'Many hands make light work' is one of the most oft quoted mantras this side of Y2K. Of course, this omits the nightmare that is team management. With limitations ranging from paucity of time, to team members' own agendas, one needs all the help one can get.
Flow is an online Collaboration and Task Management tool. It allows a user to set up a virtual office of sorts, where team members can be added and tasks planned and assigned. Flow is a web service with companion apps for iPhone, iPad and Mac.
At first glance, Flow looks like it has a rather fancy Outlook Mail-like interface. The left pane has shortcuts to your dashboard, inbox, personally assigned tasks, etc. as well as a collection of all your lists. The right pane has your content. The Dashboard, especially, is quite excellently designed. It offers a bird's eye view of all the activities related to your workspace. Adding tasks is as simple as using the compose button, or the quick add feature in your tasks view. Flow allows you to assign tasks to your team members, upload documents from your computer or Dropbox, and have conversations within the task view itself. It puts the most important parts of your work front and center, while simultaneously allowing you to view all aspects of your tasks. You can set up different Workspaces, for all your different projects, each with their own set of Team Members, tasks, etc. I especially like the Calendar View of all your tasks, completed and upcoming.
Now, I've seen several avatars of the GTD Philosophy, and this one is right up there with the heavy hitters like OmniFocus and Things. It may look minimalist, but the good folks at MetaLab haven’t compromised on the functionality they baked into it. Everything in Flow is designed with clean, minimalist elements that have become design language de jure. It really is very elegant, and reminds me of Todoist, a similar service. Both look like they've taken notes from the Jony Ive Book of Design, which is definitely the way to go as far as I'm concerned.
My only gripe with Flow is poor Cross-Platform Access. Competing GTD software, like Wunderlist and Todoist, have fully featured apps on all major platforms. Flow is restricted to iPhone, iPad, Mac and Web access for now. Considering that most team members have a myriad of devices between them, this does seem like a rather glaring omission.
Flow is, without doubt, one of the best GTD Task Management and Collaboration software available, and I don't just mean in terms of features. It is so wonderfully designed, it MAKES you want to set up tasks and collaborate, and that makes it a winner in my book.
Flow has a 30-day free trial, post which, you can sign up for five different plans, starting from $19/month. The companion iOS Universal App and the Mac App are free. If you run a small team and require quick, efficient and simple Task Management, you'll definitely enjoy going with the Flow. So to speak.