Excel task planner and an alternative

MS Excel is a flexible application which provides you with good capabilities for supplementing and extending its basic abilities with different add-ons and templates that deliver more profound and specialized functionality. For example, if you want to manage your tasks with a higher effectiveness and better simplicity you can use solutions which generally can be called task planners that are additional applications ( spreadsheets ) developed to be integrated into standard toolset to make it more convenient for specific purposes.

Actually you can use just an spreadsheet without any modifications – you can record your tasks into an Excel-made task plan as lines and their attributes (time-limits, priorities, statuses etc) as columns, but such a way is not very convenient when you want to manage a big number of tasks, so specifically-developed task planners provide you with a better functionality like in-built ability to prioritize to-do lists and possibility to set up task reminders which are not included into the basic package. Besides task planning, there are more of purposes where specifically adjusted task organizers can be used:

If you have a team of collaborators who need to report about tasks they do, then you can try using Excel task trackers . The process of task tracking in MS Excel is based on the fact that one sheet can be concurrently shared between several collaborating people through file sharing technology (shared workbook which is actually an outdated method with high probability of data errors). Task trackers are adjusted to fit needs of collaboration – for example there should be a possibility to list names of teammates and to assign tasks to doers, so when they enter this Excel task plan from their computers they can see and report their workloads.

Excel task calendar is a tool which is a task sheet customized to look like calendar where you can record your appointments and events. Such a calendar may have several regimes such as Daily, Weekly or Monthly views.

VIP Task Manager is a better alternative to any kind of task organizer. First of all, unlike Microsoft Excel, this software keeps your business data in a secure database placed on your server; secondly, the price is better, as when using MS Excel you need to buy expensive licenses for every user, and along with this you may need to buy additional applications such as planners or calendars, while VIP Task Manager proposes you an alternative to checklist – adjustable Task List to plan and assign to-do lists, and to calendar – Calendar mode with customizable time grid.