Great news for MyLifeOrganized iOS Task Manager users – MLO now supports 3D Touch and Widget!

What is the point of this update? If you’re an avid Apple user, then you are really going to love MLO's latest update based on 3D touch technology (available on iPhone 6S and later). With our new set of features you can now enjoy a few additional extras that are bound to enhance your MLO experience. Now you can use the most helpful MLO commands from 3D Touch menu and from Widget. These commands not only represent the most frequent and useful actions, but also provide for flexible user customization.

Note: You would need to run the Pro version to use the new 3D Touch and Widget feature.

You may access 3D Touch features by force pressing the MLO app icon. Here is how it looks:

Let us consider 3D Touch first. In order to configure 3D Touch, please open MLO->Settings->3D Touch.

3D Touch settings

As you will see, there is a list of three default quick actions which you can also modify if necessary:

Please tap Edit and in Quick Action option select an action from the list of five available action types: “Add new task”, “Add reminder”, “Open view”, “Search task”, as well as “Open URL”. We will consider most of them in detail.

The first action type is called “Add new task”.

As you may guess, this action is intended for adding a task to Inbox or any branch of the selected profile. You may also configure its title to distinguish it from other actions, as well as choose the profile and the parent task it will be added to (if parent is not set the task will be added to Inbox). In our case it is “Home”:

Here’s what you’ll get:

When a user selects the "Add reminder" action type, the new reminder quick entry dialog shows up. This action is used to quickly set a reminder for a new task and our new dialog is specially designed so that you can do it really fast.

This one is easy to use it as it has a familiar interface for setting a reminder — as usual, you are to choose date and time, and tap “Save”:

As the result, a new task added immediately gets a reminder that will show up in the preset date and time:

As for the “Open view” action, it opens the specified view in a particular profile (for example, “Active by Context” in your work profile). Besides, you may also choose workspace and zoom for a branch (which is optional). At last we name the action by setting its title:

To have a view included to the list of views enable it in the “Edit Views” menu:

The next action type, “Search task”, opens a search dialog with an optional predefined search string. It has 3 settings, they are its title, the profile where a task is going to be searched, and the third being the optional field to set the search text to be entered when using this quick action.

As you can see, MLO automatically uses the predefined search text (“buy”) when searching for a task:

There is one more action type which we decided to introduce for 3D Touch, it is called “Custom URL”. Many iOS applications have their own list of URL schemas that you can use to perform certain actions in these apps. For example, to run Chrome app and open a page in it you may execute this URL command: googlechrome://example.com . MLO is going to have its own URL Schema (the list of commands) which we will describe later on. Thus, this small action opens up a rich field of possibilities as you can enter any URL of any application (including MLO) to execute a specific command. Please refer to the syntax documentation of the necessary app for details.

As for Widget, it works and is configured much the same way, but is available not only through long tap, but also by swiping down from above (iOS 10) or swiping right (on iOS 11).

The icons of the widget represent this or that action:

Note: Only top 4 actions will be displayed in 3D Touch and Widget. The actions may be removed later.

Do you enjoy this update? Please feel free to comment.

Best wishes,

The MyLifeOrganized team

Life is easy when organized

One more surprise to be announced today: the feature of archiving and deleting completed tasks is now available for your Android Task Manager!

Note: This functionality has been released as an experimental feature for now. Learn more how to get it.

Why do we need this function? You perform tasks day after day and the profile grows, slowing down the application, piling up the current view and creating discomfort. How to solve this problem? It is difficult to manually find all the old tasks that have been performed. In addition, you may not want to delete them altogether, but leave them just in case or for reference. What is the optimal solution in these cases? Archive! Transfer old completed tasks to another profile, freeing the current profile and leaving them for other purposes in another profile.

This feature was previously available only in the desktop version and Android users had to archive using the sync with their PCs. From now on Archive/Purge tasks can be found in MLO settings, within the Profile section on your Android device and you can use it even if you do not have MLO on your PC. Let us explore this new feature in detail. 

Tip: Archiving is necessary to prevent possible slowdown when using the app. 

The first setting allows to run archiving at any moment for a particular branch or for the entire outline. The default for this would be “All tasks”, but you may change it anytime.

Next, we set how old completed tasks must be to be archived. The task must have been completed on or before this date to be archived or purged.

After that we may tap to set two more things (the default for these is on):

1. Clean out only those tasks with all subtasks completed;
2. Not to archive subtasks within open projects and recurrent tasks, which means you would need to complete the whole project or finalize the recurrent parent task to archive such completed subtasks.

Having done this, you should select the Action performed with this option. There are three options: you may just copy old tasks (without deleting them from their current position), you may move old tasks (from the current profile to a profile intended for archiving), or purge them (meaning their full deletion). To be on the safe side, you can use the "copy" option just to test what tasks will be archived when you set the "move" option later.

Are you done? Make sure you selected the profile in “Move old tasks to archive” and click “Archive tasks”. Be ready to confirm the operation and wait until the process is over. 

Tip: If you sync tasks to other devices, you should run archive only on a single device. The best place to set up automatic archive is MLO Desktop if you use it. 

We've also prepared a video with a brief overview of the new feature:

Stay with us! Feel free to ask questions and share your impressions, we appreciate your feedback. 

Note: You would need to run the Pro version to use the new archive feature. 

Best wishes,

The MyLifeOrganized team

Life is easy when organized

We are glad to let you know that MyLifeOrganized iOS Task Manager has been taught to add reminders using voice!

MLO users have long been asking us to connect Siri to MLO through the Reminders app. Why would we need that and what is it for?

As you know, in iOS there is a standard application called Reminders. iOS allows you to use Siri, the built-in voice assistant, to add new reminders to the Reminders app. In other words, you can say “Hey Siri” and literally dictate a new task indicating the reminder time. Such task will first be added to the Reminders system app:

And we’ve made it exactly as you asked — you can dictate a new Siri reminder and after launching the MLO this task will be in <Inbox>. This makes the reminders adding process effortless and quick.

Let us consider how to set it up.

First, we tap to activate the "Import reminders" setting in MLO Settings-> Reminders. Next, we select the list from the Reminders app to be processed by MLO:

Tip. To make it more organized, you can create a separate reminder list in Reminders specifically intended for MLO. In this case other lists will not be processed.

Now we just add a new reminder to this list in Reminders and launch the MLO.

Thus, at the time of launch, MLO will transfer all tasks from the chosen list in the Reminders app to the <Inbox> folder in MLO with given reminder time or assigning the appropriate context for the location-based reminder (if set):

We've also prepared a video with a brief overview of the new feature:

 
Be assured — you are bound to be twice productive with the new Siri reminder functionality in MyLifeOrganized. This feature gives you a new lease when you need to take prompt decisions and produce effective solutions. On top of that, you are now provided with a whole new method for creating planning systems and lists.  

Note: You would need to run the Pro version to use the new feature "iOS Reminders".

A great improvement has been added to MyLifeOrganized Android task manager – the latest update concerns the feature of Statistics. This can be accessed through MLO settings in Profile section.

Note: This functionality has been released as an experimental feature for now. Learn more how to get access to it.

Statistics deals with gathering data to explore the usage of various items available within the app. As you can see, these include the total to-do items, completed tasks, projects, flags, as well as many others. How many tasks and suspended projects do I have? How many of them did I complete yesterday? How many tasks did I add last year? To these and other questions a new statistics feature gives the answer.

For instance, here is how the screen looks like for Completed tasks and for Projects. As you can see, there are 25 tasks completed this week and there are 3 suspended projects in the current profile.

Make your own investigation to discover how you may improve your way of planning and organizing. You may track your progress, compare data in your profiles using different strategies, as well as study your diligence. Furthermore, this allows you to evaluate the profile for the number of old tasks and decide on the archiving (will be described in another article). Any other ideas? Feel free to share them with us!

Tip: You would need to run the Pro version to use the new Statistics feature.
We've also prepared a video with a brief overview of the new feature:

Remember: Life is easy when organized, twice easy when statistized!

Best wishes,

The MyLifeOrganized team

Friends, we have a new vital feature to announce!

This one is called Backup/Restore Profile and allows to carry out backup (with no synchronization) into a file, as well as to restore it back when necessary. You can backup and restore all your tasks, contexts and flags, as well as views stored in the current profile. This is useful for example when you change your phone and want to transfer your MLO data to it.   

Note: the synchronization is still the best way to backup your tasks in real time and to share them with other devices. Backup to a file feature is only useful if you do not use the sync.

The feature is available in MLO settings, within the Profile section.

Let us start with the backup feature itself. When you have opened the option, tap the desired elements and click “Backup profile”. You will be asked to enter the desired password or leave empty to create a backup with no password. Done? Great! Then just click “Create”.

Tip: You may tap to backup either only tasks, contexts, flags, or views, as well as tap for both.

When the creation is over, you will be informed of the file storage location, its name, as well as offered to send it by e-mail. Depending on your installed apps and services, you may have some other possible types of destination available besides e-mail as well.

Now let’s restore the profile using the second option. For this you just need to click the button “Restore from backup…” and select the necessary backup (.mlobak) file you created earlier. MLO will request the password if you added it when the backup was created.

MLO will also propose you to switch to the restored profile, which can be done by a single click.

As you can see, all this is pretty simple and can be used just by doing several clicks. Just go and create your backup to always feel safe and protected. Besides, this is one more superfeature for adjustments and complicated task management systems.

Tip: You would need to run the Pro version to use the backup feature.

Stay tuned!

Best wishes,

The MyLifeOrganized team

Life is easy when organized

We have added flags to MyLifeOrganized for Android task manager! As you know the users of MyLifeOrganized task organizer for Windows and our to do list app for iPhone have the opportunity to enjoy the bright flags for a long time already. And now the Android users have joined the company.

Starting from version 2.8.0 you can use flags directly on your Android devices: assign flags to tasks, filter, sort and group with the help of bright and useful flags.

Flag list in MLO-Android

For example, you would like to highlight the most important tasks with the red flag, the tasks for home with blue flags, shopping list with green and so on. To assign a flag you need only one tap on the flag placeholder in the task outline. To select which flag to assign - long tap.

Mark tasks with flags in the task outline

Moreover, you can synchronize custom flag icons from MyLifeOrganized desktop to Android and create a personal comfortable system.

We would like to mention an important point. You can define the order of the flags in the list. Therefore, this order is also taken into account when sorting and grouping by task flags. Thus, you can create a view in which all marked with flags tasks will automatically line up in that order.

Tasks grouped by flag

Tip: You can switch off using flags for certain MLO profiles in the app settings if you like.

Despite the flags is a new major functionality in our Android app we are happy to announce that it is a free update for all MLO-Android v2 Pro users!

As you can see by adding more and more features to the MLO-Android app we bring the Android mobile app functionality closer and closer to the desktop possibilities. We hope you will enjoy the flags on your Android devices and it will help you to create the task management system you need.

Best wishes,

The MyLifeOrganized team

Life is easy when organized