Customer Reviews

Planplus 4.0 for Windows Xp Franklin Covey Win Xp

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

I have always been impressed by the nice feature set of the Franklin Covey products, and Covey's methodology seems pretty solid in general, but their software engineering appears to be among the worst in the industry overall. Version after version, this product has had not just serious but fatal bugs and flaws that make it nearly unusable for many of us. Their support is also terrible in general. I get a quick response in barely understandable grammar with an obvious and marginally useful answer, and then they simply ignore followups asking for further clarification. I cannot recommend Franklin Covey software in general.

Many problems I had with previous versions had to do with their confusing and weak implementation of the synchronization with Palm handhelds. FC made the mistake of creating their own version of Palm lists, so you ended up with multiple incarnations of tasks, events, and so on, and it was almost impossible to configure the synch properly to avoid duplicate items or missing tasks.

V4 of PlanPlus for XP thankfully fixed the synch problem, by simply eliminating it. They no longer synch directly to Palm, they only synch to Outlook, and then you would synch between Outlook and Palm. This is a good thing, in my opinion, making the synch much simpler and more reliable.

On the other hand, the new version introduces a whole set of new problems that are even worse. They keep their "database" in the My Documents folder, which means that if you use this on a tablet or laptop connected to a network you may be using it with Microsoft's IntelliSynch feature. That's bad because of the poor engineering of FC's database and lack of integrity or repair tools. When Intellisynch synchronizes your laptop and network versions of the database, it tends to corrupt the FC database, making the product unusable. There are no real repair tools and the instructions given by tech support are a jumbled mess of file copies that generally don't seem to solve the problem. After managing to reinstall the product about four times for this problem and recreate my database from scratch each time, I have decided sadly to give up. The features aren't worth this pain.

If you are going to rely on a database for managing tasks and events and notes, it needs to be a reliable database with good tools for repairing it in case of corruption. The software engineers at FC never even imagined their database could be corrupted, since their tech notes imply that apparent corruption is always due to a registry protection problem. I verified that this simply isn't true, and they have been extremely unresponsive in fixing any of the bugs and flaws in the product that have been discovered by myself and others.

I am not happy to have to give up on this product, since there are no real competitors with wuite the same feature set for the tablet PC. However it is unfortunately not usable because of the corruption issues, and it is also frustratingly slow to start up and has significant delays during use even on a very fast tablet PC. I have had to go back to Outlook, Office, and One Note, which don't have the nice integration of digital ink yet, but at least they are very reliable and perform well.

As one of the earliest users of Ascend 1.0 (the original name), since 1990, I have upgraded through the years to 8.1. Each version got a little better. I never used it on the Palm (which seems to have been a problem), but it worked great on the desktop. I had to reinstall Windows and my 8.1 disk were in storage (moving) so I used it as an excuse to purchase PlanPlus 4.1.

I was shocked! It doesn't even work the same way anymore. Following are some of the problems:

- The prioritized task list used to have a quick wizard that I used every day (it is gone). This was the SINGLE greatest feature. The product manager should get fired.

- The task list does not follow windows conventions--it doesn't let you know if you are in the correct field so it erases your entry.

- There are no longer reoccuring task (so much for scheduling my weekly items in advance (regular deliverabls, monthly reports, etc.). The reoccuring setup was very slick--gone, gone, gone.

- There are no reoccuring appointments (all birthdays, regular meetings, deadlines cannot be automatically scheduled). What were they thinking? I noticed a release for 5.0 that added this back--but it still isn't on their website (and it would need more than just this).

- The entire goal section is messed up (it will not allow you to carry your goals into your daily appointments automatically--can't, doesn't have reoccuring tasks).

- The print qualify is junk (lines too thick, doesn't look nice)

- It does not default to the last screen you were on when you re-enter it--it always goes to the calendar, even though I want it to go to the daily task list.

- You can't find an icon on the top for the "task list"--only for "notes" (which brings up the task list (go figure)).

- If you double click on a task (to enter edit mode (like normal), it takes the task and moves it to the 12:00 appointment slot (huh?).

- The program allows drag and drop, which is good. Except if I want to drop a task to the appointment, it only means that I am scheduling when I want to do it. Instead, it MOVES it, when it should have the option to copy it (so I can still mark it off my task list).

It looks like the XP version has 1/2 the features of the 8.1 version (and it is up to 4.1/5.0?). I find it unusuable and an absolute piece of JUNK! And I mean J U N K!

I don't know the history, but it appears they re-wrote it (probably to fix the synch problems) and completely messed up an incredible application.

I have since returned my copy and purchased a used copy of 8.1 off ebay (since mine is in storage in one of 350+ boxes). I hope this poor review warns everyone to stay the heck away from this until they re-create what they had before (even 1.0 was better than this) and then improve the bugs and synch problems.

The companies revenues have dropped steadily (from $500 million to $255 million). The annual report claims much of the loss is because of less sales of their electronic products. Yeh... junk doesn't sell!

I did notice that the print option was easier to use (required 2 clicks instead of 4 (but even then, the button should just print whatever is on the screen--you can go to the pull down print to find other options).

BEWARE of this junk!!!

Signed - massive POWER user who thought the application went to the dogs!

Egads, I am so stupid. I read reviews for some other Franklin Covey software. Hmmm... 41 reviews and only 1 star. Oh well, I thought to myself, this is new stuff. They must know what they are doing by now!

I have lost information and about a FULL WEEK of waking hours trying to get the palm to syncronize. A few hard resets of the Palm have cost me my contacts (not good on a 'smartphone', a wiped out Task List on my Palm (gee, why did I get this stuff?), and more.

There is NO CUSTOMER SUPPORT. I tried the software free for 31 days. Should have listened to the voice that said 'it hasn't worked for 48 consecutive hours- give it up!'. Instead, I believed the tech support guy who assured me these last voodoo steps would work. They did- for 48 hours.

All my data was on FC software, and this just looked so good. It isn't. I am thinking of going to Salt Lake City just to scream at these people live- since it costs $25 to talk on the phone, and 'chat support' is only available during business hours. (Rude ideas about sharpening saws not come to mind).

All I can say is RUN AWAY!!! Do not be lured by the siren call of the software- LOOK AT THE SHIP REMAINS DASHED ON THE SHORE AND KEEP SAILING!

I've been using Franklin Planner software since the earliest version came out. I have upgraded just about every 2 years, with little or no problems transferring current data. This new version of PlanPlus for XP, however, is a nightmare! I used the trial version just for a few days to see if I could get it to work, and the unbelievable thing was that the transfer of data from the older version took over 14 hours! I tried it on one of my other PCs because when I used it on my primary one, it virtually hung up and took over the other version, even though I tried to install it in a different directory. I ended up having to reinstall my original 2-year-old version of PlanPlus on my main machine. On my second PC, the process of converting data took so long that I finally gave up. I tried to provide feedback to Franklin Covey about the problem, and each time their feedback site lost my review and went to a page not found error. I e-mailed Tech Support directly, and while I received a courteous reply, they forwarded me again to the feedback site, which was a waste of time because the same error occurred. I'm waiting until these folks IMPROVE the product before I upgrade again. Take my advice and steer clear of the newest version!

The long and short of it is that this product is not a full version. It is a barley a beta. So many bugs, so many simple, obvious features missing, so many problems.

Problems? There are many.

- Let's start with the install. A nightmare. I was required to uninstall Outlook and reinstall it before Plan Plus would recognize it. That is bad enough. The fact that the previous version had the same problem gave me pause that maybe they had not cleaned this program up. As I found out, they had not.

- Bugs. Lots of 'em. A short sample includes the program crashing when attempting to customize the Plan Plus Home Page, numerous blank tasks appearing out of nowhere, crashes when adding a task, Outlook periodically freezing or taking half a minute to refresh a screen, etc, etc, etc. If there was any QC done prior to release, that entire department needs to be fired.

- Missing features. Lots of 'em. I'm not asking for anything special. How about dragging and dropping tasks or other items. How about changing fonts and font sizes, how about forwarding goals, how about tasks and subtask in projects that know what project they belong to instead of just dropping another task onto the task list, how about not making me retype my compass every week, how about a manual that actually covers how to use the product in a logical fashion and is not 200 pages of quotes and motivational articles written by Covey? I could go on and on and on.

- Customer support problems? Lots of 'em. If you have a problem, do yourself a favor and do not call Franklin Covey. Nothing is their fault. The software is perfect. Zero defects. Anything that goes wrong is the users fault.

It is very disappointing. I have used a Franklin Planner for over 20 years and love the product. This program, however, is a mess. It has so much potential. But, potential means nothing with so many bugs and features missing. It simply was not thought through. Perhaps Covey should stick to what they know, pen and paper.

I used the Treo650 with PlanPlus, but it can not sync the "Task" with Palm. FranklinCovey only announced this is a bug, but there is still no solution until now. Please notice this bug before you purchased this SW.

I really like the approach to planning and prioritizing that Franklincovey have embedded in their planplus for Outlook. Unfortunately, this software is completely unusable if your goal is to be productive. I'm running outlook 2007 and Vista Ultimate, and planplus crashes almost every time I look at the calendar, or if I add a task. Sometimes I wait it out and occassionally 10 min later outlook unfreezes.

Don't waste hours of you life with this poorly developed and horribly tested application - it is the #1 "loss of productivity" solution. In Covey-speak, this is a quadrant 4 activity - not urgent and not important. Don't waste your time trying this out just to come to the same conclusion.

First review I have ever posted. I have used PlanPlus for Outlook for years, prior versions were a little buggy and I just made do without synching the Covey data to my Palms over the years. So I thought the new version 4.0 would fix all this. After 6 hours of work on my part, I have given up and reverted to version 3.0. Version 4.0 is so full of bugs that you are constantly interrupted with weird error messages, and it seems to make a worse hash of synching to Palm devices than the previous ones. It is hard to beleive that a reputable firm like FC would release this, and even worse, once you look at how long people have been criticizing the product on various web sites, even more amazing that they haven't bothered to release an amended version.

As a fan of Stephen Covey and the Franklin Planner, but an avid laptop user, I thought this product would be great. What it was was a nightmare that finally resulted in my computer crashing, all my data being lost, and a rather rude Covey employee informing me that this can happen, and they do not have a fix for it, and cannot refund my money. They then eagerly told me to purchase a different version of their product (which they gave me a discount on), and he gave me his assurance that this version was more stable (the Outlook add in version). This version wiped out years of history and corrupted the files in my Outlook. Upon calling Franklin Covey again, I was told that if I had experienced so many problems with the orgininal version, why had I gone and purchased another one. Needless to say, I am putting "First things first" and practicing one of the "7 habits of ripped off consumers", and using my First Amendment rights to try and prevent others from being bamboozled by a company that has released a product for standard consumption without testing, and without a plan to back up a failed product. Do not buy this product.

This software is a mess. It couldn't have possible been tested. The software crashes constantly and has to be re-installed (including going through a RESEDIT procedure). The crashes come constantly when doing the most mundane things like adding a task to a project --- useless software, stay away.