Ok, now that was a pretty bold headline, eh? Well, I’m currently a little over 1 hour into investigating a piece of software that might be worthy of that claim. Well, at least to me (but of course!)
So, what could get me hyped up to such a degree? Earlier tonight I found TaskLynx. So, what the heck is that you ask?
A little background first…
As you might remember my post on productivity plug-ins for Outlook awhile back, I’m a big freak on anything (especially software tools) that will help me get more done faster. To give you a sense of my Outlook plug-in dependency, my Outlook process typically consumes nearly 200MB of memory – plus another 100MB or so for all the plug-ins. However, RAM is cheap, lost productivity is NOT. I have already commented that I spend most of my day in Outlook. Well, lately I’ve also been spending a lot of time in Microsoft Project. Since I use David Allen’s Getting Things Done method for processing my work, everything that ends up being more than a single step goes into a project. When that project involves 10 or fewer steps, I generally create a PlanPlus Project (right from within Outlook since I’m using the FranklinCovey PlanPlus plug-in). However, when that project requires more than 10 steps, I need a more robust tool than PlanPlus Project provides. So, naturally, I turn to Microsoft Project. For example, I’m putting together my company’s business development (sales, marketing, and partner relations) plan and budget for the next 8 months right now. My choices outside of Project are not viable unless I want to get fired for incompetence. Sorry folks, but Outlook is NOT meant for 500 tasks to be managed in a coherent project structure.
Well, I found the solution tonight and happily plunked my $99.95 down for the software called TaskLynx.
TaskLynx synchronizes tasks between Project and Outlook – bi-directionally! How cool is that?! So, I write out a massive project plan with hundreds of tasks, assign myself as a resource on many of them, and go through the whole project scheduling process within Project (as it is designed to do very well). Then, I click on a new toolbar icon created by TaskLynx, which synchronizes tasks assigned to me with my Outlook tasks. Since you already know I manage all my tasks in Outlook (primarily prioritizing, scheduling, etc. within FranklinCovey PlanPlus plug-in), it makes total sense to use TaskLynx to have my Microsoft Project tasks automatically synched with my normal task management system. But the coolest part to me, is that I can manage my tasks in Outlook as I’m used to (with all my plug-ins I’ve come to rely on), and they will automatically synchronize back with the Project plan!
Now, just in case you haven’t already had your ah-ha moment, let me reiterate a few things. If you’re working on projects (as everyone always is!), and you use Outlook (as 95% of the world does), and especially if you use Outlook productivity plug-ins (PlanPlus, Getting Things Done, etc.) – this software (TaskLynx) will save you immense time and massive headaches in managing your life’s projects. I recommend it with my highest possible recommendation (disclaimer: I have no ties to this company, and I’ve only been using this tool for 2 hours now. Something might blow up on me, but so far in the 3 Microsoft Project plans I’ve synchronized, everything appears to be extremely reliable and performing flawlessly.)
Give it a try and let me know what you think! They don’t have a trial version unfortunately, but they do offer a money back guarantee. You won’t need it anyway.