Currently I use Evolution for my Calendar and Task management needs, but I sometimes seem heavily limited or annoyed at the lack of a feature. Sometimes I pondering writing my own suitable application but I’m lazy and would probably give up half way through. So instead, I’ll just blog about the things I wish Evolution did as it almost fits my entire requirement.

Evolution should show task due dates on the calendar – This is one problem that really annoys me. I think it would be great if I could visually see when a task is to be due on the calendar rather than staring at a list and figuring it out. Currently only ‘events’ can be shown on the calendar, and making an event for every task is a major pain and generally not worth it. Searching around reveals many people desire this feature, but it doesn’t look like any progress has been made in 7 years.

Powerful sorting abilities – I wish I could task a bunch of tasks and sort them by multiple attributes instead of just one. Currently I sort by date due, which works but isn’t that optimal. I mean, how important is that task? The ability to tag an important to a tag and sort by due date and important would be nifty. A quick glance shows that tasks can be given a priority and sorted strictly by that priority, but thats not quite what I would like. Right clicking a task I could be able to give it a priority quickly and have all the tasks ranked accordingly.

Subtasks – This is another feature I believe would be helpful. Subtasks would simplify my havoc of todo’s all over the place often related to a single project thats due or otherwise related. It seems this feature request is even older than the desire for tasks on the calendar appearing.

Colorization of tasks with start dates – This is a minor annoyance, but tasks that have a “start by” date do not have any visual indication that they are different from tasks without a start date. This would be alleviated some if sorting by priority actually worked but alas…

The above are some of the main quirks I have with Evolution currently, and I have yet to find a Calendar/task software that does better than Evolution. If I have missed anything obvious or someone has a recommendation I’d love to hear it. Some will probably say to separate my Calendar and Task needs, but I need that visual link to actually get stuff done on a reasonable time. Otherwise I start slacking off thinking I have time as a bunch of numbers don’t quite make the same link in my head as a graphic does.