Firetask is no pure "classic" to do list app. Instead, it combines classic task management concepts such as due dates and priorities with David Allen's "Getting Things Done®" approach in a quite unique way. Firetask is also a project-oriented task management tool and thus requires you to associate each task with a project. A predefined "Miscellaneous" project can be used to gather tasks that are not part of a specific project.
From the feedback we have gathered so far we know that GTD® adopters as well as people who like to focus on the "here and now" love the app. On the other hand, if you just want to "see" all your tasks in a single, simple list on the Today screen Firetask may not be the right iPhone task management app for you.
As you might have guessed already, the main concept behind Firetask is to keep you focused on what you need to do today and within the next couple of days as well as what you could do next. We also try to provide you with visual hints such as different icons for categories, traffic light-style colors for priorities, or "burning" overdue tasks. In addition, Firetask can help you keep track of the status of tasks you have delegated to other people.
In other words, Firetask was designed by and for people who need to manage and execute dozens to hundreds of tasks every week. This is our focus and we hope that you like our approach to heavy-duty task management.
The Firetask user interface is made up of five tabs named "Today", "Categories", "Projects", "Inbox"/"In-Basket" and "More". We decided for a tabbed user interface in order to provide you with quick access to what we thought are the most often used screens in the application. In addition, the "More" screen provides access to less often used areas of the app such as the archives of completed tasks and projects.
The application always starts up with the "Today" screen. The idea behind the Today screen is to provide you with a one-stop view of all tasks that are or could be relevant to you on this specific day, but at the same time hiding currently not relevant tasks from you. In order to use Firetask effectively, this is the most important concept you need to understand and embrace. The Today screen will determine whether you are going to like our app or not.
Another important aspect of all task-oriented views (including the Today screen) is that these views are always split into two "areas":
Due tasks are tasks that have a due date set and thus get relevant when they are due today or within the next days in order to let you focus on the current day and the next days. If Firetask would show you all due tasks on the Today screen you would get overloaded with tasks that are most likely not yet relevant for you. Note that you can configure the number of days you want to have taken into account in Firetask's settings (between tomorrow and up to 7 days).
Next tasks are tasks that have no due date set, i.e., you can choose to complete them anytime. Again, we chose to prevent you from "information overload" by limiting the Today screen to a single next task per project by default. The single next task that is chosen per project is simply the first open task in a project (you can adjust the order of tasks in the individual project tasks lists as described further below in "Projects & Tasks"). This is the first of many concepts borrowed from David's GTD®-approach. Starting with Firetask 3 you can also choose to add more next tasks to the Today screen by "flagging" them: simply set a task task's "Flagged" property to "Yes" and it will show up on your Today screen.
You can add new tasks directly from the Today screen by pressing the "+" button on the top-right corner of the screen. Please note that depending on the due date you have set and the order of next tasks in a project, the Today screen might not instantly show the new task you just added. In other words, if Firetask "thinks" that the task you have just added is not yet relevant for you it will not show it on the Today screen.
In order to change the status of a task to "In Progress" or "Completed" simply tap once or twice on the status icon that is located to the very left of each task. This functionality is available in all task lists (Today, category and project task lists). If you have completed a task accidentally you can tap the priority again and the task status will revert to "Actionable". Note that starting with Firetask version 3 you can also use this to quickly make an In-Tray item actionable, or to un-complete an already completed task.
In order to view the details of a task, to edit or delete it you need to tab on the task itself which will open the task detail view. Use the "Delete Task" button that appears on the bottom of the view to delete the task permanently from the repository.
Another one of David's concepts is what he calls "contexts" and we call "Categories". We simply chose the name "Category", because we found it to be more common. A category can be used to group tasks together depending on their "nature". Typical categories are "Phone Calls", "Emails" or "At Home".
The basic idea of categories is to have quick access to all tasks of a single category. For instance, if you have time and you are anyway on the phone you might be able to efficiently make a few calls rather than just a single one. Another example might be a category "Agendas" where you put all things you might want to talk over in the next jour fixe. Normally, you might not remember what you wanted to cover in the next meeting. Now you simply navigate to the category "Agendas" and you can quickly go through all relevant tasks one by one.
A special category is the "Waiting For" list. It is also inspired by one of David's GTD® principles, although it was our choice to implement it in the form of context/category. The idea behind the Waiting For list is to have a single place where you can track tasks you do not need to complete yourself, but rather have delegated to other people. In other words, tasks you are "waiting for" to get completed by the people you assigned those tasks to. In our opinion, the Waiting For list is one of the most powerful GTD® concepts.
You can create a new category by tapping on the "+" button in the upper-right corner of the "Categories" view. Editing and deleting a category is possible from the category detail view accessible via the blue detail disclosure button of each category. Press the "Edit" button in the category overview to change the order of your categories. Please note that the "To Dos" and the "Waiting for" categories cannot be deleted.
In Firetask every task belongs to a project. If a task is not part of a specific project you can use the predefined "Miscellaneous" project. Similar to tasks, projects have a status and a category. Please note that tasks will only appear on the "Today" screen if both the project has been started and the task is actionable.
Similar to categories, new projects can be created by tapping on the "+" button in the "Projects" view. Editing and deleting projects is done via the project detail view that can be accessed via tapping on the blue detail disclosure button displayed by each project. Again you can reorder your projects by pressing the "Edit" button.
By clicking on the project name you can access the project's task list. This list is the best place for detail planning your project's tasks. The "Edit List" button allows you to reorder the tasks displayed in the "Next Tasks" section. The topmost actionable task is the task that is displayed in the "Next Task (per Project)" section in the "Today" screen. Please note that only non-due tasks have a defined order, due tasks are ordered via their due date.
The "In-Tray" or "In-Basket" is a place to quickly enter a task or idea -- simply to get it off your mind and into an organized system. The newest inbox/in-basket item is always placed on top, the oldest item on the bottom of the list. Note that in Firetask the "Inbox" or "In-Basket" is technically a task status rather than a separate list. Therefore, you can very easily make an inbox/in-basket task actionable by changing its status to "Actionable".
Finally, the "More" tab provides you with access to not-so-often needed views such us, e.g., the archives of completed and cancelled tasks/projects. These archives can be used to look up when a specific task was completed or to undo a cancel or complete operation that was done by accident.