Taskline plus Close Contact

Posted by Tumbleweed
Mar 13, 2023 at 01:58 PM

So I’ve been chasing closing flaws in my email/contact/CRM/meeting notes system. The goal is to have all these linked, such that one can see per contact all old email/meetings fast. And thus know immediately when the last contact was, get an overview, etc.

The best integrated software for this is EPIM. However, I have a lifetime license and in my numerous attempts it is has proven to be 1) unreliable with Exchange email and 2) unstable, ie. my latest database can’t even load without crashing. Obviously these are dealbreakers, so my metholdology has been to use:
Outlook + NEOPro - email and contacts
UltraRecall - Meetings, notes, webpages, research, file organization, scans, entries, code snippets, etc.
Watership Planner - Time mapping calendar for project planning and tasks

However, there are two problems with this system. First, Watership Planner is abandoned, although it still works for me. Second, there is no CRM element to get an overview of all touchpoints with a given contact. It can be built in UltraRecall for contacts/tasks but is not optimal as one needs to then go to NEOPro to cross-reference email.

Enter Taskline and Close Contact, both from ResultsWare. Taskline is an Outlook addin that does time blocking and task management. I’ve tried Taskline in the past, but preferred Watership Planner, due to the automated time mapping. However, the new vesion of Taskline has a lot of interested features, like separate times for categories (ie. Work, home, etc) so you can plan out projects that are professional and personal separately. I think it’s a winner and the yearly price is reasonable (yes, it’s subscription but at that price I’m not complaining).

Close Contact is another Outlook addin that allows items to attach to contacts, and also to view all items from a particular contact. Email is linked automatically. Instant CRM! Meeting and Phone calls can be created from a contact in Outlook using Journal entry, and you can then specify the type of touchpoint. This is a very fast and easy process. Also, when you look at a contact, you get a full screen where you can change columns - I’m using Subject, Received/End, and then Body Text for 70% of the view - and thus you can actually see immediately what the email is about. Even in EPIM you can’t figure out which of the huge number of email is the one you want easily.

I’m still testing these, but wow this gives the missing functionality Outlook needs! For me, Outlook is essential to make sure Exchange email is reliable (see EPIM), and thus my new setup will be:
Outlook (with Taskline and Close Contact) + NEOPro
UltraRecall - notes, webpages, research, file organization, scans, entries, code snippets, etc.

Later I’ll probably start using Obsidian for all the research items that might benefit from linking, while keeping UltraRecall to keep track of all the other items listed above.