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Old 04-08-2005, 05:00 PM
Steve Sharp
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Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 46
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Default Built for Need: Agenda Fusion 7


Product Category: Productivity
Manufacturer: Developer One Software
Where to Buy: PocketGear (Affiliate)
Price: $29.95 USD (Upgrading from version 6.86 is free, upgrading from versions 6.x prior to 6.86 is $14.95 USD)
System Requirements: Works with all Windows Mobile 2003 and 2003 Second Edition Pocket PC and Phone Edition. Pocket PC 2000/2002 and Pocket PC 2002 Phone Edition. Requires 3.5 megabytes of storage space and can be installed to main or expansion memory. If VGA support is desired, the installation size can be slightly larger.

Pros:
  • Expanded contact information is useful;
  • Allows easy linking between notes, tasks, external files, and contacts;
  • Version 7 features a backup utility that will save all project data;
  • The new project view adds a new dimension of functionality to the program;
  • Supports drawing, note writing, voice recording, and transcribing functions.
Cons:
  • The program's size is considerable, for a Pocket PC application;
  • The $29.95 price tag for the non-upgrade version is somewhat expensive;
  • Does not have a Today screen plug-in for appointments and tasks;
  • Many features, but some are confusing to set up and use.
Summary:
Agenda Fusion 7 combines features and functions that include powerful project management tools, linking, and easily creating recurring tasks and applying them to multiple days. The mainstay of this upgraded version is the Project View, which allows the user to view a multi-tiered listing of various projects, tasks, appointments, and reminders. Agenda Fusion 7 is not designed for the application size-conscious Pocket PC user. If your needs can be handled with a few, relatively simple organizational applications, then Agenda Fusion 7 may not be for you. However, if you're looking for a high-power organizational and project management tool, something to help you get a grip on multiple projects, one that will allow you to associate files, contacts, and organize task entries in your contact list, then Agenda Fusion 7 is a very nice program.

Read on for the full review!


Figure 1: Agenda Fusion 7 supports expanded contact information.

Powerful Program--But Be Prepared to Read the Manual
I've been described as a "typical male" in that I hate asking for directions and tend to only read product instructions at the expense of feeling like a dolt and a failure. However, in order to make the most of Agenda Fusion 7, be forewarned that it's unlikely that you will master, or even get started being good at using this program if you try to rely on your wits and intuition. Agenda Fusion 7 is a heavy-duty personal management productivity package for the power-user who has many contacts, appointments, and jobs to manage. The program has many features and functions that expand many of the functions that are built into the operating system. Agenda Fusion 7 also adds new functionality, such as linking files, contacts, and projects, and grouping, sorting, and organizing your information in many different ways.

Agenda Fusion 7 supports many powerful functions for the busy professional, and it does this very well. Some aspects and functions of the program are not as user-friendly as they could be, and I would not describe this as an intuitive or self-explanatory program. A certain amount of time must be invested to set up and learn how to use the extensive project management features. I relied on a good bit of trial and error to find, and I finally bit the bullet and downloaded the user manual in .pdf format and decided to get educated on the finer points of the program. The user manual is 38 pages long, which is both a testament to all of the features, and an indication that the you'll probably need a bit of help in figuring how to use some of the features. Agenda Fusion will synchronize with Outlook on your desktop, and will migrate links from Outlook into the appropriate Agenda Fusion folders. It's a high-power personal productivity program that provides calendar views and viewing options that make the calendar function, contact list, alarm settings, and that is built into the Pocket PC operating system look like a silly toy.
  • Agenda Fusion 7 will synchronize with Outlook on a desktop computer;
  • Agenda Fusion 7 supports button mapping for quick launching and launching from Pocket Outlook links to Agenda Fusion views;
  • Supports drag and drop functionality in moving or organizing information;
  • Allows the user to customize the icons associated with various entries in the Fusion views.

Figure 2: See all of your appointments and tasks for the week in the weekly view.

Getting it All Together
For those who have set up a database, generated a milestone chart, or managed a cumbersome project, you probably know that investing some time in organizing things now can save much time in the future. The set up of Agenda Fusion 7 is similar to this type of effort. Developer One has done as much as they can, in terms of making it as painless as possible to create associations and links and importing your contact list and so on, but the bottom line is that only you can organize your information in a way that is meaningful to you, and that takes a bit of time. Much of the power of this program comes from the Project View that marks this program as being useful for its target market, but as they say, "garbage in, garbage out" and if you don't take the time to read and understand how to set up your information and projects, then there's not much to be gained by being able to look at the Project View.

A nice thing about Agenda Fusion 7 involves the associations that you can create and that ease consolidation and navigation to all material that is pertinent to a particular person or project. Information is easily edited, and the different icons make for quick references to items of a certain type. I particularly like the feature that enables the entry of recurring tasks or reminders, without having to manually re-enter the information, each time. I also like being able to divide my appointments into increments other than the standard 1 hour or half hour intervals. In what I call the day-planner, time increments can be broken down to intervals as small as 5 minutes.




Figure 3: Agenda Fusion 7 supports a visual breakdown of your day by the hour.

So Many Features, So Little Time
For the sake of doing justice to all the features of Agenda Fusion 7, I cannot spend an inordinate amount of time babbling about each feature, but my purpose is to provide an idea of the many things that it has to offer. Aside from the items that I have mentioned already, Agenda Fusion 7 provides support of configuration and customization of tabs and tab views which enable the user to decide how and what information will be presented. Multiple calendar views allow the user to view the calendar for the entire year, or zoom in to an hourly view of a particular day. Fusion Utilities provides support for voice notes which can have written notes attached and can be saved as part of meeting notes, a reminder, or simply a voice memo to yourself. View tabs for calendars, for example, can also be mapped to buttons on the Pocket PC for quickly opening a particular view that is referenced often. Entering appointments or modifying/adding/deleting appointments works in the same way that the appointment minder that is built into Windows Mobile operating system works, so there's no learning curve, there. Significant days in the "Year View" of the calendar, such as deadlines, birthdays, or that all-important wedding anniversary, can be highlighted very easily. Alternatively, Agenda Fusion 7 supports a "show birthdays/anniversary" feature that will not only remind you of such dates, but it will indicate the years being celebrated.


Figure 4: Significant days for the entire year are viewable in the calendar view.


Figure 5: Although Agenda Fusion 7 provides a format, within the program, that resembles the Today screen, this view is not actually the Today screen of the Pocket PC.

I wish that Agenda Fusion 7 had a Today screen plug-in or view on the existing Today screen, but it doesn't include one. Developer One has, however, created a view that resembles the Today screen, and they even provide instructions on how to make the Agenda Fusion 7 "Today view" look like the Pocket PC's Today screen. Another feature that I liked, included in the Fusion Utilities, is called "Fusion Find." As the name implies, it is a search tool that searches all fusion items, and displays the information associated with that item, when it is located. For someone with an extensive list of people, items, or projects, this is a time-saving feature that also allows filtering, and is, therefore, invaluable for someone with many entries to sift through.



Figure 6: The user can customize the icons for various categories of items that are displayed task view or project view.

Moving right along, we have the Tasks View. To its credit, Developer One makes this sound easy to use, and I've been accused of being slightly thick on more than one occasion, so maybe it's just me. But, I had some trouble getting my Tasks View to work as it's supposed to. The idea is that tasks can be grouped by status, date, category, etc. and can be consolidated into a common view. I'm sure that it was operator error, but this never quite worked as I hoped and didn't feel very user-friendly to set up, in my opinion. Users can also change or segregate items by category. Along these same lines, categories can be hidden from the viewable list. So, if you don't want prying eyes to discover that you take Fluffy to the Bow Wow Boutique each Wednesday afternoon, this can be categorized as "personal" and hidden from the main view. A strong element to Agenda Fusion 7 involves contacts and tools for managing contacts. Agenda Fusion provides a contact editor for contact listings, an "attendees list" for meetings, and custom sorting of entries in the contact listing. Agenda Fusion 7 also supports a "Favorites" group for commonly used functions, and this feature works much like the bookmarks in a web browser.


Figure 7: The new Project View is the centerpiece of Agenda Fusion 7.

At last, we come to the previously mentioned Project View. Yes, I tossed it out there as a key feature, earlier, but I wanted to talk a bit more about this. The Project View enables the user to see, either in general terms or in specific detail, all of the subprojects and tasks that are going on under a primary project or projects. The all-inclusive "tree view" display is very convenient for seeing "the big picture" and provides an easy means of checking any aspect of any item that is listed. From this perspective, the Project View is the centerpiece of the Agenda Fusion 7 program.

Odds and Ends
There�s no way to offer a comprehensive analysis of all the things that Agenda Fusion 7 will do, or evaluate how well each function works. Almost as soon as version 7 was released, Developer One identified and corrected several bugs, and the current version is officially version 7.1. I didn�t encounter any bugs, and the only problems that I encountered were likely attributable to my lack of intellect. From a user standpoint, I can anticipate two main criticisms of this product, and I�ll address those, right here.

With many of the Pocket PC devices that people commonly carry, main memory is like gold, and folks would sooner chop of their pinky than give up nearly 4 megs of main memory for a single software package. Developer One does advertise that Agenda Fusion can be installed to main or expansion memory, but they also warn that certain features, such as opening Agenda Fusion with a mapped button, may not work if the program isn�t installed to main memory. In addition to this, I can hear the naysayers grumbling about the $29.95 price tag and rattling off a list free programs that will do "everything they need" and at a small faction of the size. Well, if you only need one or two functions that Agenda Fusion 7 provides, then by all means, download a free copy of whatever program will serve your purposes. You wouldn't likely go out and buy Oracle to create a shopping list, and so it goes that Agenda Fusion 7 is overkill if you only have a minimal amount of data to organize.

Conclusions
Agenda Fusion 7 is a large program, but it�s also a very powerful program, for those who can benefit from the large-scale capabilities that it provides. It requires some patience to learn to use, and then some more time to set up projects and tasks. Once set up, it worked well for items that I was able to set up. Agenda Fusion 7 provides many features and functions that a project manager or supervisor will likely find helpful. But, these features and functionality don�t come without a price. Like most comprehensive software packages, it costs money, and it occupies some space. Be that as it may, it worked fine on my MDA II or O2 XDA II, if you prefer. But this is not a program for the garden-variety, casual-user. Developer One has identified the needs of those who manage people, tasks, and schedules, and they have geared this product toward that market. There�s much power in the code of Agenda Fusion, but there�s a steep learning curve as well. If you need the program, and you�re willing to commit yourself to learning the nuances of its workings, are willing to obligate a few megs of space to this application, and can spare the price, then it�s a wonderful program to have. A free trial of the program is available at Developer One, Handango, and PocketGear. If Agenda Fusion 7 sounds like something you need, then by all means give it a try.

Steve Sharp is a senior system analyst by day, and a freelance writer by night. Steve is 38 years old and a native and life-long resident of Huntsville, Alabama. His first book The Art of Managing Everyday Conflict was released in May, 2004 by Praeger Publishing.
 
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  #2  
Old 04-08-2005, 06:22 PM
sylvangale
Intellectual
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 176

Some problems with the cons of Agenda Fusion:

Cons:

The program's size is considerable, for a Pocket PC application
I would like to know the size of this application vs Pocket Informant. Since any application of this caliber, including Pocket Informant... are of considerable size ops:


The $29.95 price tag for the non-upgrade version is somewhat expensive;
Pocket informant has the same non-upgrade price tag...


Does not have a Today screen plug-in for appointments and tasks;
Neither does Pocket Informant, Pocket Informant's developers suggest using Pocket Breeze... which also supports Agenda Fusion.

Many features, but some are confusing to set up and use.
Not as confusing as Pocket Informant :wink:

Thought I would point out that I am a proud user of Pocket Informant and continue to use Pocket Informant only because of an upgrade discount. :devilboy:
 
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  #3  
Old 04-08-2005, 06:24 PM
Jacob
Pontificator
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 1,162

Quote:
Originally Posted by sylvangale
Some problems with the cons of Agenda Fusion:
Just because the cons of Agenda Fusion are common with PI doesn't mean they aren't cons, it just means they'd show up in the cons in a review of PI as well.
 
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  #4  
Old 04-08-2005, 06:52 PM
Steve Sharp
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Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 46
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Default comparison vs. review

Jacob's point is exactly right. While it's nice and helpful when a reviewer has tne luxury of offering a side-by-side comparison of two competing products, regrettably I did not have this luxury when preparing this review. Please notice that I don't say that Agenda Fuion is better or worse than PI or any other PPC app. I simply annotated my opinions regarding this app., in and of itself. If I saw something that *I* saw as a shortcoming, I listed it without regard for how it compares to something else.

Steve
 
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  #5  
Old 04-08-2005, 06:55 PM
bvkeen
Intellectual
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 172

Quote:
Originally Posted by sylvangale
Some problems with the cons of Agenda Fusion:

Cons:

The program's size is considerable, for a Pocket PC application
I would like to know the size of this application vs Pocket Informant. Since any application of this caliber, including Pocket Informant... are of considerable size


:devilboy:
When you install, the installation package says about 4 MB.
The plus is that all of it can installed to an SD (runs fine from there), which is where I run it. (It is reported that installing to any place but RAM can result in some problems with associating AF with buttons - I haven't encountered because I do not assign AF to any of the buttons).

The only downside I've experienced with it is that it appears to lock up my x50v when I tap the "New" on the Today screen. I really don't use the "New" from the Today screen much, so this has not been a real issue for me.

I own the latest AF and PI and it's always hard to choose between the two. I've finally settled on AF (previously did PI) because I like its views better and because of its project view (which I think has untapped potential, and my understanding is that D1 is working on expanding its usefulness).
 
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  #6  
Old 04-08-2005, 07:22 PM
huangzhinong
Philosopher
Join Date: Jun 2002
Posts: 498

AF lock up devices since verion 3.0 when the today "New" is clicked, esp after AF is uninstalled.

AF 7.0 is good, I like it better than PI. PI 2005 has a terrible interface, but a perfect core. AF 7 can be installed into buildin flash, so size is not a problem for me. The only complaint about af7 is the speed. It's not as fast as buildin outlook. Of course, PI is also slow, comparing with buildin outlook. So 95% time I still use the buildin outlook.
 
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  #7  
Old 04-08-2005, 11:06 PM
sylvangale
Intellectual
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 176

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jacob
Quote:
Originally Posted by sylvangale
Some problems with the cons of Agenda Fusion:
Just because the cons of Agenda Fusion are common with PI doesn't mean they aren't cons, it just means they'd show up in the cons in a review of PI as well.
If the cons that are being applied to Agenda fusion are applicable to all software of it's type then it should not be stated as a con of Agenda Fusion itelf.

I point it out since to me it implies a bias, on a front page article no less, against Agenda fusion and I am sure it would be seen as such to others who frequent this site. I would expect reviews of a higher standard on pocketpcthoughts.

1. Agenda Fusion is of no bigger size than other contact management software, at 4MB, it is quite svelte. The fact that it can be installed completely on a memory card is a plus since competing software cannot be.

2. The $29.95 price is a normal price. It isn't expensive compared to other major contact management software available.

3. None of the other major contact management software provides a today plugin. Why should Agenda Fusion be expected what no one else provides?

4. Agenda Fusion is seen as having better ease of use in setting and many complain that there are not enough confusing options.
 
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  #8  
Old 04-08-2005, 11:22 PM
MerlinAZ
Pupil
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 38

D1 is aware of the "New" button problems.
There are some discussions about it on their forum. Hopefully the next version will take care of it.
 
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  #9  
Old 04-09-2005, 01:11 AM
StarTide
Pupil
Join Date: Oct 2004
Posts: 33

One thing that makes AF very useful to me, is that each view (Week, Month, Agenda...) can be filtered separately. This allows me to track different schedules and tasks simply by changing views.

As far as a Today plugin, I've begun using the AF Today view instead of a Today plugin, and it works quite well.

Startide
 
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  #10  
Old 04-09-2005, 01:29 AM
Anthony Caruana
Sage
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 706

Nice review

I've tried both PI 2005 and AF7 and at the end of using each for a week I went for PI 2005. The biggest thing for me was that PI 2005 was much faster on my device. (I posted on this at my site. If you'e interested see
this post. Also, I'd been a PI user for some time and am just used to the PI way of doing things.

If you're after a good Today plug-in I recommend Calendar+ from Mohair Sofa. Take a look at this site
__________________
Get your Pocket Mojo. Anthony Caruana is the Mojo master.
 
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