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TaskClone = Evernote + Task App + Google Calendar (GTD)


TaskClone

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[uPDATED July 4, 2014 - Our 1-year anniversary]

 

Never again forget tasks lost in your notes.  Stop wasting time transferring tasks from Evernote to your dedicated task app.

 

TaskClone copies or "clones" your todos OUT of Evernote and INTO your favorite task app (40+ supported).  After a year of development, see our post on the 8 Ways TaskClone Improves Evernote Productivity:

  1. Cloning tasks to your task app
  2. Aggregating tasks across Evernote into one "task list" note (free and no task app required)
  3. Sending tasks to multiple task apps (e.g. home & work)
  4. Setting due dates, assignees, tags and more
  5. Adding default parameters to each task (e.g. tag, folder)
  6. Creating new notes from each task
  7. Creating iOS Reminders from tasks
  8. Scheduling events in Google Calendar

To get a <2min preview of TaskClone in action, check the video.

 

 

TaskClone was built on a few premises:

  • While many seek an all-in-one solution for tasks, notes, calendar and email, we should not sacrifice a full feature-set that allows start dates, due dates, reminders, assignees, prioritization, context and categorization.
  • Rather than compromise, we want the best software for each need while simplifying integration among them and minimizing cost.  For us, this means building the perfect task app is a job for someone else.  Not Evernote and not TaskClone.
  • Being able to add Reminders at the note level is not sufficient for those who don't need a reminder on a whole note, but on the many tasks that might be within that note which may have very different due dates, priorities, assignees, etc.
  • Everyone seems to have a different workflow, so flexibility is very important.

 
A Great Year! 
It's been wonderful hearing from so many how TaskClone has solved practical problems and made them more productive.  Social media and the blogosphere have been great.

  • DottoTech Youtube | TaskClone - The Evernote Answer to Tasks, To-do's and Appointments

 

 

TaskClone supports almost every popular online task or project management app, including:

We also wrote an article about the 10 Best Task Apps with Evernote Integration if you would like even deeper integration with Evernote.

 

 

Thanks again.  The Evernote community has been fantastic!

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Hi Troy - thanks for the post. We can talk more next Friday, but something may have gone awry because I ended up with 116 new tasks in RTM with the evernote:/// as the task name. Also, I thought I tried selecting against the option, but I ended up with "|TC|" in about 20 of my notes that have checkboxes in Evernote. I think overall its a great idea. Maybe it was user error on my part? :)

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Hi Troy - thanks for the post. We can talk more next Friday, but something may have gone awry because I ended up with 116 new tasks in RTM with the evernote:/// as the task name. Also, I thought I tried selecting against the option, but I ended up with "|TC|" in about 20 of my notes that have checkboxes in Evernote. I think overall its a great idea. Maybe it was user error on my part? :)

Daniel,

Thanks for the feedback on the concept.  We will certainly talk more about that this Friday, but we should be able to quickly resolve the issue you are having before then.

 

For the benefit of other users, the "option" you indicated is not really meant to be an option as described in the setup instructions at http://support.taskclone.com/customer/portal/articles/1168381-setup-detail---screenshots-video,   The text entered allows TaskClone to know which tasks have been cloned so duplicates and other errors are not created.  That part was likely user error.

 

However, our system should catch such errors and I believe the there is a "bug" in that the system didn't account for the user error.  We believe we have resolved such errors as they relate to signup using our instructions, but clearly there is an issue if a deviation from those instructions occurs.

 

To resolve that, I'd request that you'd communicate with us through support@taskclone.com as we did for the 182 successfully cloned tasks we've discussed previously.  Or, you can use the Email Us link at our Support Center at http://support.taskclone.com/.  

 

Given the hour on the East Coast, I will reach out to you tomorrow to ensure this is resolved quickly.

 

Troy

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Perfect. Thanks again, Troy!

Thanks again for your willingness to work with us on this issue and provide us information helpful to improve TaskClone for everyone..  

 

We believe the issue is now resolved, but can discuss further Friday.

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Hey there - great question ... and 100% I continue to practice what I preach and rely on Evernote for tasks, projects, and all of my actionable and non-actionable reference related materials.

With respect to RTM, TaskClone, or any other 3rd party app that hooks into Evernote, I find all of them exciting and interesting. As everyone knows from my blog post about the Reminders, on Google+, and all of my excitement and multiple exclamation marks in the beta group here,  I think that the Evernote dev team nailed it with Reminders. Absolutely nailed it. It further bolsters the methodology that I set forth in my book and reduces the need for extra tags such as "!Today" or "This Week" or "Next Week" or even "Later". There is so much going on with Evernote in beta right now that I believe later this year may be a better idea to begin re-writing my book for everyone.

 

Now, that being said, I think RTM nailed it too. What I have wanted for years is a way to surface up just those notes that I need to be reminded about that I want to accomplish Today, Tomorrow, This Week, and later. I just want a list. Nothing else. I don't want notes - just a list I can check off. RTM, with its bi-directional syncing ... and I should add like freakishly fast ... like Usain Bolt fast syncing, you'll always have your Reminders up-to-date (and a link to the original Evernote note) no matter whether you do it in RTM or Evernote. I 100% respect the developers over there because they addressed a need I've been looking for in the marketplace for awhile and candidly, I think it's worth the $25/year subscription. They somehow took this document and figured out how to get it right and I truly respect that. Once in RTM, you can easily set up contextual tags and project tags, create smart search lists, etc. I do think its a good option for some folks

 

One of the other white spaces I see for app developers to capitalize upon is taking checklists within the body of a note and surfacing that up as individual tasks. Peter Tamte figured that out when he developed NoteSuite (which, I believe given who he is and another year's worth of user feedback will be a true fighter against Evernote). I also think that Troy from TaskClone saw this and that's why he's been developing his app. His app gives folks the ability to use a task manager of their own choice and not only extract those checklists and put them in their task management app, but also pulls due dates and hooks into a calendar. It's ideas like this, that Peter already has in NoteSuite, that I think will ultimately get rolled into Evernote's native app.

 

This may have been a bit longer than you were expecting, but get me at 5:38 AM with my cup of espresso, and look out ...!! I hope that helps some, friend.

 

Cheers!

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I love this concept! The number of notes I create in meetings exceeds the amount of time I have to review and sort them. The lack of a full-circle solution frustrates me greatly. Would this mean that every time a check box is assigned, a task would be created and then reminders would get pushed to google calendar?

If that is the case, are you considering having evernote put a similar icon indicating deadlines or periods of time designated to a specific task or calendar item?

Additionally, I have long been frustrated with Google Calendar's absence of an easy way to insert hyperlinks. Do you suppose a hyperlink on tasks and in calendar items could be facilitated? I would absolutely love to be able to pre-assign calendar items that click to tasks which in turn hyperlink to speciific Evernotes that contain both my files (images and word/ppt/prezi files) and my notes. In this way I could walk into the classroom and start my lessons from my calendar modeling workflow as well as teaching. Kids really need this kind of daily demonstration!

Thanks for your time and vision!

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I love this concept! The number of notes I create in meetings exceeds the amount of time I have to review and sort them. The lack of a full-circle solution frustrates me greatly. Would this mean that every time a check box is assigned, a task would be created and then reminders would get pushed to google calendar?

If that is the case, are you considering having evernote put a similar icon indicating deadlines or periods of time designated to a specific task or calendar item?

Additionally, I have long been frustrated with Google Calendar's absence of an easy way to insert hyperlinks. Do you suppose a hyperlink on tasks and in calendar items could be facilitated? I would absolutely love to be able to pre-assign calendar items that click to tasks which in turn hyperlink to speciific Evernotes that contain both my files (images and word/ppt/prezi files) and my notes. In this way I could walk into the classroom and start my lessons from my calendar modeling workflow as well as teaching. Kids really need this kind of daily demonstration!

Thanks for your time and vision!

First, thanks for your kind words.  We wouldn't mind some endorsing for Evernote's Devcup at https://www.hackerleague.org/hackathons/evernote-devcup-2013/hacks/taskclone as voting is underway!

 

More to your points, TaskClone is not intended to be a full-circle solution as many think.  The premise is that notes are for storage and tasks should be managed in a task app.  The same is true for email and most task apps facilitate getting action-related email into the task app.  There is generally no way to mark the email as completed in your email app and likewise, marking the checkbox in Evernote does not get registered in your task app.  However, just like these apps use the email body as a note to the task for context, TaskClone inserts a link back to the Evernote note that generated the task.  You can see this in action on our homepage or the tutorials on our Youtube channel.

 

By adding a checkbox, a task is created in your task app.  Depending on the syntax available for that task app, you can add priority, tags, assignees, start dates, due dates, time estimates, and yes, reminders.  With Toodledo, we've added the ability for you to set a default reminder so all tasks with a specified due date automatically have a reminder at a user-designated default time before that due date, which of course can be overridden by the user while typing the task in Evernote.  All this is possible without ever leaving the Evernote note!  We will review other task apps and add similar functionality based on demand.  You can learn about what features task apps support by reviewing our support article.

http://support.taskclone.com/customer/portal/articles/1144084-summary-of-supported-task-apps

 

TaskClone sends items you mark as "Schedule: " to your Google Calendar.  You can send anything there you want and Google processes it using their natural language processor that knows what to do with "Meeting with James at James' Office on next Thu from 2-4pm james@gmail.com"  All those details get entered correctly in GCal and James is invited too!  I love this feature and use it to schedule followup meetings while taking notes in the meeting. There is no link back to Evernote or the task app within GCal, but given that the Calendar event might have other attendees, it could be problematic for some to have a link to the task or the Evernote note for all to see.

 

Thanks for your interest.  Check it out.  Ask as many questions as you like here or in our Support Center.  For those of us who spend too much time in meetings, lectures, seminars, TaskClone has been a real time saver and stress relief.

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  • 3 weeks later...

A few users have asked if TaskClone works with Evernote Business.  Until recently, Evernote did not allow 3rd-party apps to receive notifications (i.e. webhooks) for changes to business or shared notebooks.  These webhooks are essential for TaskClone to automatically "know" when you've added a task or event.

 

We were ecstatic when Evernote recently added this functionality for business notebooks and we are now underway to bring TaskClone to all users of Evernote Business.  Whole teams will be able to create tasks, assign to team members and schedule team meetings without ever leaving Evernote!

 

When completed, we'll update this thread and also our blog and social accounts.  http://taskclone.com/blog/

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  • 2 months later...

The Evernote EC3 conference was a blast and we appreciate the opportunity to meet so many cool people, demo TaskClone and get feedback.  Most were surprised at how many task and project management apps TaskClone works with.

 

There's a growing list of 40+ at Summary of Supported Task Apps and it seems each week we discover another compatible app.  So far, some of the favorites are:

  • Omnifocus
  • Wunderlist
  • Trello
  • Nozbe
  • Basecamp
  • Todoist
  • Azendoo
  • Nirvana
  • Wrike
  • RTM
  • Toodledo

On the feedback front, just after the conference, one of our users gave a tip that should simplify using TaskClone for everyone.  Check out the blog post about it here. We liked the tip so much we made the 2 min video demonstration below.  

 

Please keep the feedback coming here.

 

Enjoy!.

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

For those TaskClone users using our service with Evernote as a task manager, note links are now clickable note titles on all Evernote clients.  

 

This means that you can easily jump back to the note that has the individual task in it to remember details about the task.  You also no longer have to deal with the long Evernote links as we use the title of the note.  Creative tip:  We also seen users create a Table of Contents or index by adding a todo item at the top of every note and letting TaskClone generate the index automatically.

 

We're working with other task services to make the links clickable in their applications.

 

Thanks to another user who suggested this even it should have been obvious to us.   Keep the feedback coming.

 

For support issues, visit http://support.taskclone.com/ for support articles and submit tickets there so we can keep track.

Thanks again.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...
  • 1 month later...
  • 4 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...

TaskClone 2.0 is launched.  Thanks again for all the love and support from the Evernote community!

 

I took a look at your new website and not clear what's changed since 1.x.  Could you please post a summary of major changes or a link to your release notes?

 

thanks!

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  • 1 month later...

 

TaskClone 2.0 is launched.  Thanks again for all the love and support from the Evernote community!

 

I took a look at your new website and not clear what's changed since 1.x.  Could you please post a summary of major changes or a link to your release notes?

 

thanks!

 

We just updated the original post with all the new information.

 

The biggest changes were:

  • Removed the requirement to have a Google account.
  • Added ability to send to up to 5 different task apps on a per-task basis
  • Added ability to store default parameters to each task (e.g. due date)
  • Added a choice of Evernote note links:  evernote:///  or https: to launch Evernote from your task app

See our blog post for our user survey results that led to the changes.  We also dramatically simplified our setup process to 4 steps and 3 pieces of info.  The process now takes less time than the video:

 

http://youtu.be/3gHTW-l2Jjs

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  • 3 months later...

Wow! Evernote just concluded a great conference and announced many new improvements that have our creative juices flowing.  Any Evernote Business users out there care to share how they use Evernote Business?  We want to do something uniquely useful for EB.  We'll probably post this ? elsewhere, but wanted to ask folks interested in TaskClone.

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  • 3 weeks later...

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