I believe Thunderbird is one step away from being the supreme killer-app for office workers … this is a little lengthy, but please read on as I try to describe an add-on project which would (in my view) elevate Thunderbird/Lightning above all other PIMs out there …
As an academic I find most of my work revolves around particular projects, ranging from minor stuff ‘Write a short introduction of my own research for the institutional webpage’ to ‘Complete your PhD thesis by end of July’. As a programmer, you probably work the same way and there are numerous online solutions for this workflow (Asana, Bitrix24, etc).
Most knowledge- and office-workers daily work is organized in this way: in relation to particular projects. On the computer however, things are organized differently: all files are stored in the filesystem, mail correspondance in the mail inbox, appointments in a calendat, etc. In other words, different things related to a particular project are scatterede all over the place (desktop).
Thunderbird can be used to manage some of these (mail, calendar, tasks). However the last, and most important feature is lacking in Thunderbird … and in Outlook, Kontact, Evolution and all other PIMs I have worked with:
- A simple overview of all resources related to a particular project.
I have tried to illustrate my thinking in these two (manipulated) screenshots:
– image 1
– image 2
Please note the ‘Basket window’ in the right hand side.
The idea is inspired by the ‘Getting things done’ approach described by David Allen – the basic premise being a ‘project basket’ where all things related to a project is stored for easy retrieval. (Which also inspired the KDE app Basket – no longer in development).
The ‘XNote’ and ‘Tasks and emails’ plugins for Thunderbird almost do the job, but not quite and they are not terrible well integrated – most importantly: no support for linking to local files or web-resources.
My suggestion is simply as follows:
- Implement a ‘Project baskets’ tree
- In the Baskets view (illustrated in the two screenshots), all resources associated with a particular projects (links to local files, notes, emails, appointments etc.) can be viewed easily.
Clicking on the link to a local file, should preferably open that file in the system-wide associated app (e.g. pdf file in Evince or Acroread).
This new functionality would obviously require the ability to associate emails, tasks and appointments within Thunderbird with a particular project: e.g. drag-drop mails into the Project folder. Furthermore some sort of note-taking plugin should also be integrated with the project views. Or perhaps linking to Tomboy notes.
The functionalities could probably be implemented in a number of different ways: e.g. when clicking the ‘Mail’ view in the Basket view, the mails associated with the current project could be
a) highlighted in the normal mail view window
b) listed in a separate tab (similar to mails searches) or
c) listed in the Basket mail view window itself.
The ‘Basket’ functionality could possibly be implemented as a third-party plugin.
As I mentioned above, I truly believe this would be a major improvement of Thunderbird and one which would elevate it (further) above the other mail clients and PIMs out there …
Thanks for an excellent app !