We recently announced the availability of REST APIs for Zoho Writer, Sheet and Show. Today, we have added REST API for Zoho Planner as well. The functionality & working of this API is similar to those of Writer/Sheet/Show. The Zoho Planner API allows you to get, create, update ToDo lists and do a lot more as well, all from inside your web application. Check out the new Zoho Planner API. If you need help in building a mashup using our API, do write to us at feedback(at)zohoplanner.com.

Zoho Planner offers some formatting options. You can put these options to good use while making your To-Dos lists and Notes. Say for example, you can use Bold text for highlighting a particular To Do to convey that it is more important to you than others.

The help page for knowing the various formatting options can be accessed by clicking on the ‘Text Formatting‘ link at the bottom-left of your Zoho Planner page. Also, this Zoho Wiki page helps illustrate the various options as well.

One common question we receive from our Zoho Planner users,

It is difficult for me to see my to-dos for the day as my to-dos are typically present across multiple pages. How can I view them all in a single page?

You can actually see your to-dos across pages applying some pre-built filters that Zoho Planner offers. On the left panel, click on “To do’s overview” -> “All my to do’s”. In the page that opens, on the top-right you will see a combo box. Choose the appropriate option there and this will list all your to-dos across pages.

Bonus tip : For making an offline copy of your to-dos, use your browser’s ‘Print’ option for printing the page.

Here’s one oft repeated feedback mail that we receive from Zoho Planner users :

I keep getting a reminder mail from Zoho Planner though the Appointment (or Task or Reminder) has long passed. How can I stop this?

Well, Zoho Planner offers recurring reminder options for your ‘To Dos’, ‘Appointments’ and ‘Reminders’. Screenshots below of the options offered.

Though we set the reminder option to ‘once’ by default, users tend to set it to ‘every n hours’ or ‘every n days’. Hence they end up getting the reminder emails repeatedly at their set frequency. So, if you don’t want to get bombarded with the same reminder email(s) from Zoho Planner again and again, please exercise caution when setting your reminder option!

Login to your Zoho Planner account, revisit the To Dos / Reminders / Appointments sections of your Zoho Planner pages and edit/delete them as the case may be.

Shailendra at ‘ApniTally’ has a good demo for Tally 9 created in Zoho Show, explaining users how to create a payslip.

Miriam at ‘illuminea blog’ is using Zoho Planner and notes that it is a cool tool. More at her blog.

Helene Blowers at Learning 2.0 has a nice podcast titled “Web Applications - Taking Productivity beyond the Desktop”. To quote her, “With Zoho and web-based applications, the possibilities are endless”. Thanks Helene. Click here for more.

Friends at Jambav are using Zoho Sheet and Zoho Creator for their checklists and surveys.

How are you using Zoho?

The latest update at Zoho Planner addresses some of the major usability issues that you users have pointed out. Though AJAX has been a boon for the whole web with its non-loading pages, easy drag-and-drop etc, it can cause problems too (as compiled in this famous list of Ajax Mistakes).

One of the major flaws was breaking the browser’s back button functionality. This is now addressed in Zoho Planner. You can now move from one page to another and use the browser’s Back/Forward buttons to navigate. Going further we will be addressing the intra-page navigation too and expect them to be carried over to other Zoho apps as well!

The top ‘Insert’ menu has given way for a sleek menu bar with direct links. The link to iCal has gone inside the ‘Settings’ menu and the Add List Item/Reorder have gone to the bottom of a list (they were on top previously).

Do give the new Zoho Planner a try and do let us know where we need to improve.

Anne Zelenka has a nice debut post at Web Worker Daily. She lists the advantages of having one’s todo lists on paper compared to having them on an online personal organizer. Liked the comment that one Mr. Peter Bell made there :

I used pen and paper for a long time and still do while “on the move”, but I find a simple Notepad/Textmate style to do list invaluable. Why?- I can always read my typing - not always true about my writing
- I can easily re-order tasks which I almost always have to do. Try re-ordering 30 tasks on a piece of paper - ten times. Then trying doing the same using cut and paste on a laptop . . .
- I can find tasks by keyword so I can afford to have plenty of “some day” tasks and just find them via search.
- I can easily save my historic “done” tasks - again for searching by project or other key words down the line.

The above’s true for Zoho Planner too. I have tried the yellow sticky notes before but it didn’t work for me. Too many of them cluttered my work place and I found them impossible to organize. All tools have their own advantages & disadvantages. Like you can use the Notepad/Textmate when offline (with Zoho Planner it aint possible) but you would need your laptop always for accessing them.

We had Barry Dahl as the featured Zoho user earlier. Continuing the series, we have today, Craig Cmehil. Craig is a Community Evangelist at SAP and involved in the SAP developer network (SDN). Craig is so fond of Zoho that he mentions us atleast once every couple of days in his blog! Visit his blog and scrolling down, see the ‘Categories’ in the right panel. You will see around 40 posts tagged Zoho! His latest post mentions him along with his friends using Zoho Planner to plan his trips.

Craig Cmehil, flanked by Sridhar Vembu & Raju Vegesna at the Office 2.0 Conference

Zoho is part of Craig’s everyday activities. Craig is so into Zoho Creator that he created (perfected actually, after 3 tries) his own roadmap for Zoho. One of upcoming SAP’s developer network conferences is happening at Bangalore and Craig is asking for presentation invites. And of course, he’s doing that on a form hosted by Zoho Creator. He also has a book library, a contact list and according to an email from him, a “10 min” app which he has been using multiple times a day.

Craig says he’s using Zoho Sheet to track his finances. He had used Zoho Show for an SDN presentation at a SAP conference. And he has his resume hosted on Zoho Writer.

If you are a Zoho user like Craig or Barry, please do write to us (you can mail me at aravind(at)zoho.com) about how you are using Zoho.

Zoho Planner had an update a few hours earlier that brought in some cool new features.

We receive constant feedback from Safari & Opera users to make Zoho applications work on these browsers. As the first Zoho app, Zoho Planner now works on Safari (2.0+) & Opera (9.0+). Zoho Planner already supports Firefox, Mozilla & Internet Explorer.

We have tested Zoho Planner on multiple versions of both the browsers. There may be untested versions, so do write to us if you come across any issues.

Users have been asking to collapse & expand todo lists & notes. This has been done in the latest update. Another feature to roll in is the facility to delete all your completed todo list items in one go.

Till now you can private share your pages with Read & Write (Edit) privilege or have them shared to public. Now you can private share your pages in Zoho Planner with Read Only (View) permission too.

Check out the latest Zoho Planner & tell us what you think. Do write to us if you have any specific feature requests.

Zoho Writer Alpha was launched on Sep 15, 2005. And we had a small b’day celeb going on today evening.

Zoho Planner and Zoho Challenge got released last September too and the function commemorated all the three services. Dean has more to report.