NetManage's ECCO Pro is both a sophisticated PIM and an alternative Windows desktop
John Montgomery
There
is
a method in your madness, you continue to insist, despite working in an office that seems to have been decorated by the guy who invented the Post-It, where the papers on your corkboard should be carbon-dated, and where any horizontal surface is a filing cabinet. This is entropy in action.
NetManage's ECCO Pro is a personal information manager (PIM) that fights entropy. By using linked outlines, ECCO not only can round up your to-do list, your list of people to call, and your phone book, it can help restructure the way you work. With ECCO, you'll start to think in hierarchical terms, categorizing what needs to be done and even doing simple project management.
But that's ECCO's downside, too. As with any PIM,
you
have to adjust to the way
it
works. Despite this one possible shortcoming, ECCO is powerful enough to handle most PIM tasks. Actually, ECCO is a little scary. It's so all-inclusive that you may find you can't function without it. You won't feel comfortable jotting a name down on a piece of paper. You'll have to enter it directly into ECCO's phone book.
Not Just a PIM
About three years ago, ECCO reintroduced PIM users to the concept of outlines. The
new version (3.0)
calls them notepads, but they're basically still outlines, with some
user interface
(UI) improvements, such as easy ways to join and split lines.
ECCO is capable of far more complex presentation and organization, though. You can add columns, as you can in a spreadsheet. For a project outline with a month-project-tasks hierarchy, you could add a start date and an end date, a pop-up list of people
available to work on the project, and a check box to mark when you finish a stage of the project. If you wanted to get really fancy, you could even add Gantt charts and columns based on information in your phone book or to-do list. In fact, you can cross-reference the information in any of the outlines you create.
This type of cross-referencing is handy. You can drag information from one outline into another, and it will be referenced in both places. For example, drag a name from your phone book to your calls list. ECCO not only adds it there but adds a check mark by that name in the phone book to remind you to call the person. During the phone call, you can take notes under the person's name in either the calls list or the phone book. The name and note will appear in both places. When you mark the call as done, it's added to your completed tasks list, so you can keep a record for your nosy boss.
Learning How to Think
ECCO includes six templates, each targeted at a type o
f information: general, legal, manager, project, research, and sales. Common to each template are, not surprisingly, a calendar and a phone book -- standard in any PIM. Common across most are a tasks list and a calls list.
Outlines and templates aside, what makes ECCO special is its integration with other applications. It supports OLE 2.0, so you can embed documents into ECCO outlines with no problem (though in these days of widespread OLE 2.0 availability, that goes without saying). Beyond that, ECCO also includes a clever tool called the Shooter -- a sophisticated cut-and-paste tool that far surpasses Windows' own. When you install ECCO, the Shooter (a small arrow) appears in the title bar of all the applications you run. You left-click on it, and a drop-down menu appears, offering you the option of "shooting" selected information to another application. Generally, you'll probably be shooting names and addresses from your ECCO phone book into word processing documents.
Here's the best part: When
you update the information in your ECCO phone book, it will be updated in your word processing document, too. We noticed a minor problem with the Shooter, however. On slow machines, it drags down the responsiveness of your running applications. But on any machine faster than a 486/50, you shouldn't notice a problem.
The main drawback to ECCO is that the database around which it's centered isn't fully relational, and the filtering engine can't compensate for this. So, to take different views of a project, you must create a new outline and drag the folders from the folder manager into the new outline. You can't click on a column in your existing outline and say, "view by this column." You can sort by columns, however.
Once you have mastered ECCO, you will probably find that your coworkers are envious of your newfound efficiency. That's when to install it on your network. ECCO uses three tools for sharing information. With the first tool, ECCO stores its shared files on a file server but keeps the e
xecutable file on your local disk. You then use the second tool -- an E-mail transport such as Vendor-Independent Messaging (VIM) or MAPI -- to request meetings. The third tool is replication. You can replicate local information from a desktop computer to a notebook and back.
Enforced Organization
For people who are already organized, ECCO is a natural way to work. If you're not organized, ECCO can help you get there by making you think of projects and information hierarchically. But if your style is more free-form, maneuvering to the correct outline, finding the right place to enter data, and learning how to use the information in the various columns could be more trouble than it's worth. With that caveat, we recommend ECCO Pro for anyone who is striving to reach the apex of organization.
PRODUCT INFORMATION
ECCO Pro 3.0.............$175
NetManage, Inc.
ECCO Division
(206) 885-4272
fax: (206) 885-0127
eccoservice@netmanage.com
http://www.netmanage.com
*
Group scheduling via direct network access, TCP/IP, and E-mail
*
Real-world templates (e.g., Rolodex and three-ring binder)
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Expanded drag-and-drop functions
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Time and expense tracking
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Simplified dialog boxes
screen_link (62 Kbytes)
Unlike standard Windows applications that are co
mpliant with the Multiple Document Interface (MDI), ECCO Pro actually merges different views into one seamless window, so it's easy to move data from one notepad to another.
John Montgomery is BYTE's features editor. You can reach him on the Internet or BIX at
jmontgomery@bix.com
.
Organization Made Loud and Clear
