“I just wanna spread the message, “Use any browser, it doesn’t matter. But use the latest version!”.” Designed by Minhaj Mohamed from Sri Lanka.
We, TaskAnt, support these browsers:
TaskAnt supports some keyboard shortcuts. Now, we have:
/
Focus on search field
N or C
Create new task
R
Refresh current list
Ctrl+Enter (or Command+Return on Mac)
Submit while creating/editing a task or adding a comment
Esc
Cancel while creating/editing a task or editing in the search field
If you have any ideas about shortcuts, please feel free to comment this post to share with us. We appreciate your suggestions and will consider about them seriously.
People are increasingly adding projects and tasks on TaskAnt. Then you’ll see more and more tasks from different projects mixed together in your inbox. To distinguish these tasks easily, we’re glad to introduce a new feature in TaskAnt, Project Color Label, which is released today. We can apply different colors to projects. For example, we select red for Project A. Then, all tasks in A will have a red label. So it’ll be easy to find them out from the inbox.
It’s simple to use. When hovering on a project name in sidebar, you’ll see a circle label showing the color of this project. It’s transparent as default (No color label). Click to select color. Please take a try now, you’ll see the change in your task list on the right side.
Please note that, the colors are personal. Others can’t see it. We can select different colors for every project, or just apply to a specific project. In my case, I apply the highlight yellow to Project TaskAnt, so that I can focus on my core tasks which matters most. 
1) We make sure the TaskAnt.com beta version is stable and secure enough for business use. The future versions like GA are not different with beta versions in stability and security.
2) We already have some big customers now. For example, a developer team in Tencent (company of QQ), is using TaskAnt.com in their daily work. They confirmed that core features of TaskAnt.com was finished and it had already save their time, improve their communication, and bring efficiency.
3) Accounts created in beta program are free forever and allow unlimited team members. This offer is time limited.
1) From your friend. Stand up and look around to see who’s using TaskAnt. Then ask him/her send the invitation to your email. Everyone, who own an account, has more than 10 invitations for the beta program. And this number is growing.
2) Via twitter. Follow @taskant, RT the latest tweet from @taskant, then we’ll DM(direct message) the invitation link to your twitter account.
3) Leave your email address in the form below the web site http://TaskAnt.com/. We’ll send you an invitation in less than 7 days.
BTW, TaskAnt is a team tool. Don’t use it by yourself only. So after signed in, click Settings/People and add your colleagues into your account. Enjoy assigning tasks to them.
Welcome!
After you signed in, click the “New Task” button on the top-left. You can assign a task to yourself or other project members. Anyone in the project can see and edit this task. So please take one more look at the “project” field in the form, to avoid putting the task among wrong people.
When you decided who is responsible for the task, select him/her in the “assign to” field. So that he/she can check the task in the “Inbox”. If selected “Nobody”, you can still find it in your “Sent” box. If selected “All” project members, every one can see it in every “Inbox”. (Any one got it done, it’s done. Because it’s only ONE task.)
The assignment information can also be added or changed later.
A task’s final status can be “Done”, “Cancelled”, or “Merged”. Checking the checkbox in front of a task will get it done. Click “Cancel” in “More” to cancel it (not delete it). Click “Merge” and enter another task number will merge the two. Done/Cancelled/Merged tasks will disappeared in Inbox.
Click the checkbox again to un-done/un-cancel/un-merge the task.
“Project” is project in the real world. Every task should belong to a project in TaskAnt. Projects are under access control. That means only members can see see/create/edit/assign tasks in the project. And they are equal. But, yes, only admins can create project and choose people. After project closed in the real world, you should set it to “Inactive” to make it read only.
Browsing and searching are easy and fast in TaskAnt.
The basic way: Click “Browse” next to the search field to pulldown the browser view and search tasks by creator, assignee and status.
The advanced way: Direct type search expression (like “to:brian in:XMind pri:3 #bug”) in the search field and press enter. TaskAnt will give you all tasks which are assigned to Brian, in project “XMind”, labeled as highest priority and contains “#bug” in text.
Smartlists are your saved search. Click “Save as Smartlist”, on the right side of search field, to create a new smartlist in the left sidebar.
In previous example (“to:brian in:XMind pri:3 #bug”), you can name the smartlist “Brian’s huge bugs in XMind”.
Smartlists are also TEMPLATES! Click the smartlist “Brian’s huge bugs in XMind” then click “New Task” and you’ll get a new task automatically assigned to Brian, in project “XMind”, labeled as highest priority and contains “#bug” in text!
There are a lot of Todo List apps. Most of us are using one. Maybe more than one. Why? Because I need it to:
We’re a small developer team with only 6 members. We believe there’re lots of small teams like us around the world. Although we are working in one place, we still need software for collaboration and communication. Why? Because Todo List apps can’t do:
In my opinion, the second requirement list are more important than the first. Because it’s for business. That’s what I call “Collaborative Task Management” (or “Task Collab” for short).
Before making a decision, we try to compare some existing solutions. And the most popular solution, I think, is our email system. Its pros are:
But there are also some cons:
So TaskAnt considered the pros and cons of both Todo List apps and email system in design time.
And before we using TaskAnt. We used 37signals Basecamp, which is the most famous online project management tool. It’s a) Web app, and b) Addictively easy-to-use! But after a few months using, we feel a litter unhappy. It’s not about features. It’s a very good assistant while we’re at the beginning of the project. But we can’t use it after project growing. Because a) Lack of GTD concepts and b) It focused on the tool’s variety too much instead of let every separate tool be the best.
Then we decided to build TaskAnt. We start from adding a little feature on Basecamp’s Todo Lists. At last, TaskAnt becomes a “Task Collab App“. It’s actually a task pool with all tasks for your team. Every task has a life-cycle. All team members are grouped by projects. Project members are equal. Others can’t see anything in the project. All action history for tasks are automatically recorded, including comments. We’ll share detail information later in this blog.
We’re our first users of TaskAnt. As we expect, it improves our productivity. It meets our original design by:
TaskAnt will be available soon. Thanks!
Let me give some hints:
Cool?
Give me your feedback. Thanks!
TaskAnt is still under development. Recently, we are ofter asked how it comes, and we would indeed love to share our sparkle in great details.
We all know David Allen, who is really a great guy, and is widely recognized as the world’s leading authority on personal and organizational productivity. His book, Getting Things Done:the Art of Stress-Free Productivity, has been a perennial business bestseller since it’s publication in 2001, and is now published in 28 languages. And more, GTD is popular known as the method, which can help us to work efficiently, save our time, and let us be relaxed and successful in life.
We all like GTD, and indeed are benefiting from it. We use folders to organize files, GTD software tools, such as things, to let tasks organized. We observe the GTD rules and hope other colleagues understand it too. But then come some problems.
We hope our team be a whole, and a team organized by GTD rules. We find It’s not that easy to integrate GTD into the team collaboration. There are much extra time spent on communication about project process, task process, and etc. The work process is broken too often.
TaskAnt is designed to have a brand-new experience during team collaboration. We hope the whole team can work relaxed and be successful!
Everyday, we have to face many tasks, big or small, urgent or normal. Project managers spent many time looking for a best solution to arrange tasks fast and efficiently, for example, ask John if received the emails and finished his tasks.
So finally, much time have been wasted on this kind communication. Because John may forget to open the email that day, or he just found one task did not belong to him, so he forward that email to Tom. Then the manager has to call Tom again.
TaskAnt makes sure that you and your team members would have a good and efficient experience on task collaboration.
BTW, thank you to people who’ve submitted to join the private beta of TaskAnt. We’ve been overwhelmed by the response we’ve received.