TaskTask

A couple of weeks ago we released TaskTask for Windows 8 devices, including the Microsoft Surface with Windows RT. TaskTask for Windows 8 provides many of the same great features from TaskTask for iPad and iPhone on the Windows device platform.

However, TaskTask for Windows 8 is still a work in progress. Some users have experienced issues with being unable to connect to their Exchange server using the Windows version of our app. These problems are currently under investigation, and I have an open support request with Microsoft to figure out what the cause of the problem is. In the mean time, I’m working on a workaround that will provide intermedia relief for customers who cannot connect to their server. Except this update to drop in early January, as soon as it works it’s way through the Windows Store’s approval process.

In the mean time, please accept my apologies for software that isn’t working as expected. We’re working on solving the problem as fast as we can over the holiday season.

Thanks again for being a loyal TaskTask customer, and we hope you have happy holidays and a great new year!

If you’ve installed the latest update for TaskTask, you may have noticed the dates on your task have disappeared. Late last night I isolated the cause of this problem to a change in the way Apple’s APIs parse XML in the new version of their software. Unfortunately this causes problems even for people who are not using iOS 6. It is limited to users connecting to Exchange 2003 servers. If you are connecting to Google Tasks or Exchange 2007 or Exchange 2010 then you shouldn’t be experiencing any problems with missing dates.

I’ve produced a fix and submitted it for app store approval. The approval process usually takes about 7 days, but I hope an update will be available very soon.

I’ve been distracted from TaskTask development since the last major update working on a number of other projects. Last week I picked up giving a little more attention to my favorite task management app, and I’ve fixed a number of bugs that have been causing problems for people.

If you’ve been seeing random or intermittent crashes or issues where TaskTask returns to the “Home” screen on your device, the coming update should resolve most of these issues. Unfortunately the build quality of the last build wasn’t up to par with what I should have been delivering, and this update fixes nearly all of the top crashes that were reported through iTunes.

Simultaneously in the works I’ve been working to improve TaskTask in a couple of new directions. I’m currently working on making TaskTask more visually appealing, without trading off functionality. This will materialize through “Themes” which will be making there way into the 3.5 release. Themes will enable you to customize the look of TaskTask to be more of your style by choosing from designer made themes.

In addition to prettying up TaskTask, I’ve been working on some often requested features as well. In the near future I expect to bring multiple account support. I have have a few other features I’m working on, but they aren’t far enough along to announce just yet.

The update to resolve crashes has been submitted to Apple for a couple of days, and I hope to see it approved and released early next week.

After many months of working hard on TaskTask for Windows Phone, I’m now happy to announce availability of TaskTask for the Windows Phone 7 platform! This new version is redesigned with the Windows Phone Metro style in mind, but still provides an easy task experience that synchronizes with your Exchange mailbox and Outlook tasks.

For an introductory time, TaskTask for WP7 will be offered at a reduced price! The reduced price is my way of saying thank you to early adopters of TaskTask for WP7, since like any V1 software product there may be a few issues uncovered as the application scales out to more Exchange environments and devices than I have access to test again.

If you’re using one of those great new Nokia Lumina phones, or any other Windows Phone 7 device, go check it out!

In an effort to reduce the complications of connecting TaskTask with your Exchange server, I’ve been working on the development of a cloud service to act as a proxy for TaskTask communication. The primary goal for this service is to enable connectivity to servers that are not natively supported in TaskTask. Normally when TaskTask fails to connect to an Exchange server, the cause is either improper configuration (TaskTask guessed the wrong server), the server expects authentication that TaskTask cannot provide (for example, if the server is configured for Negotiate authentication), or the server is unreachable. The new service aims to eliminate these problems and increase the ease in which you can use TaskTask with your mail server.

The service will be free and provided for customers of TaskTask on their mobile devices. Initially the only client that will be enabled for the service is the upcoming TaskTask for Windows Phone 7. However, in time all TaskTask clients will receive the benefits of the service if you opt into using the service.

As I prepare for the release of TaskTask for WP7 and the cloud service, I’ll post more details about how it works and how TaskTask uses the service.

Use of the service is covered by our web service privacy policy.

I’m interested in how you would feel about TaskTask using a service to proxy communication between your mobile device and your Exchange server. Let me know what you think about this idea in the comments!

The latest update of TaskTask, 3.2.492, just landed in the App Store tonight. I thought this would resolve all of the issues people have been running into where TaskTask won’t connect to their server with the 3.2.x update but previously did. However, shortly after the update went live, Nick S. reported an issue that he could no longer connect to his Exchange 2003 server which required “Allow Invalid Certs” to be enabled (and was enabled).

Turns out, the update that fixes the ability to connect to some servers breaks the ability to connect to others. I’m flustered that somehow I missed this when I was producing the update for the first issue. I’ve created a fix that resolves both issues, QA tested it against Exchange 2003, 2007, and 2010 servers with valid and invalid certificates, and just now have submitted it to the app store.

In the mean time, if you have an account configuration that requires you to turn on “Allow Invalid Certificates” I recommend you do not upgrade TaskTask to 3.2.492, since TaskTask will stop being able to connect to your server. If you do upgrade, you will see an error message that includes “errSSLXCertChainInvalid” at the bottom, which indicates that your SSL certificate is invalid/self signed and TaskTask failed to ignore the bad certificate.

All of this unfortunately started because of a change in the way SSL connections are configured when an application is built using the iOS 5 SDK. The coming update, 3.2.494, will resolve these connection issues and should get everyone back on track.

If you’ve installed last week’s update for TaskTask, you may encounter an issue where TaskTask repeatedly crashes. Unfortunately there was a test case that I missed while working on that version that does cause TaskTask to crash in a rather common scenario. I’ve just submitted a fix for the issue to Apple and have requested that they fast-track approval of the update due to the crashing issue. If you haven’t updated already, I recommend waiting until the 3.2.492 update is released to update.

Sorry for the troubles, I’ve updated my set of test cases to make sure I have good coverage on this particular type of issue in the future.

Edit: There also appears to be an issue with iOS 5 devices not being able to connect to some servers. An error message indicating a problem with SSL will be displayed, and you will be unable to connect. I’ve tracked down the root cause of the issue and have also provided a fix in the upcoming 3.2.492 update.

Last week I submitted an update to TaskTask to version 3.2. This new update includes several new features requested by you, my customers! This update, when approved by Apple, will provide the ability to move tasks between folders, search your tasks significantly faster (full text index), and features a redesigned view settings to make it easier to find all of the options to customize your view.

This update also adds experimental support for syncing with Google Tasks. This provides very basic task list management to everyone with a Google account. The support is experimental because Google hasn’t finalized their Tasks API, so it’s possible in the future the feature could break. Google Tasks are also significantly more limited than Outlook, so the set of functionality available with Google Tasks is significantly less than what TaskTask offers with Exchange. I’m looking forward to hearing feedback from anyone who tries out the Google Tasks mode.

Moving beyond this update, I feel that the majority of TaskTask functionality is complete for iOS devices. With the release of the built-in Reminders application from Apple with iOS 5, sales of TaskTask for iOS devices have fallen considerably. While I will continue to support TaskTask for iOS for the foreseeable future, my focus will be shifting to working on TaskTask for other platforms, such as Windows Phone 7 and Android. I’ve had a version of TaskTask for Windows Phone 7 in progress for quite some time, and will be working on finishing it up so that I can deliver these features to Windows Phone customers. After that release, I’ll start the investigation on porting TaskTask to Android.

This means the update rate for TaskTask for iOS will likely decrease over the next few months. I will continue to monitor e-mail and forum traffic to see if there are any significant requests from customers around TaskTask functionality or issues that need to be resolved. I appreciate the continued support from all of my loyal customers and I look forward to delivering the TaskTask experience on all mobile devices in the future.

If you’re using TaskTask on iOS 4 or iOS 5 and can’t find the Local Reminders setting and aren’t seeing reminders appear on your device, you will need to reinstall TaskTask to get the setting to return. This issue is a bug in TaskTask where the state of the device’s support for local reminders was stored permanently and isn’t reset even though you have upgraded the OS version that now supports local notifications. Reinstalling TaskTask from the App Store will allow TaskTask to detect that your device supports reminders and enable the feature.

This issue will be fixed in the next update for TaskTask.

I’m moving to a new e-mail provider for TaskTask e-mail accounts this weekend. If you’re trying to e-mail support and receiving an error that the message cannot be delivered, please send your mail to support [at] tasktaskonline.com. Hopefully the issue that is preventing mail to the normal address from being delivered will be resolved later today. Also consider posting your question on our support forum at http://forum.tasktaskapp.com/.

Everything is back to normal now. Please use support [at] tasktaskapp.com for e-mail support, although I encourage everyone to post their issues to the forums, where other people can help you out as well!