Organising Daily Tasks

It is becoming increasingly difficult to coordinate daily tasks and delegate these around the office. 90% of the time these tasks repeat every week, such as "Staff Members 1 - Update GayTube"

I have tried many different methods to try do this, from having work sheets printed off daily for individual staff members, having big message boards on the walls with tasks lists on, ect.

The problem I am finding is none of these seems to work that well as they take so much time for me to organise. On top of that there are constantly things being added such as new tube sites to upload to weekly and such. We use BaseCamp to coordinate big projects but it doesn't function in a way that can help organise daily tasks, only project development.

Does anyone know a computer based solution to organise recurring tasks.
It would be great to be able to have some sort of system that can say, tell "Staff Member 1" every Monday to "update these tubes - Build FHGs for updates" ect ect.

Thanks in advance!

good luck to you hoping you find the right person to answerto your querry.......

Sam, we have been using an online system called zoho. Well, I haven't been using it, but Ben has :) I will get him to pop in here on Monday and tell you more.

We've been using BaseCamp and it does marvel to us for big projects. Now for smaller day-to-day tasks we are using Things by CulturedCode and we luv it!

I have had the same issues in finding a good tool, we are using zoho and with some modifications on the way i enter things it has become valuable in managing operational tasks. Having said that it is still designed to be a project management tool.

Zoho is good though from a price point of view, only 99 per year so a lot cheaper than basecamp.

To manage operational tasks, to use Sam's gaytube submits as an example.
- I set up a new project, I call is Ops - Submits so all Ops projects are easily separated.
- the I create a task list, ex - a task for each week of the month - Submits Feb1-7, allocate to a team member and they get an email that tells them.
- they can log in anytime to their dashboard and see tasks, status, overdue, coming up etc. it also graphically shows this info.
- I get emailed when they update the status on tasks, or put a note on one etc
- I get emailed when tasks that are due are overdue as well.
- it is easy to reallocate a task to a different user as well if you have someone going away for a week, no new project or re entry of data, just switch user for that week, add a note to the system (if needed to explain) and then it emails out the task info.

What I like about Zoho is that generating tasks is really fast and easy, just make a project and add tasks, so we use it for all weekly newsletters, set descriptions, weekly tube submits etc, it is as fast as sending an email.

Of course you can make it more complicated with milestones (Tube Submits), task groups (like Feb Submits), tasks (weekly or daily submits) and then even add dependencies, gantt chart etc, so you can push to a more complex approach too.

There are a ton or reminders, forum, document share features etc as well, I don't use most as too time consuming.

Let me know if you want more info or some screen shots Sam. The tool was recently upgraded and it is a lot better than when we first started using, I was ready to ditch it then.

Just created an account for the Zoho. I'm not seeing that it wants money to use the writer or notebook so far. Are there particular parts of what they offer that aren't free?

Also, there is a firefox plugin for the notebook here: http://notebook.zoho.com/nb/ext/index.html?v=1.0b9

Hey Sam,
For personal daily tasks, I find stickies on the desktop works best for me, I actually use a combination of real stickies (real important things I can't forget) and the stickies program on Mac that is also one of my widgets.

As for employees, I am able to delegate tasks by creating 'to do' lists for them each week in basecamp. This can get time consuming though. It would be nice if they had a feature so you could set up 'recurring to do tasks' for employees. I think I will send the developers an email to suggest it. Maybe there is a way to do it that I haven't discovered yet will do some searching around.

Sam,

One thing you can do that does speed things up.

Create a 'to do' list template for an employee. That way you can just select the template every week and it will be easy to set up the recurring to do items each week.

I think once you want to start using the project management functions and have multiple users you have to upgrade, or at least that is how it worked when we first paid. I think you get a trial period, 30 days or so.

If you use Zoho for ops work like I mentioned the task lists are basically to do lists. When you make your first one you can save it as a template too. Once you make a template you just select the template to report the same operational tasks.

Also I like to prioritise to do task list too (you can set deliver start and finish and also priority), and is useful for staff. Zoho lets you prioritise as required so you can make sure their efforts are focused on the critical work first.

Like I said it is not by any means perfect but with the upgrades they have done and at the price I am pretty happy with it now. And Like Bec mentioned the toolbar is pretty cool, they seem to be adding these sorts of interactive tools more and more.

FYI, got this back from my Basecamp ticket:

Right now it isn't possible to create to-dos in Basecamp that automatically recur. The best I can suggest would be to use a To-do template to make re-creating similar to-dos lists much easier. Here's how: http://help.37signals.com/basecamp/q...se-to-do-lists

Hopefully that will help until we can add this feature. It's a request we hear from time to time and I hope that we'll be able to add it in a future update. We'll definitely keep your suggestion in mind when the time comes.

Out of curiousity, what do you guys use for CRM?

It might seem like "old tech" compared to what you're all suggesting, but I use Outlook calendar!
I have Outlook running the entire time I'm on-line, and I schedule it to issue reminders at the start of my day listing all the work that needs doing. Every Fri I go through billing and the following week of work and just copy/paste the reminders in for repeat work. Of if I have a day free I'll go through and add work for a month.

There's also the OneNote in Office that I'm just starting to use. Definitely helps me keep track of info.

maybe a real secretary will help you best. :ura1:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by NALEM

maybe a real secretary will help you best. :ura1:

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I think I am about to hire an assistant actually. A friend of mine has offered to take calls and run admin for me.

If you use Gmail, here's another easy tip. Press Shift and T, and you can enter any daily tasks, check them off as you finish, etc. It's really good for daily tasks although ICalendar is better for monthly planning.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by conran

I think I am about to hire an assistant actually. A friend of mine has offered to take calls and run admin for me.

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:yes::yes::yes:

Then, Conran will be free from the daily trifles. Congrats!!!

- Yan

yah an appointments secretary would be perfect:)

CRM - at present just using email and a spreadsheet but I am looking into software for this too as I am keen to get something in place. Any info is appreciated!