UPDATED: February 16th, 2021
Quick Tasks are Here
One of the more popular features of IOS devices is the native “Reminders”, which allow users to quickly jot down tasks, which they can then assign alarms to for easy task management. This feature was improved further with IOS13, which supported indenting tasks, allowing users to organize tasks under different categories for essential project management.
As task management is a core part of CRM, we thought Handheld Contact could incorporate Reminders to help users quickly record tasks, without assigning times, dates, users, contacts, etc. Then push them to Act! as needed.
The objective was to support creating ten tasks in the time it takes to create in one in Act!, thus allowing users to plan their day better and delegate tasks more efficiently.
The key difference with “Quick Tasks” is they’re managed inside the HHC app itself, or pushed to Act! as regular timeless To Do’s. These Quick Tasks are by default assigned to the My Record, or delegated to the appropriate user on-the-fly
Quick Tasks will be a “Premium” feature in HHC API that is expected to be released in late February, and will not be part of the Classic or new Basic versions of Handheld Contact. Here’s a breakdown of the features included:
- A Quick Task are timeless & dateless by default, but can be assigned both like Reminders
- When a task is pushed to Act!, it will automatically clear in Quick Tasks.
- Checkbox will be on left of task, with buttons at the top of the list indicated “Clear” or “Send to Act!”, that allows the selection of multiple Quick tasks.
- Tasks without a date or time will go across as timeless “To-Do”, and be assigned the date of transfer with a 5-minute duration. No alarm.
- These tasks would also be organized inside of Act! into categories with task prefixes, so they could easily be grouped in Act!’s task list when you sort by the “regarding” field.
- Tasks with a date & time will go across as a “To-Do” for that date & time, with a 5-minute alarm
- Like in IOS Reminders, tasks can be nested under other tasks, helping users plan projects better.
- When a subtask is transferred to Act!, the parent task will be displayed in curly brackets as a prefix to the To-Do. For instance, a Task called "KAM" with a subtask described as "Translate into French", would display in Act! as a To-Do with "{KAM} Translate into French"
- Quick Tasks can be moved up & down or indent & outdent with arrows in the toolbar, or be draggable with your finger
The next major update to Handheld Contact is expected to be released on February 1st (learn more about that HERE), which is approximately the time we expect to submit Quick Tasks for beta. Subject to testing feedback, Quick Tasks should be released in late February for both Android and IOS.
The publisher of Handheld Contact, the Keystroke Group, also intends to release a Windows version called Quick Tasks for Act! by the end of this month.