The first time I tried Daylite.app for Mac it seemed too complex to me: I thought that it was surely very useful for teams of 20-30 people and more, but to me, a single blogger without any sort of team, it was just too stuff in one single window. Then, one of my Twitter followers said “What? You don’t use Daylite? Go try it!” and I decided that it should get another chance.
It was worth of it.
Daylite is a business productivity manager designed to help you manage you business, either if you are a single or a team. It has got features like Projects, Calendars, Tasks, Notes and Contacts: basically, everything you would ever need to organize your business “the Mac way”.
Getting Things Done with Daylite
“Say hello to GTD on the Mac.Daylite’s real productivity power is in its flexibility.”
The first time you run Daylite you will be asked to input a Database name and to choose between many Templates: from Real Estate to Sales there’s a large selection of options which should fit to every kind of need. Personally, I’ve chosen General Template, which is the best if you don’t want to select a specific category.
Daylite can handle tax requirements as well, so that you could set your VAT rate for future invoices management.
Calendars
Calendars, the first thing you’ll notice, is nothing but a more organized iCal: you can display your events either by day (if you have many appointments) or by week and month: this last one is very brief and informative, giving you a quick glimpse of all your monthly tasks. To add a new appointment you have to double click on the the day you want, then you’ll be able to enter many additional details such as starting / ending time, category and owner; moreover, you can link appointments to something / someone else (Projects, Contacts) or set reminders and repeats.
Once you’ve entered your appointments, you can check them in Appointments menu, which gives you, without the need of double-clicking, a list-view of them together with all the additional stuff you wrote before.
Keeping Track of Multiple Projects
The main feature of Daylite, anyway, is Projects: by starting a new Project you can assign a starting and estimated time, pick up a Category and choose an Owner as well; moreover, you can link to it tasks,appointments and notes, meaning that you can organize your business in a complete way.
You can sort your Projects with Smart Lists: choosing one or more criteria such as Category or Owner, all of your projects will be divided in “albums” to better understand and collect them. Amongst all the things you can do with a new Project, “Link” is, without a doubt, the coolest and the most useful: you can link a task, an appointment or even a contact to a Project, meaning that you can sort the already sorted.
Great.
Daylite’s email integration works in Apple Mail: when you receive an email from a contact, Daylite automatically finds any related open projects and presents them to you. With a single click you can review the whole project - including tasks, meetings, files and more. You can select some text, create linked tasks or appointments and optionally delegate the activity to another Daylite user.
The Interface
From a user interface standpoint, Daylite is a great example of Cocoa applied to business software: everything is clear and simple,with some nice icons that helps you in understanding exactly what you are doing (just take a look at Calendars or Appointments icons) and a well structured sidebar to sort your activities.
Overall, Daylite is a great piece of software, very useful either if you are a freelancer and you need to better organize your stuff or if you have a team.
You can try Daylite with no limitations for 30 days or purchase a single license.
Links:
