HCL Notes vs. Projector PSA vs. Todoist

I often work with teams from other country and regions, hence HCL Notes is a very useful platform for internal company management operations. It standardized organisational work standards in most of the offices worldwide. HCL Notes also enables chat with other team around the world that I find very helpful when initiating conversation or just want to have a quick update rather than sending emails and waiting for replies. However, HCL Notes is not very efficient in web browsing and user still need to use other internet service providers.

Incentivized

We think Projector PSA is a great tool to track and manage people in a professional service environment like management consulting. This system is easy to set up, easy to understand and should easily suit the needs of smaller and medium sized firms. It may be less appropriate for firms that rely very heavily on project management through another system (like MS Project) or firms that rely very heavily on a sales pipeline tracking system. While still very much possible to use, you would (I believe) have to do some re-keying between systems

There have been lots of times when we need to add a new habit into our daily work routines, and having the option to do so in the To-Doist app on the very first screen is incredibly helpful. It's a good reminder, and I believe that professionals who truly appreciate and properly value the implementation of good habits would be very grateful for this feature. It's also a time saver because you don't have to manually type it in every day/week / etc.

Incentivized

• It has a really strong and robust database that's extremely scalable and holds up well to thousands of users and many different environments.
• It has a really good enterprise-grade framework for development custom database applications
• All of the custom database applications along with the email all have a nice uniform look and feel so their easy-to-use.
• I really like how it's developed and supported on every client OS (Windows, OSX, Linux)! The competitors definitely do NOT offer this (M$).

Incentivized

• Projector is a very well designed tool for project management. It has allowed us to eliminate a number of auxiliary tools for project timelines and WBS for the vast majority of our projects.
• Time and expense entry is intuitive and quick for our staff.
• Our forecasting and resource management capability has improved greatly with Projector and allows us to grow our team efficiently with minimal additional administrative burden.
• Reporting is extremely robust. It does require some time to really get a handle on the full functionality of the reporting tool, but once you do, you can get almost any kind of report you want out of the system!

• Free plan offers two viewing options and 4 color themes; paid plans offer more
• Can integrate with Google Calendar, IFTTT, and Zapier apps
• Viewing format is pretty uncomplicated, including sidebar, easy on the eyes
• Importable and exportable data, emails
• Optional beta testing opportunities (can opt in/opt out at any time)

Incentivized

• Notes' backwards compatibility sometimes gets in the way. Menus are cluttered with extraneous, outdated options and features that modern users will never use, and Preferences are often difficult to navigate for those coming from Gmail or Outlook. We have greatly simplified this via Policies, but users still find it daunting to go through all the options that are available.
• The IBM Notes client for Windows & Mac is essentially the Eclipse Java development platform...so it is HUGE. Performance initially was very slow but IBM has done a good job of speeding things up. As IBM moves more toward cloud-delivered applications, this will not be as much of a problem.
• Notes and Domino can be complex to manage for administrators who are more accustomed to ActiveDirectory, Group Policy, etc. Editing a notes.ini file to add a feature, or working with XML files by hand to create a SmartUpgrade kit can be daunting to those coming from more modern administrative roles.
• Some users claim to "hate" Notes mail. While I have heard this less and less over the past 10 years, we have had 3rd party software offer plugins to Outlook and it's rare to see any for Notes.
• The client update process should be automated more. I would like to see the Notes client update quietly and quickly more like an Adobe software update. If an update fails it should automatically try again without prompting the user over and over.
• Notes multiple language spell checking is a downloaded add-on Java-based resource that has to be deployed in a convoluted way that is difficult for users to grasp. Therefore any foreign language spell check updates must be done individually per Notes client by IT, which is unfortunate. I would prefer to see that be a "live download" update option for users to get directly from IBM (don't make me download it and put it on my network).

• Release management process needs to be improved. Currently no facility is provided to test the impact of new releases in a sand-box. This introduces business risk if there are interfaces into Projector PSA as part of it's use in the business.

• The Todoist application now works almost identically across all platforms. There is a minor improvement that I would like to see on iOS and that is the ability to show task count by custom filter.
• In Board view, I want to be able to easily add sub-tasks to a parent task.
• Besides those two minor improvements, I am extremely happy with the application.

Incentivized

I've been in IT business and as a Programmer/Developer for 20+ years with too many programming languages experiences/back ground (C/C++/Visual Basic/Basic Program/Unix/COBOL/Java). Also with 18+ years with Lotus Notes/IBM Domino, I am still and always think Lotus Notes is the best RAD platform available!. When the time where resource is very limited and the expectation is very high and the turn around is too short, IBM Domino/Notes is the platform to use and it's the only choice available.

We have been using this tool for a year now and find our use of it continually evolves and broadens. We are also very excited about the overhaul that's under way and feel many of the improvements being put in place will help make us that much more effective and efficient. The Projector team is also very responsive and collaborative in terms of user feedback and improvement suggestions, which helps us know they will work hard to help us get what we need out of the tool.

Easy to use for the user, most of the apps we developed, there is not much need for user training. Most of the times, we just do a demo to the users group and they can pick up from there.

Desktop interface feels complex to new users.

Excellent features and concept, simple implementation, but the software is not very clear in training new users and communicating features. The occasional unexplained crash or freeze is not handled gracefully by the desktop software, requiring either the user or tech support to manually restart.

Incentivized

In 5 years of use we have never experienced an unscheduled outage.

I've been using the production for a very long time and very happy with it. Also, all the online resources and forums for notes is very friendly and easy/quick for getting help. I found out that compared to Microsoft or Oracle or any other platforms, IBM Notes online forum is the best I have seen.

I've used Todoist for about three years now and I haven't needed to contact support, which I'm considering a 10 out of 10. Honestly, their platform is so easy to use that I never had to look up a knowledge base or forum to be able to do what I wanted in Todoist. So I'm not sure what their support system looks like or how it works, but I do know that if I haven't needed support, that's also a good sign!

Incentivized

Implementation is easy and smooth if the requirement is well gathered/documented. Notes is a RAD platform, all projects in Notes is simple in the implementation step.

Outlook has been considered for years as a replacement platform. Pricing and support staff made it prohibitive. Our long-time use of Microsoft Office productivity suite naturally led us to consider the adoption of Office365. A recent investigation told us that Azure Cloud services propel an O365 solution to the forefront. Early adopters in international divisions have paved the way for Azure and O365.

Incentivized

We did pursue Quick Arrow another tool that was similar. We found that be in inflexible in use. Projector allows a lot of flexibility in setup. Our organization has very specific business processes and we were able to set up Projector to work with those processes. Several other systems we tried were not as flexible in allowing set up to our needs.

[Todoist: To-Do List & Task Manager] is significantly simpler and cheaper than most of the alternatives and doesn't complicate the management of tasks with a plethora of unnecessary features. While all the alternatives have strong feature sets, what Todoist does better than any of them is manage tasks, in theory the central point of them all.

Incentivized

• Over the years, we have lost countless hours of productivity from the thousands of crashes we have experienced.
• One benefit of IBM Notes is that it is very simple to train a new user on. Many people prefer and are familiar with Google tools, but those that use IBM Notes have very little trouble acclimating themselves.

Incentivized

• Even in the small time that I stayed to see Projector PSA reporting I saw ROI projections become more realistic. There was real data to analyze that proved we were spending way too much and charging way too less on some projects.
• Although employees were not used at entering their hours, this single reporting improved operations management and validated employees concerns that more people were needed to manage workload
• Project proposals were more realistic because they were driven by real data.
• Decision making overall for the department became more efficient and effective

Incentivized

• Location-based reminders ensured that my staff didn't miss things when they went onsite with a customer. This has led to renewals on a regular basis.
• Sharing of task visibility for managers with their direct reports has enhanced 1-on-1 meetings and ensured that field coaches kept focused
• The cost of Todoist vs. the value it creates is a huge selling point for the software. For the price per user, I've found nothing that even comes close!

Incentivized