Don’t Do.com for Android until the app gets an update

During a recent round of updates to the Do.com social task management application, Salesforce launched the Do Social Productivity app for Android. It joins their free Do - Social Productivity iPhone app for enabling users mobile access to their Do.com projects and tasks. I use Do.com for managing some reoccurring midsize projects, so I recently spent some time using their new app on a Google Nexus 7 tablet. While you can use it from an Android smartphone, the app makes nice use of the extra screen real estate tablets offer.

When you open the app, you have the option to login using either a Google Apps or Do.com account. If you don’t have a Do.com account yet, you have the option to create a new account directly from the app.

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Create tasks

When you open the Do Social Productivity app, a list of your assigned and available tasks greets you. The tasks are written in white text on a black background, which can be harsh on the eyes. It’s the one part where the fabled Salesforce user experience stumbles in this app. I found the white text on a black background hard to read even on a tablet. Figure A shows an example of the task list.

Figure A

The task list shows your tasks by section.

When you tap the plus sign [+], it brings up the Create a Task screen (Figure B). I tried to assign a task to another user, but the assignees feature wasn’t picking up anybody from my address book or the test email addresses that I shared with the project. However, a Salesforce representative said that the Do development team is about to submit an update to Google Play that will allow users to add new assignees via an email or through the device’s address book. On a brighter note, the calendar interface for the due date is well designed and easy to use.

Figure B

Create a Task screen.

Unfortunately, when I tried to add the task to an existing Do project, the Do Android app crashed repeatedly, and I was never able to get the feature to work when I was writing this post. I followed the prompts to report the crash, which brings up a rather intimidating Google legal agreement that you have to accept or decline before sending notice of the crash and your system data to the minds at Google. On a corporate or BYOD tablet, this would be inexcusable. The only workaround at this time is to add tasks from the web and only use the mobile app to strike tasks from your Do.com project.

Access and create projects

The Projects list is way more readable than the list of tasks. You can scroll through all of the projects you have access to in Do.com, with direct links to Tasks, Projects, and Notes. The scrolling was responsive on my Nexus 7 tablet. Figure C shows how the Do app presents Projects.

Figure C

Projects in the Do Social Productivity app.

You can create new Do.com projects using the Android app. It works like a charm. To add insult to injury, actions like finding assignees and creating a new task worked flawlessly in the new project I just created. Figure D shows the Create a Project screen.

Figure D

Create a new project in Do.com.

Add Notes

The notes feature (Figure E) is pretty bare bones as note-taking features go. One immediate reaction is you can only type text above the line in the note — it’s not a space for a heading (if it is, then that’s another thing that didn’t work for me in this app). The notes I entered using the Do Social Productivity app didn’t synchronize back to my Do.com project.

Figure E

A blank note in Do.com.

Wait for the update

While the web version of Do recently gained Do Contacts, a contact management feature, and Do Deals, a lightweight CRM feature, you’ll have to wait for these to appear on the Do Android app. However, if you have a task associated with a Deal or Contact from the web app, it will still appear in the Android app.

The Do Social Productivity App for Android has great potential, but the readability issues and multiple crashes make it seem like a beta app when put up against the high quality Do.com cloud application. I can’t recommend this app right now, because the significant quality issues make it unacceptable for business users. I advise waiting in hopes the development team resolves the quality issues and delivers an update on par with the Do.com social task management application.

Source : techrepublic[dot]com

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Take fast notes on the go with Quill

I recently examined the complex (but incredibly handy) BeNote application and found it to be an outstanding tool to keep your life and business day organized. But what about those users who want to take simpler notes, say for meetings? When you need to quickly write out notes or sketch drawings, there’s a great solution called Quill.

For only $1.00 (USD), the Quill handwriting/note-taking app offers the following features:

• Active pen (digitizer) support for ThinkPad Tablet, HTC Jetstream, and HTC Flyer
• Fast response to pen strokes
• “Fountain pen” mode supports pen pressure (requires active pen)
• Pinch-to-zoom
• Double-finger tap to zoom
• Two-finger move gesture
• Pen strokes are vector art
• “Pen only” mode to disable touch input while writing
• Android 3.x hardware accelerated graphics
• Open source (GPL) format
• PDF export (save to SD card, Evernote, Share)
• PNG (raster image) export
• Backup/restore your data
• Ruled/Quad background paper
• Tagging for pages
• Easy switch between multiple notebooks
• Undo/redo
• Change pencil thickness/color

Obviously, the experience with Quill is made better with an active pen. With these, you get touch sensitivity and other features (depending upon the pen and tablet). Active pens that are known to work are:

• ThinkPad Tablet Pen (N-trig digitizer) for the ThinkPad Tablet
• HTC Scribe (N-trig digitizer) for the HTC Flyer / HTC Evo View 4G / HTC Jetstream
• Samsung S-pen (Wacom digitizer) for the Galaxy Note

Even without an active pen, you can still use a capacitive pen (I’ve purchased these at drugstores for $5.00) or your finger. Regardless of how you interface with the app, Quill is a great way to take instant notes without having to dig through the features and steps of other, more complicated, note-taking tools.

Let’s take a loom at how to install and use Quill.

Installation

As you would expect, getting Quill on your tablet is quite simple. Just follow these steps:

1. Open the Google Play Store
2. Search for “quill” (no quotes)
3. Tap the entry for Quill
4. Tap the price button
5. Tap Accept & buy
6. Let the installation complete

You should now see the Quill launcher in your app drawer (or, depending upon you tablet, the home screen). Now, it’s time to start taking notes.

Usage

When you first fire up Quill, you’ll find yourself on a fairly minimalistic page (Figure A). You can immediately begin writing, sketching, adding images, etc. Just place your pen (or your finger) on the screen and start writing (or drawing).

Figure A

Quill on the Verizon-branded Samsung Galaxy Tab.

In the right half of the top toolbar, you’ll find all of the available tools. If you want easier access to these tools, tap the red circle in the bottom left corner. When you tap this, you enable the toolbox (Figure B).

Figure B

Quick access to the tools make for faster note taking.

You can easily switch between the fountain pen and the pencil. Unless you have an active pen, you won’t see any difference between the pencil and fountain pen. The fountain pen supports pressure sensitivity (so the harder you press, the thicker the line).

You can change the thickness of the pencil by doing the following:

1. Enable the toolbox
2. Select the pencil tool
3. Tap the drop-down between the color picker and the tool selector
4. Choose from ultra-fine to giant

It’s also possible to add an image to your note. This is great for annotating. To add an image to your note, follow these steps:

1. Open the toolbox
2. Tap the image tool (directly to the right of the eraser)
3. Tap and drag the screen to size the image
4. From the image selector (Figure C), tap either Gallery (to select an image from your collection) or Photo (to take a photo with the tablet’s camera)
5. If you’re adding an image from your Gallery, locate it, and tap it to add
6. If necessary, tap the Crop button to crop the image
7. If necessary, tap the rotate button(s) to change the rotation of the image
8. Once the image is exactly how you want it, tap the Save button

Figure C

If you change your mind about adding an image, tap the Erase button to cancel the action.

The image should now be in your note. You can draw or write notes about the image (Figure D).

Figure D

Here you see notes added to a screenshot taken from BeNote.

To use the pinch-to-zoom feature, you must first tap on the zoom tool (top left tool in the toolbox). Once you’ve selected that tool, you can then pinch to zoom in or out, and you can move the note about on the screen. The nice thing about zooming is that you can make finer-grained notes. This is especially helpful if you have trouble writing smaller print clearly - just zoom in, write, and zoom out.

When you need a new page for new notes, simply tap the Next button. You can also create new notebooks (say for different departments) by going to the Quill home screen (tap the Quill icon in the upper left corner of the main window). From the Home Screen (Figure E), tap the Switch Notebook button, and then tap Create new notebook.

Figure E

You can also filter pages by tags on this screen.

To add tags to a note, tap the Tags button in the upper left corner, type the tag you want to add, and tap either Done or Next (on the keyboard - Figure F). You can add as many tags as needed to a note.

Figure F

When you type the first tag for a note, the keyboard key will say Done.

Finally, you can export your notes to various formats by doing the following:

1. Open the note to be exported
2. Tap the menu button in the top right corner
3. Select Export
4. Name the note in the resulting overlay (Figure G)
5. Select the output type (PNG, PDF, Quill Archive)
6. Tap Export

Figure G

From here you can also easily share the note.

Although Quill doesn’t have all the cool features of BeNote, it does enable you to take very fast notes, quickly add images, and keep multiple notes and notebooks. It’s fast, simple, and allows you to export your notes to a universal format.

Source : techrepublic[dot]com

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