Customer Reviews

GMP PLANPLUS 3.0 FOR MICROSOFT ( 29565 )

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

 

 

I have used all 3 versions of Plan Plus for Outlook and this is definitely my favorite. It is great to be able to have the features of the Franklin Day Planner on your PPC. For example, with PPC tasks you simply have a task list; with the plan plus software you can assign a task to a given day, present or future, and give it a priority (A1, A2, B1, B2....). You can also set reminders to notify you when a task is due.

Even more powerful are the desktop components of the software that integrate with MS Outlook. There is a project task list that manages tasks by project (a sheet for each project with tasks and sub-tasks and sub-sub-tasks, etc.). Project tasks that are assigned specific days are automatically copied into the daily task list or existing daily tasks can be assigned to the project tasks. The project task and the daily task are then linked, and when one is checked off the other is checked off too. As a general contractor, I really like this feature because I can focus on everything I need to get done today by looking in the daily tasks or I can focus on everything necessary to get a particular job done by looking in the project tasks page, and like I said, when I mark a task as complete in one place it is checked off in the other place also.

The "weekly planning" and "coach me" features do more to help me be productive than I ever imagined It starts with determining what is most important and planning that first and then filling in the remaining time with everything else you need to get done. Determining what is most important is done by reviewing your goals for the week and your core values (part of the "coach me" feature). And the whole thing is interactive - once you go through the weekly planning section in outlook (4 steps - 20 minutes total) your week is planned and you can sync it to your PPC. The "coach me" feature has wizards to help you determine your core values (or rather, help you get them out of your head and into a format you can use), your mission statement, your goals and many other useful things. I feel like I am attending an expensive self-motivation seminar when I use them.

One final thing I really like about the software is the PlanPlus Home page. This is the page where outlook starts once you have installed the software. This page allows you to see your calendar (1, 5, 7, or 31-day view), prioritized daily task list (or master tasks, or project tasks), daily notes, and inbox all in one view. All the other pages in outlook are still available, but the ones you use most are all on one page. I can't say enough about the layout of this page. It makes outlook so user friendly and effective. As you click on a day (on a small monthly calendar that is also shown on the page) the calendar, daily notes, and prioritized daily task list all go to this day. I can barely use outlook in its standard mode anymore.

I will say that I have had technical difficulties in the past, but they seem to be resolved with this version. I will make one note: if you are installing an upgrade version I suggest completely uninstalling the original. I installed mine over my v2.0 and had many of the same old problems (active sync always conflicting with the plan plus software, slow outlook startup, etc.). Then I uninstalled everything and only loaded 3.0 and it works like a charm! I had to get a product key for v3.0 to do this (to go along with the one for v2.0) but was given this over the phone in a couple minutes. And the online chat support is great (I recommend this to the guy who was having so much phone support problems.) It's on their website and that is where support for electronic media is directed. I used it once had had my rather difficult problem solved in 10 minutes.

If you really want to get control of how you use your time and become more productive, I highly recommend this software to you.

I purchased PlanPlus 3.0 in September 2004 and was unable to get my Palm's Task List to sync with Outlook. I was told by Franklin Covey techical support that there's a known issue with the HotSync conduits for v3.0 and Windows 2000, so I followed their instructions and installed the Palm OS software for PlanPlus 2.0 so I could sync. This worked fine, though I don't understand why they couldn't post this information on their Web site's Knowledgebase.

Fast forward six months later. The software worked fine, and then I had to reinstall due to an unrelated computer issue. I see that the fix I was given months ago is still not posted to the Knowledgebase, so I hvae been going in circles with Franklin Covey's email support. They provided me a download link to the trial version of PlanPlus 2.0, but that no longer does the job. I'm ready to call FC's $19.95/hour phone support and demand they help me without charge.

Bottom line is Franklin Covey is NOT a software company. I wasted an entire day and a half getting set up the first time around, and now I've wasted another 2 days and I stil can't sync my Task List. The software is great once you get it up and running, but expect a lot of headaches to get to that point.

I have gone through version 1, 2, and now version 3, hoping that FC will finally get a stable product. I finally gave up, like I did with Version 2. Tech support worked with me and had a good attitude, but they finally threw their arms up and said we will research the problems. This is the same response that they had with Version 2. No one ever contacted me with the results of their "research". They refused to refund my $ because of the time since purchase. I should have asked for a refund at the first sign of problems. I reinstalled FC PP, MS Outlook, set a new profile, reinstalled my entire operating system from scratch - all to no avail. Some modules never worked. Others would crash. Outlook frequently disabled PP because of problems. I like the Covey approach to life prioritization, and I like the ability to apply the Covey approach in Outlook, but the motivation is being productive, not trying to work with buggy software. I will definitely skip a version or 2 before I think about giving it another try. Maybe someone else will come up with a package that incorporates some of the same ideas. My advice is to stay away from this package until Franklin Covey and its contract programmers can figure out how to get the bugs out.

Like many others, I too am a Franklin user. I started with PlanPlus 1.0, and while it did work, I found that the 2.0.2 release of PlanPlus was reasonably stable.

For Pocket PC users, there seem to be no synchronization problems with the Version 3.0 and 4.0--not so for PalmOS.

Bottom line, Franklin has yet to fix palm synchronization errors with Version 3.0 and 4.0. If you've got a palm, buy V2.0 to get the license, and install the 2.0.2 trial version and register it with the 2.0 license code (the 3.0 license code does NOT work with V2.0).

With Version 3.0 and PalmOS, you can synchronize a new Daily Record entry exactly once from the Palm handheld to the desktop. After that, you can modify the Daily record entry on the desktop, and it will sync down, but only when there is NO existing record on the desktop will it sync from hand held up to the desktop.

The task lists (daily and master) present their own problems in version 3.0. Early on (mostly fixed...mostly), if you modified a task by moving it to a different day, or to or from the master task list, it would start duplicating on the palm until you deleted all of the copies on the palm, and all but one copy on the desktop, then the synchronization from the desktop down to the palm would occasionally work. A remaining issue (not fixed in build 778) is disappearing tasks. The synchronization program strips out one of the two dates that Outlook uses, start date and due date (due date remains if I remember), but not both when a task is moved from a daily list to the master list. Thus, if the due date remains, but the Start date is blank, the task will disappear in the daily and weekly planning views. You can find it by looking directly at the Outlook tasks folder, but spotting the missing record is tricky. The preceeding anomalies apply to version 3.0, your mileage may vary.

My suggestion is buy an old license for version 2.0 and stick with that.

A tip on getting V2.0 to synchronize reliably: If the sync seems to be stuck, bring up the Windows task manager (control-alt-delete) and tell it to switch to the "hot sync" program. This will usually break the race condition that has the sync stuck. Sometimes, all that you need to do is bring up the task manager, and the sync will resume.

Another Daily Record observation: sometimes, if you modify the Daily Record entries on the desktop, your bullets will be converted to asterisks when you sync. It's non-fatal, but it's not pretty.

If your Exchange server is heavily loaded, and synchronization is taking a long time, set your outlook folders for "off-line access" (lookup "ost" in the Microsoft Help for details). Then, exit Outlook and let it do it's "send/receive" step. Unplug yourself from the network, restart Outlook in "off-line" mode, and then perform your hot sync to your palm. For overloaded Exchange servers, this can reduce your sync time from 10 minutes to about 1-2 minutes.

Also, don't count on preserving your data for the Daily Records when you upgrade or down grade. It's best to just print them out, or capture them one day at a time into the palm note application and put them back after you upgrade.

If your task list becomes confused, set your hot sync to have the desktop overwrite the palm and sync. This will probably set all of the tasks on the Palm to "unfilled", then adjust the hot sync setting back to "synchronize" and hot sync again. The second sync will push back down the categories list into the Palm, and update the tasks, setting the tasks back to the categories listed on the desktop.

For Franklin Planning Software Users, the "What Matters Most" items (roles, compass, mission & values) do not sync to the Palm.

If you can find an old version of PlanPlus 1.0, there was a calendar application which replaced the standard Palm calendar and was able to read the Task list rather than the "to-do" list data in the original palm database. It will work with the Version 2 Palm software, but it's difficult to find. It did have some unusual behavior, and was not very consistent about which category it would display by default on the combined day and task view, but I do miss that app.

For Palm, use V2.0.2... sad, I know.

Compared to using Outlook natively, or other productivity plug-ins (Getting Things Done or Clear Context), PlanPlus for Outlook 3.0 offers the best productivity features I've seen. The best feature is simply the ability to see your daily tasks next to your daily calendar in one view and the ability to prioritize these tasks within groups and assign relative priority as new tasks are added or deleted. Another great features is the Goals/Intermediate Tasks in the Weekly Planner which is great for creating high level goals, then breaking those goals down into achievable tasks that you can accomplish on a daily basis and schedule on your calendar or delegate to others. One bug with this is that the tasks on your calendar do not keep in sync with the tasks in your Weekly Planner (the Weekly Planner tasks should be Marked Complete when you mark the corresponding task complete and the due date should be updated when you update the due date on the task, and this should cause the overall due date for the goal to slip as well). Another functional shortcoming is the auto-ranking of tasks. It only works if you move a task (so if you have task A1, A2, and A3, moving A3 before A1 changes it to A1, and the others automatically renumber). However, if you add or delete a task, they don't automatically renumber unless you move one of the tasks and move it back. This just is annoying and makes no sense why they did it this way. Two other promising features are the PowerNotes and Project list, but I'm not sure why they don't integrate with Microsoft One Note and Project respectively since these are common office productivity tools commonly used in enterprises. For example, the ability to enter a detailed project plan and then schedule or assign individual tasks is very powerful, but the fact that you have to enter the project plan manually in PlanPlus makes no sense. Why not be able to at least import a MS Project file? And PowerNotes is incredibly powerful since you can take notes, even using digital ink on tablet PCs, and store web pages, or any other documents all in one place, but why not use MS Word or One Note as the document format rather than the proprietary PlanPlus format? It seems like the product team should focus on adding productivity features to existing Microsoft Office software rather than try and create competing inferior and incompatible products.

Nasty stuff. I could never even install it completely, and now it won't uninstall completely. Customer service at Franklin Covey was unable to help, and didn't really seem to care. This is garbage software, don't even think about buying it.

GMP/FranklinCovey PlanPlus for Microsoft Outlook 3.0 works as promised. However, there were minor problems and annoyances that got me to uninstall the software. For example, the software relies heavily on the .NET framework, and this often caused lockups that required Outlook to be restarted. I liked the single view of my calendar, e-mail, tasks, and notes, but the interface needs updating to provide the look, feel, and funtionality of Outlook 2003. It was obviously designed around Outlook 2000 & 2002/XP, and therefore didn't harness some of the features of Outlook 2003. Overall, it was an average product that I give 3 stars.

Plan Plus is GREAT software IF your default browser is IE- if you use Firefox- it's NOT compatible- I've been bugging them for 4 years, to make it compatible but it's not their priority. Unfortunately, many of my clients/software use firefox, and so am unable to use. SOOOOO disappointed!

Sorry about this because I use the Franklin Covey system -- tha planning product is a mess. WAY too complex and not flexible at all.

I used to use and rely on a Franklin binder many years ago then tried their old pda software years before before planplus. The old software didn't work out and I gave up.

I've recently became involved with a lot new projects so I needed something like my old franklin for my ipaq and desktop outlook, and based on the planplus positive reviews gave it a shot. All I can say is WOW.

The ability to organize and priortize daily work through the awesome task list functionality is worth triple the cost of this software. Not only can you priortize and easily move tasks around, but you can create a master list and then assign tasks to a certain date. At first, I didn't like this but as you use it, it gives such peace of mind as you know what has to be done on that day, by looking at that day.

I recently started using the project planning functionality. It's easy to use and an excellent brainstorm board for what has to happen to complete a project. You then priortize it out and add it to your ask list, while being able to review the project through a separate page. It also has the daily notes section which is something I missed from my old Franklin Binder. There's also a lot of coaching and training material so you don't need to remember it all; you just walk through one of the training pieces to get back up to speed.

If you miss your old Franklin binder, but use Outlook and/or a PDA then I recommend this. I have version 3.0 so I don't know about the earlier versions. I'm blown away by the usefulness of this software.

REVISION - DOESN'T WORK WITH FIREFOX
If you have Firefox as your default browser, then this won't work until you change it over to Internet Explorer which I think is just plain wrong for whatever reason. So now I have to go through the hassle of popping up my yahoo mail into IE but then use Firefox the rest of the time just because of this "glitch" or requirement. I would give it 2 stars because of this problem/hassle. Seems the company could easily have had this requirement removed. Bogus.