This is the third in a series of posts on project management (PM) tools for PDAs. (See here for the first post, which addressed Pocket Plan, and here for the second, which addressed ListPro). In this post we will look at using Bonsai for managing projects.
Bonsai is a very useful, easy-to-use project management tool for the Palm and Windows platforms. It was among the first software I bought for my Palm devices in the late 1990’s, and I found it to be extremely helpful in managing a number of substantial projects.
The following screenshot provides the basis for a number of talking points about Bonsai:
As shown in the screenshot, Bonsai outlines support any level of indentation. Each level can be numbered (or not) using a variety of numbering formats. Each entry can be entered as either a Task (my preferred style), a ToDo, or as a Simple item. Tasks can be assigned a Percentage Complete, and the percent complete is reflected graphically in the layout. Additionally, Bonsai calculates the percentage complete of Parent items based on the values of children items. For example, if there are two children items, one with a percentage completion of 20% and one with 10%, the parent item will be figured at 15%. One of the reasons I prefer the Task style is this percentage completion feature.
Task items can also be assigned a priority (1 to 5) and a Category of Business, Personal, and User-Defined. For each item, dates can be assigned (start, due, completion, and an auto-generated creation date) and items can be linked to a ToDo in the Palm Task or to a Calendar item or to another Outline. Each item also has a Note section that has room for a lot of status information (or contact info, or whatever info you want to put in). You can also import ToDo items from the Task application. The default setting on this is to delete the ToDo’s from the Task list program after importing, but you can change this in the settings.
If you decide you want to change the order of items within an Outline, the items can be easily moved with drag and drop, or you can clip and paste entire branches of the outline.
You can also easily change the font size of the Outline. For Palms that support a screen-rotate feature, such as my TX, this is handy for the landscape view, as shown below:
The desktop (Windows) version of course does everything that the Palm version does, and Outlines sync between the desktop and Palm versions, so that changes in either are reflected on both. The desktop version also allows exporting of Outlines to XML, HTML, CSV, or Text formats, which can be very handy.
All owners of Palms can benefit from checking this program out. I wish the developers of this software would make it available for the Pocket PC platform.
In the next installment, we’ll talk about ShadowPlan, which is also available for Palm and Windows and also for Mac.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
good site jngyrq