the task.
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