Customer Reviews

FranklinCovey PlanPlus For Microsoft Outlook 2.0

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

I have always been a Covey fan but the vendor who designed this is clueless.

Per tech support (useless) I have installed and uninstalled Plan Plus, Outlook 2002, Outlook 2003, Office XP and Office 2003 over and over for ten days. After each uninstall I had to scrub the system registry. Each time Plan Plus would develop new bugs and crashes every ten minutes or so.

The Pocket PC interface is minimal and tech support is by on-line chat that won't accept sentences of any length so you can't really communicate very well. Forget about cutting and pasting the long error messages generated. The techs handle every question with the same set of useless answers, I'd swear it is some automated software program.

The old version took a number of installations in order to get it working, unfortunately 2.0 is even worse.

To Covey Execs, find a new software developer.

I have never written a review of a software product before. I felt compelled to write one about FranklinCovey's PlanPlus For Microsoft Outlook 2.0 because I hope to that it will dissuade people from wasting money on this product.

Until I bought this product, I had no beef with the company FranklinCovey. I have been using their paper planner for the last 6 years. I had hoped that PlanPlus would simplify my life by allowing me to use planning tools while in Outlook. In reality, I have had nothing but trouble with the nearly impossible installation, the buggy product, and the infuriating tech support.

It started when I tried to install the product on my laptop. I worked with their tech support online (they charge if you want to actually speak with someone). I went through quite a few tech support people, many of whom seemed to repeat the same mantra of "uninstall/reinstall" which I did countless times. I really had to push them to get them to help me. When they were stumped and they said they would research the issue and get back to me and of course they never did. Eventually I got someone online and I would not let them go until we resolved the installation problem. After 5 days of working at this, it was finally installed. To my horror, it slowed down outlook so significantly that I decided to uninstall it.

Around the same time I was dealing with problems with the install on my laptop, I was trying to also install this on my desktop PC. I worked with tech support for about 3 weeks off and on. Again, they were stumped. They kept repeating the phrase, "We will get back to you at the earliest." I never heard back from them. Now I wonder what they meant. Was it the earliest ice age? The earliest millenium? They kind of left it open for interpretation. It's been several months now and I have wasted so much time on this. I was never able to install the product, I kept getting an error message and the installation would stop.

I can't return the product because they don't accept returns on software if it has been opened. All I can do at this point is vow never to buy another FranklinCovey product again and encourage others to reconsider their plans to purchase this product. If you are a diehard Franklin Planner user, like I was, I would recommend that you stick with the paper planner - it's far less buggy and you won't have to deal with an indifferent tech support that will "get back to you at the earliest."

I'd wait to buy this until they come out with version five or so. By then, the bugs might be gone. As it is now, I'm using Outlook 2002 on a Windows XP 3ghz machine with 1gb of RAM, and it takes me 34 seconds to load Outlook (time for the splash screen to go away). Occasionally it will tell me it had to disable PlanPlus on startup as well. The memory usage (if you leave it open all the time like I do) is high as well, although I don't notice it much, having such a leet box (translation: fast computer).

I do give them 2 stars instead of 1 because it's pretty. I decided to use it based on screenshots alone. Outlook 2002 on its own is really dull, especially after you've looked at it daily for years. The extras (like the Compass, Mission/Values, and Goals) are very similar to their planner kits' first few pages. So if you liked those, I'm sure you'll enjoy the extras on PlanPlus.

I installed the trial version, downloaded from the franklincovey website. It crashed twice during install, and now MS Outlook takes several minutes (yes MINUTES) to launch. I tried to uninstall this piece of crap, but it will not uninstall.

Do not pay money for this product!

I wouldn't risk it based on the reviews here. The first version ruined my Exchange profile - now I can't have tasks in Outlook -EVER. FC Support is worthless. So ironic that a company that puts so much emphasis on integrity and excellence put out such an incredibly shoddy product. I'm sorry - I can't trust a company that would release such an incredibly bad product.

I love this software add on for Outlook, in fact I had the older version which worked pretty good.
I bought version 2.0 and noticed some good changes, however a couple of weeks after I installed it I started to have some problems with syncronizing. The sync would hang and I would could not just cancel the sync, I had to kill the Hotsync program and re-boot the Palm (Tungsten E). I also had a problem where when I would sync w/o Outlook open, I would get an error. If Outlook was open, the error would not occur. For this problem the tech support had me clear out the "add-in's" (there apparntly was an improper add-in installed with Plan Plus).
My other problem tech support provided me a work around... well the work around works, but I have to perform this work around 2-3 times a week. I have installed the online updates, and there is still something buggy with this, but Franklin tech support will not admit to it.
I would wait until Franklin fix's their prolems... post complaints to the customer service.

I downloaded the 30 day trial of the previous version and found it to be quite useful. I later purchased 2.0 and am very disappointed with it. It has slowed down Outlook considerably - I have a P4 2Ghz with 1 GB memory and it's slow! There are also many bugs associated with reading email. It sometimes returns to inbox after reading a message, other times it pulls up the next message. It does not let you mark a message as unread. Sometimes when using the scroll bar it will pop up a an email message randomly???

I am running PlanPlus on a 10 month old Gateway 450 laptop. XP is my operating system. Accordingly, I think my computer, while not brand new, ought to be able to accomodate the general office tasks I ask it to perform.

Plun Plus has a nice interface-- I like having all the outlook features in front of me and it's relatively easy to use the FranklinCovey tools. That said, it takes forever to load Outlook now and probably every third time I open an email box, I get 90 seconds of the hourglass. The irony is stark: this tool that promises increased productivity has become a barrier to that objective. I wish I had paid attention to the 30-day try-out period, because I would have sent it back. Wish I had bought it on Amazon, too, because I would have payed considerably less.

Buyer beware! Do not buy PlanPlus 2.x! Do not even install the trial! It does not work as advertised and will not uninstall without damaging your OS & Office apps. Avoid this product and save yourself many days in lost productivity.

In 2003, I purchased and installed PlanPlus 1.0, which immediately malfunctioned, wasting many days of my time getting it to work half as well as advertised. Tried to contact Tech Support & Customer Service many times. Simplistic answers were offered, or my requests were ignored. I had to trouble-shoot the problems myself. It never worked as advertised. Benefits just outweighed costs ($, time).

In 2004, I purchased and installed PlanPlus 2.0, which promised to address the known problems (yes, they finally admitted it). The program displayed all of the problems outlined in other comments plus a host of others (have a look at the FranklinCovey PlanPlus product support page for a list of the 'problems' they fixed since releasing v2.0 to an unsuspecting public). What else is lurking as yet undiscovered/unfixed? Once again Tech Support & Customer Service were unresponsive and after many months of badgering for a refund, I finally got one. I should have known better than to trust FranklinCovey again.

Do not reward FranklinCovey for their actions. Take your hard earned cash elsewhere!

I had used Franklin Covey paper planners for years, and loved them, so naturally when I transitioned to a Pocket PC and Outlook, I chose them. What a big mistake. I had to uninstall and reinstall many times, and problems were never resolved. Tasks never synched properly, views of the Calendar didn't work properly, and to make matters worse, their tech. support staff expected me to spend my time on chat support groups to figure out how to make their product work. I refused, and asked for a refund, which they denied. Don't make the mistake that I did, there are other, cheaper products out there that actually do what they are supposed to do.