Review: Agendus for BlackBerry

[stmcgill]

Verdict: A legend in PDA organisation makes the jump to BlackBerry and the future looks promising.

Pros: Original, wide range of extensions, offers a quick and efficient overview of your activities.
Cons: Can be slow at times.
URL: http://www.iambic.com
Price: £19.95
Overall rating: 4

Agendus has been around for what seems like an eternity. It used to be called Action Names and on 4th December 2001 version 5 was released- this offers an indication of the history involved in this title, and many years later it has finally arrived on BlackBerry devices!

It brings contacts, calendar and tasks into one application and includes a number of extras which you would not expect to see when dealing with organisation, but they have a purpose in this instance. Agendus does not create a second copy of your data, but rather uses the original and writes to exactly the same data store that your current data resides in. It can also synchronise with your current desktop solution, such as Outlook, or you can go for the Agendus for Windows version as well which brings a raft of usability improvements to the overall solution.

Let’s take a look at the various views included in Agendus. To gain an overview of where you are and what you need to do, the views are the most important aspect of a PIM application-

Today View- in Agendus this offers calendar entries, the latest received messages, weather forecasting, quote of the day, Day in History and tasks. Each entry is reachable with a simple click once it is highlighted. You can choose how many tasks to display and this makes for a decent overall look at your life and even outside factors- the quote of the day and day in history features quickly become quite addictive.



Week View List- this view is perfect for those of you with very busy schedules- it would nice to see a month list view included, but hopefully that will appear in a future update. This is the view I tend to use because it offers such an extensive display of the next few days, and that is somewhat reassuring.



Contacts View- this is the best contacts display I have seen yet. On a device like the Bold, you can squeeze a good number of contacts on one page and you can also colour code them depending on the category they are in.



There are many other views such as One Day, Week Grid, Month, Tasks and Contact View Expanded so you have no excuse to not find the one that is right for you.

Adding a new entry is fairly straightforward and just requires the menu key followed by ‘New’. You are then presented with a list; new appointment, contact etc. Some of the dialogues are extensive and Tasks and Contacts offer every field you could possibly need for extensive record keeping.

Performance is good 99% of the time with the occasional lag creeping in when changing some views. This is not a huge problem, but it would be nice to see it tightened up in a future release, and to be fair iambic has already posted a couple of updates in a very short period of time.

Agendus is very different from the standard BlackBerry PIM apps, but once you take the time to get used to it you may well prefer it. Having everything in one place is a huge time saver and I have not experienced one crash or loss of data in many weeks of testing it.

Conclusion

What can I say? The legend has reached BlackBerry and has made an impressive entrance. It is easily worth the asking and price and definitely worth a download to see what you think.

[Sam123gil]

Does this app also tell you the status of your berry

[mdlissner]

I used to use this on my Palm devices, and am glad that it has finally come to the BB world. Still needs some refinements - but it is version 1.x.

Main needs to me are an Agenda View (One Day List for meetings and Tasks) and customization of font sizes and colors.

[ajamudc]

~via BB (wap.pinstack.com)~
I tried Agendus for Palm, but didn't use it prefering one of their competitors, Datebook 6. I'll give them a try again though. The calendar (and third party options) is the one area that I really missed about my old Palm 650.

[bshpmark]

I downloaded the trial version and so far this hands down beats Pocket Informant for BB. Main issues/wants I see are:

1. EXTREMELY(!) slow when updating weather, daily quote, etc. And I am on Wi-Fi and it is still dog slow doing those things.

2. Needs an Agenda view

3. Would be great to have a stocks section on the Today View where you could get a market view and track some favorite stocks.

4. When inputting a new appointment for the first time, the time and date area are very cluttered and confusing. I would prefer that the new appointment open up and look like the regular BB calendar does

[wcbratton]

I also used to use this program back in my Palm days, just downloaded the trial.

Its way too slow.

~via BB (wap.pinstack.com)~

[mdlissner]

Agree that speed optimizations are needed. I also have used PI on my blackberry and both have strenghts and weaknesses. To me the weakness of PI is its use of a proprietary database that at times can cause sync issues with the Native BB database and the blackberry to hang if PI and the exchange server are both trying to gain access to the main BB database. The views and customization ability of PI beats Agendus right now, but I think Iambic will eventually catch up. PI does not let you attach contacts to items and dial/email/sms like Agendus does.

Overall they are both excellent upgrades over the native PIM on the BB and each user should test drive both and see which one fits their usage better.

[dts51]

Anyone figure out how to set-up weather? Mine is defaulted to Sunnyvale CA...how do I change it?

[drester4u]

when you get a reply please let me know drester4u@tmo.blackberry.net lol

[tavella81]

Can anyone tell me if it will open Agendus when you select tasks, calenar, phonebook, etc like on a WinMo phone or do you have to open the application manually?
~via BB (wap.pinstack.com)~

[mdlissner]

Answers to Questions above:

Weather Settings
- From anywhere in Agendus hit the BB Menu and select preferences. Select Today View Preferences and go down to Weather and delete Sunnyvale, CA and entery your own home town city and state. In the today view you should be able to update then.

PIM Usage
- Then native PIM apps cannot be set up to launch Agendus on the BB you would need to enter Agendus, but everything should be there (on your default calendar only).

[tavella81]

Thank you for the information.
~via BB (wap.pinstack.com)~

[sbs8331]

In the trail version I tried of Agendus a few weeks ago, the one issue I had was the inability to see e-mail message details on my 8300 (os 4.5). I could see the header information but not the body of the message. I'm not inclined to spend $ on this app until that's resolved. It seemed like a good app otherwise.

[Tre Lawrence]

If you owned it on Palm, i believe they give a "crossgrade" discount.

[bshpmark]

According to the Iambic website forums, Agendus, under BB OS 4.5, does not display calendar information or emails from the default BB applications. Yet, nowhere on the product info page does it say that it is not fully compatible with OS 4.5.