Zoho Planner is undergoing an infrastructure upgrade on Saturday, December 8, 2007 between 17:30 PST and 22:30 PST (5 hours). During this time, access to your Zoho Planner accounts will not be available and the reminder emails will be delayed. We apologize for any inconvenience that this might cause.

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Matthew Moran at ITTtoolbox finds Zoho Planner so useful that he first had a blog post titled, “The Joy of ZOHO Planner - shared todo lists, tasks, and collaboration…“. He then followed it up with a cool video showing how he uses Zoho Planner. From his post,

I have also been playing around a lot with ZOHO’s suite of applications. I’ll be covering these in more detail over the next few weeks. Suffice to say, their documents are more full-featured and have a better interface than google - hands down.

Zoho Planner allows us [Matt & his wife Laura] to have our own tasks page or pages. We can then share a page or pages of tasks with someone else - giving them read only or read/write access to the page.

I setup a page called Laura’s Shared Tasks and one called Matt’s Shared Tasks. I gave Laura read/write access to both.

Laura can then add tasks, appointments, and notes to my page and to her page. I can see them, I can add tasks, and I can add notes. It does a couple of things. First, she and I both have a place to add tasks to the other person - and notes with greater detail if needed.

Second, we can see the tasks we’ve added in context of other tasks and appointments they (the other person) has due. It helps us know two things - one that the other person has the tasks on their list and two that our tasks to them are not the only things they must do.

And here is Matt’s nice video where he explains Zoho in general followed by a tutorial on how he emails tasks (to-dos) & notes to his Zoho Planner account.

Thanks, Matt! Now, to the readers of this blog - do tell us how you are using Zoho Planner.

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With the latest Zoho Planner update, you can now chat to each of your shared users. On clicking a page you can see the list of shared users with status (either online/offline). Now you can chat with the person who is available for chat.

We have also added RSS feeds for your shared pages. You can find this feature in your planner settings page. Subscribe to the RSS feeds and get notified on the changes done by the shared users in your page.

Do give a try and send your feedbacks to feedback at zohoplanner dot com.

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We recently announced the availability of REST APIs for Zoho Writer, Sheet and Show. Today, we have added REST API for Zoho Planner as well. The functionality & working of this API is similar to those of Writer/Sheet/Show. The Zoho Planner API allows you to get, create, update ToDo lists and do a lot more as well, all from inside your web application. Check out the new Zoho Planner API. If you need help in building a mashup using our API, do write to us at feedback(at)zohoplanner.com.

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Zoho Planner offers some formatting options. You can put these options to good use while making your To-Dos lists and Notes. Say for example, you can use Bold text for highlighting a particular To Do to convey that it is more important to you than others.

The help page for knowing the various formatting options can be accessed by clicking on the ‘Text Formatting‘ link at the bottom-left of your Zoho Planner page. Also, this Zoho Wiki page helps illustrate the various options as well.

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One common question we receive from our Zoho Planner users,

It is difficult for me to see my to-dos for the day as my to-dos are typically present across multiple pages. How can I view them all in a single page?

You can actually see your to-dos across pages applying some pre-built filters that Zoho Planner offers. On the left panel, click on “To do’s overview” -> “All my to do’s”. In the page that opens, on the top-right you will see a combo box. Choose the appropriate option there and this will list all your to-dos across pages.

Bonus tip : For making an offline copy of your to-dos, use your browser’s ‘Print’ option for printing the page.

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Here’s one oft repeated feedback mail that we receive from Zoho Planner users :

I keep getting a reminder mail from Zoho Planner though the Appointment (or Task or Reminder) has long passed. How can I stop this?

Well, Zoho Planner offers recurring reminder options for your ‘To Dos’, ‘Appointments’ and ‘Reminders’. Screenshots below of the options offered.

Though we set the reminder option to ‘once’ by default, users tend to set it to ‘every n hours’ or ‘every n days’. Hence they end up getting the reminder emails repeatedly at their set frequency. So, if you don’t want to get bombarded with the same reminder email(s) from Zoho Planner again and again, please exercise caution when setting your reminder option!

Login to your Zoho Planner account, revisit the To Dos / Reminders / Appointments sections of your Zoho Planner pages and edit/delete them as the case may be.

UPDATE : Stopping the reminder has been made easier. Each reminder email you receive will have a unique URL (HTML link) in it. Clicking on it will stop the reminder (you will see a message “The recurring reminder has been stopped” once you click on the URL, when logged in to Zoho Planner)

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Shailendra at ‘ApniTally’ has a good demo for Tally 9 created in Zoho Show, explaining users how to create a payslip.

Miriam at ‘illuminea blog’ is using Zoho Planner and notes that it is a cool tool. More at her blog.

Helene Blowers at Learning 2.0 has a nice podcast titled “Web Applications - Taking Productivity beyond the Desktop”. To quote her, “With Zoho and web-based applications, the possibilities are endless”. Thanks Helene. Click here for more.

Friends at Jambav are using Zoho Sheet and Zoho Creator for their checklists and surveys.

How are you using Zoho?

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The latest update at Zoho Planner addresses some of the major usability issues that you users have pointed out. Though AJAX has been a boon for the whole web with its non-loading pages, easy drag-and-drop etc, it can cause problems too (as compiled in this famous list of Ajax Mistakes).

One of the major flaws was breaking the browser’s back button functionality. This is now addressed in Zoho Planner. You can now move from one page to another and use the browser’s Back/Forward buttons to navigate. Going further we will be addressing the intra-page navigation too and expect them to be carried over to other Zoho apps as well!

The top ‘Insert’ menu has given way for a sleek menu bar with direct links. The link to iCal has gone inside the ‘Settings’ menu and the Add List Item/Reorder have gone to the bottom of a list (they were on top previously).

Do give the new Zoho Planner a try and do let us know where we need to improve.

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Anne Zelenka has a nice debut post at Web Worker Daily. She lists the advantages of having one’s todo lists on paper compared to having them on an online personal organizer. Liked the comment that one Mr. Peter Bell made there :

I used pen and paper for a long time and still do while “on the move”, but I find a simple Notepad/Textmate style to do list invaluable. Why?- I can always read my typing - not always true about my writing
- I can easily re-order tasks which I almost always have to do. Try re-ordering 30 tasks on a piece of paper - ten times. Then trying doing the same using cut and paste on a laptop . . .
- I can find tasks by keyword so I can afford to have plenty of “some day” tasks and just find them via search.
- I can easily save my historic “done” tasks - again for searching by project or other key words down the line.

The above’s true for Zoho Planner too. I have tried the yellow sticky notes before but it didn’t work for me. Too many of them cluttered my work place and I found them impossible to organize. All tools have their own advantages & disadvantages. Like you can use the Notepad/Textmate when offline (with Zoho Planner it aint possible) but you would need your laptop always for accessing them.

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