In the space of a week I have had a few requests for info on apps to take care of tracking and allocating tasks. So these might be little things such as collecting drums, filling in a fox hole or picking up sticks. Alternativly the tasks might be more complex tasks like animal health activites involving mobs, locations, and treatments or agronomic activities like crop spraying.
Here are a few ideas.
General first steps – Have a really good think about the pain points and what you are trying to achive. An app won’t fix communication problems on it’s own. It won’t generally motivate unmotivated staff (or family). If you struggle with telling people what to do, or clearly holding people to account for inaction, hiding behind an app won’t help. (Jo Eady or Sally Murfet probably can).
What a task app may be able to do is help you as a manager become more organised, it may help with memory or recall, it may support other good communication and team strategies. It can work in well in conjunction with other planning or organsing tasks like talking about things at a meeting then listing the jobs that need to be done.
I had a reply to this blog post highlighting the importance of human connection, and just putting the phone down. There are possibly two issues at play, one is the lack of direct communication and the other is the impact of the constant brain noise being generated by phones impacting on our memories. Chat to your team, family or a friend and have a think about what the problems really are.
What have you got already – If you use an existing app or program you will probably find that it has a task functionality. Investigate it first. Even if it is not perfect, there may be a few little hacks or work arounds that make it easy for you, and limit the amount of apps people have to use. Some have a way to convert a task to a record or link to a mob of stock or piece of machinery which is handy.
So deep dive on Farm Simple, AgriWeb, Mobble, Safe Ag Systems, they all have functionality in this regard.
Things to look for include the ability to geotag a location for a task, add a picture, set priorities etc, allocate to a staff member etc.
For those of you using AgWorld there is no functionality on the Basic Subscription. You can only convert a recommendation from your agronomist to an actual. It’s really limited. If you have the Plus Subscription you can turn recommendations into work orders, and allocate them to staff members. However you can’t easily generate a list of general farm jobs and allocate them to staff. I had a good chat to their help desk and there is a little hack – for those on the Plus Subscription, you can make up a little paddock, outside of an existing paddock, perhaps just around the sheds, called ‘Jobs” and then generate a work order this way. It’s a bit clunky so have a play around with it yourself before you try to get your team on board.
Other options If it is just you and you like keeping things simple – A checklist on your phone in notes is an easy and free option. You can have multiple lists. eg shed jobs, rainy day jobs, town list etc.
If there is a team and your farm based app is too expensive or won’t do the job –
Iphone users can use notes on their phones and using the functionality to share a note to others, with the changes recorded and synchronised between those you choose to share it with. This will work if everyone has an iphone. If there are multiple phone religions in your team, pray for their souls and then perhaps have to look at one of the options below, or something like google keep.
If those options are not up to the job…….
Have a look at todoist. It allows mutiple lists and multiple users. You can set priorities etc. For those with project based work or a great complexity with tasks, take a look at monday.com A few people I know use onenote, it is excellent as it can also be used to store files (think manuals, maps, safety info) in the same place. I have also had a recommendation from someone who uses TickTick. Trello is great too, however I think it suits desktops rather than phones.
Do you need an app?
Sometimes a paper works really well, especially for repeatitive tasks in a single location (think sheds, intensive animal production etc).
I have a master jobs list on a clipboard for the person who helps me with my dogs. Pretty much everything is on there. She only comes once a week and does not automatically know where I am up to or what is a priority, so I highlight the areas that need to be addressed that day, and she ticks them off when done. I scan directly into dropbox from my printer and which saves a copy as a permanent record and the originals are destroyed.
Bec from House Paddock Training and Consulting has been woking on a farm operations planner which I am sure will be excellent. I would follow her socials to stay up to date.
I have at this very minute just received another email from my son’s school, instructing me to download yet another app, this time to review his work. I might just leave them to it. App overload is a thing.
A word for those with oldies, semi literate staff, technophobes etc
It might be hard to get everyone on board. It’s ok to develop a manual system for someone who is, respectfully speaking, a lost cause. Like me with the 75th school app.
