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Wise Tasks

Trying to keep track of your daily tasks for business, personal, and everything else in-between is a struggle. That is why our BlackBerry organizes us and keeps us on track. As someone who requires complete control over her To Do's I'm always searching for an application to reduce unnecessary steps to be me focused.

Wise Tasks is not just your basic task application. It works in conjunction with the native Memo, Calendar, Contacts, and Tasks applications to quickly and easily manage your projects and to-do's. This productivity application is meant to enforce the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology by breaking down your tasks into actionable items. While the learning curve for this method may put off some, Wise Tasks has streamlined the process for BlackBerry devices.

Review


Developer: Nuno da Silva Donato Version (at time of review): 2.1.7
File Size: 876 KB OS Requirements: Smartphone 6.0 or higher
Cost: $1.99 Website: http://wisetasks.wordpress.com/

Layout & Overview


Wise Tasks Home

Wise Tasks offers a simple and easy to use, albeit somewhat condensed, layout on the main screen. Categories can be accessed by selecting or pressing a hotkey (letters in bold) as well as through your projects as shown below.

Wise Tasks GTD Method
Basics of GTD Workflow and the concepts of Wise Tasks

Features

  • KISS - Keep it Simple: Use keyboard shortcuts to quickly navigate the app.
  • From Inbox to Done: Effortlessly move items across lists and change status.
  • The Power of GTD Contexts: Easily select what to do next, with context filtering and geolocation (context= where keywords @ or hangtags #).
  • Project Management: Assign Tasks and Contacts to Projects, so that you can view all the relevant info in just one go.
  • Supports GPS Positioning and cell-triangulation for models without GPS.
  • Set an unlimited # of geocontexts by specifying its geographic coordinates and a radius of influence.

Organizing and processing tasks

Wise Tasks Projects
Wise Tasks Project layout 

As it integrates with your Tasks App the easiest way to start is by onboarding the current tasks you have stored. All of them are located in the inbox to be processed by you. From here they can be assigned to a project task (action, project, waiting, someday, delete) which them allows each of them to be filtered to the various home screen categories.

For instance, if you choose action it automatically assigns the #next hashtag and you can specify a context/location using the @. Doing this will bring you to the native application to complete your edits. Once that is done, a project can still be assigned if necessary.

What I do love about this application is that you can setup your tasks even if you're in the native application. Using the shortcuts, hashtags, and contexts you could easily type in "Call Alicia @work #next" and Wise Tasks will automatically sort and filter them into the corresponding categories.

Wise Tasks
Adding a participant to a project task

Depending on how you categorize the project you can then break it down into additional tasks or notes, and include individuals who are involved. If you click on a project you will see all of the different steps are arranged in an ordered fashion.

I admit it takes time adjusting to the different mindset of the GTD process. I think if you are a busy individual with complicated tasks that involve numerous steps then this method and application will work for you. They've simplified the process to integrate with all of your BlackBerry applications. The only issue I have is that I think the layout of the application could be improved upon in future updates as well as fixing a couple of application errors.

Wise Tasks is compatible with devices running OS 6.0 and higher. It is available from BlackBerry World for $1.99.

Wise Tasks
by Nuno da Silva Donato

Pros

  • Archive/delete past projects and tasks
  • Ability to email or call contacts assigned to projects directly from within the application
  • Seemless integration with native applications (i.e. Task, Memos, and Contacts).
  • GeoContexts allow you to act on just the tasks in a particular location rather than scroll through your entire list.

Cons

  • When changing a task's status (i.e. from waiting to deferred) the assigned hashtag is not always removed unless manually edited
  • Tasks that contain apostrophes or double-quote characters cause a parse error bug or empty screens

The Bottom Line

For those who prefer the GTD methodology and want to alleviate their feelings of being overwhelmed by complicated tasks then Wise Tasks gets the job done. It takes the basics of the GTD process and streamlines them into a useful and sufficient application to fit your needs.   Wise Tasks web link

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