I think a calendar sync feature (with Google, Exchange) would make the product a complete solution.

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Nick DeLong
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I have been searching for a task management tool that would let me plan at all levels - long term, month, week, day and hour. WeekPlan comes very close to what I want, but I'd like to add the ability to plan my day in a more granular way. I have meetings, etc to plan around, and I'd like to be able to sync with my calendars to see what time slots I have open to devote to tasks in my todo list. That is a feature I would happily pay a premium price for. 

Thanks for a great product! 
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Aymeric Founder
Quote from Uwe “Oova” Kleinschmidt
Ok, let me explain, what I am trying to do, instead of implying a certain implementation.
Weekly goals are perfect. But they have context very often. Ideally you can break quarterly goals into monthly and weekly goals. I am looking for a way to do that. I am using today the parking lot for a mix of monthly and quarterly goals and then break them down to weekly goals. some of the breakdown has dependencies for tasks, they are then best modelled with sub tasks, but need to be finished at different times. Making sense?
Actually, I think something like this would be more versatile (would work for more scenarios): http://gyazo.com/14557246b5e3d9bdfd119065242bf8ba

Any item in the outline could be made a task (with a date or inside the parking lot) and each task can have any level of subtasks.

This concept of subtasks would be different to the one existing in weekplan currently. Existing subtasks could be renamed "Checklist". Here the subtasks would be shown as their own task in the week view (instead of only being shown when you edit a task).

This outliner view would allow people to break down their goals by any structure they want (year / quarter / month / etc..)

Would that solve #2 and #3 for you?


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Aymeric Founder
Quote from Uwe “Oova” Kleinschmidt
Ok, let me explain, what I am trying to do, instead of implying a certain implementation.
Weekly goals are perfect. But they have context very often. Ideally you can break quarterly goals into monthly and weekly goals. I am looking for a way to do that. I am using today the parking lot for a mix of monthly and quarterly goals and then break them down to weekly goals. some of the breakdown has dependencies for tasks, they are then best modelled with sub tasks, but need to be finished at different times. Making sense?
Would a visualization of your goals like this ( http://static.squarespace.com/static/52bbd653e4b0525234c48f43/t/52c36f7fe4b0034167fd3f91/1388076165851/MCA_8669.jpg?format=1500w ) work for you?
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Uwe “Oova” Kleinschmidt
Ok, let me explain, what I am trying to do, instead of implying a certain implementation.
Weekly goals are perfect. But they have context very often. Ideally you can break quarterly goals into monthly and weekly goals. I am looking for a way to do that. I am using today the parking lot for a mix of monthly and quarterly goals and then break them down to weekly goals. some of the breakdown has dependencies for tasks, they are then best modelled with sub tasks, but need to be finished at different times. Making sense?
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Aymeric Founder
Quote from Uwe “Oova” Kleinschmidt
I am far from lecturing you, but the statement "profile evolves as I get closer to the chasm" doesn't make sense to me. Before the chams you have people who buy concepts and want to be cool, after the chasm you have pragmatists then late majority copying the pragmatists and then the laggards, who can't do anything anymore than using your tool for the same problem solution as the pragmatists where. The innovation doesn't change in how it solves the problem when going through the lifecycle. And in my assessment you are way beyond the chasm already. You have real-life customer with real-life problems, who use your tool to solve the problem and by doing so give you feedback and you increase their value by using them as kingpin in the bowling alley attracting more customers with real problems, who are willing to shell out money since it is valuable to them. I hope that make sense. I would like to see three changes and integration for our company:
  1. two way integration with Google calendar
  2. long term goals (I am using your parking lot, but it doesn't really treats this as goals, just as pending)
  3. sub tasks (checklist) would need to have ETA settings to. That allows for hierachical goals.
I do not understand #2 and #3.

#2 could be done through the "Long term goals" section in the Envision module. What could be added to that?

#3 If I add ETA to subtasks, would you expect to see the subtasks in the week view like normal tasks?
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Uwe “Oova” Kleinschmidt
I am far from lecturing you, but the statement "profile evolves as I get closer to the chasm" doesn't make sense to me. Before the chams you have people who buy concepts and want to be cool, after the chasm you have pragmatists then late majority copying the pragmatists and then the laggards, who can't do anything anymore than using your tool for the same problem solution as the pragmatists where. The innovation doesn't change in how it solves the problem when going through the lifecycle. And in my assessment you are way beyond the chasm already. You have real-life customer with real-life problems, who use your tool to solve the problem and by doing so give you feedback and you increase their value by using them as kingpin in the bowling alley attracting more customers with real problems, who are willing to shell out money since it is valuable to them. I hope that make sense. I would like to see three changes and integration for our company:
  1. two way integration with Google calendar
  2. long term goals (I am using your parking lot, but it doesn't really treats this as goals, just as pending)
  3. sub tasks (checklist) would need to have ETA settings to. That allows for hierachical goals.
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0
Aymeric Founder
Quote from Uwe “Oova” Kleinschmidt
thanks. If I used your model we would have no customers anymore, but we don't build a horizontal product as you do.
Do you have a bowling alley or other go-to market models or how do you judge value to your customers and enter the market? What determines the importance of your features? It seems like you use the user echo feedback as prioritization. This is like online focus groups. Have you identified customer profiles, where your product would bring high value to them and their organization? Or is a customer, who is not paying but present online in high volume higher prioritized than the paying customers? then your company would just be a hobby and no clear direction is possible to identify. Just food for thought. If you consider paying individuals and companies, whose staff is embracing the four quadrant method and the weekly goal setting as accepted best practice to improve productivity, you could grow your company faster, hire more developers and make more people satisfied. thanks for listening. As for me, I have to wait and consider alternatives, more integrated solutions.
actually I am glad you are referring to the "Crossing the chasm" because I wanted to explain that WeekPlan's customer profile evolves as I get closer to the chasm. It started with 7 habits individuals but now I have many users you haven't read the book and I am starting to have teams as well. Each new feature seems to attract a slightly different kind of customer every time.

You say you need a more integrated solution, what would you need exactly for WeekPlan to work for you?
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Uwe “Oova” Kleinschmidt
thanks. If I used your model we would have no customers anymore, but we don't build a horizontal product as you do.
Do you have a bowling alley or other go-to market models or how do you judge value to your customers and enter the market? What determines the importance of your features? It seems like you use the user echo feedback as prioritization. This is like online focus groups. Have you identified customer profiles, where your product would bring high value to them and their organization? Or is a customer, who is not paying but present online in high volume higher prioritized than the paying customers? then your company would just be a hobby and no clear direction is possible to identify. Just food for thought. If you consider paying individuals and companies, whose staff is embracing the four quadrant method and the weekly goal setting as accepted best practice to improve productivity, you could grow your company faster, hire more developers and make more people satisfied. thanks for listening. As for me, I have to wait and consider alternatives, more integrated solutions.
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Aymeric Founder
Quote from Uwe “Oova” Kleinschmidt
I am trying to run a SaaS company myself and every time somebody tells me "I am working on it.", my neck hair starts standing up. Why? It means normally "I have no clue when I am going to be done, I am unable or unwilling to commit to an ETA and you have to get back to me countless times to get an update". I as the customer (internal or external) will find out that the feature is implemented when it is released. No planning possible, no accountability. Any chance you can publish a roadmap with the list of features ordered by priority?
> I have no clue when I am going to be done

This is true. You probably know how software development estimates are rarely accurate.

> I am unable or unwilling to commit to an ETA

This is also true. Because I don't know when something will be done, especially since someone else is currently developing that feature, I don't want to set the wrong expectations to the users.

> have to get back to me countless times to get an update

Users get notified of new features inside the application with popups, and sometimes via the blog / mailing list (depending on the importance of the feature).

Google calendar integration is something that isn't high in the vote ranking of UserEcho and yet I feel many people would use it. This is why we are working on it, and why I will notify people when we are done.

Regarding the roadmap, the way I choose what to work on next is based on feedback from users and feedback from metrics. If I see the bottleneck of my SaaS company is conversion rate from free to paid users, I will decide to work on that. Because each piece of work influences the feedback from users and metrics, the roadmap keeps changing.

Right now, I am working on native Android app, Google Calendar synchronization, educational videos, and blogging.

Next, I am considering making a day view (hours breakdown), translating to other languages, making a Gmail extension but this is likely to change.

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Uwe “Oova” Kleinschmidt
I am trying to run a SaaS company myself and every time somebody tells me "I am working on it.", my neck hair starts standing up. Why? It means normally "I have no clue when I am going to be done, I am unable or unwilling to commit to an ETA and you have to get back to me countless times to get an update". I as the customer (internal or external) will find out that the feature is implemented when it is released. No planning possible, no accountability. Any chance you can publish a roadmap with the list of features ordered by priority?
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Aymeric Founder
Quote from Uwe “Oova” Kleinschmidt
It seems "Under Review" just means parking lot. Aymeric, it would be better if you don't create the impression you are working on it. You have way too many items under review and create the wrong impression that 'under review' actually might make it into the product. After 11 months you should know by now what you want to do. I can tell you that I like your product and would consider introducing it for the whole company, but the missing Google Calendar integration and your lax way of dealing with new requests will lead to limited use for just a few people.
UserEcho automatically puts an item as "Under Review" every time I reply to an item (even when I reply via email)

We are currently working on the google calendar synchronization actually. We will first release a one way Google Calendar to WeekPlan feature while we implement the second way. It is almost there.