Friday, February 19, 2010

New Toodledo Options

We’ve introduced two new Toodledo options to make an advanced settings page.

Folders and Categories

The first new feature lets you choose how categories should be mapped between your phone and Toodledo.  You can choose ‘tags,’ ‘folders,’ 'contexts,’ ‘goals’ or no mapping at all.

What’s the difference?

  • Tags offer the most flexibility for the device.  The categories from your phone are mapped to (and from) a comma-separated list, such as “Personal, Birthdays, Purchases” at Toodledo.  You can sync as many categories as can fit in the tag field at Toodledo this way, and filter your phone’s view on any one or several of the values.  The downside is that Toodledo doesn’t offer a good way of filtering the view based on the tags.

  • Quoting Toodledo, “Folders are a convenient way to organize your to-do list. You can use folders to keep track of different projects, or keep work-related tasks separate from personal items.”  When mapping categories to folders, only one of the categories is synced back to Toodledo, since tasks can only be in one folder at a time.  You can move tasks between folders on your phone by selecting the appropriate categories, or create entirely new folders by creating a new category.  When the device sends the category list back, if any of the selected categories is already a folder we will use it.  If none of the chosen categories is already a folder, we’ll create one from the first category which the device sent to us and place the task in the new folder.

  • Toodledo contexts are used to filter tasks based on where you are and what you are doing.  For example, while you are out of town on a business trip it isn’t helpful to have a task reminding you to wash the car at home.  Contexts help separate the two.  To the phone, contexts appear much like folders, and the rules are the same.  Whether you prefer to use folders or contexts mostly depends on how you prefer your tasks to be arranged at Toodledo.

  • Toodledo goals are used to group loosely related tasks.  For example, you may create the goal of losing 10lbs, and then associate tasks like a jog in the morning, picking up some fresh fruit for lunch, and exercising at the gym after work.  To the phone, goals look much like folders and contexts, and again, which would serve best depends mainly on how you’d like to organize your Toodledo list.

  • You might choose no mapping at all if your phone doesn’t support assigning categories to tasks, and you want to make absolutely certain that the folders, contexts, goals, and tags you’ve already assigned at Toodledo will not be disturbed.

 

Completed Tasks

The second new option is whether or not to retrieve completed tasks on the initial sync.  While most of the time it makes sense to start with only active tasks, sometimes you need access to past, already completed tasks for reference.  This option lets you select which you behavior you’d prefer.

 

Any questions or comments, please head on over to the NuevaSync forum.