I assume that attachments support is in the works. I could not use a GTD app without attachment support or the ability to forward an email with an attachment as a task into the system.
Yes, this is also high on our list. We think of it in two ways. Native attachments and attachments from online services like dropbox and OneDrive. Both are on the list. Excellent feedback, keep it coming!
This is probably one of those “unavoidable necessities” that come with how computer software often works these days and the expectations people have come to have. People are used to being able to access everything from anywhere. It is a very common requirement, and possibly half-suicide not to have it.
Personally I have minimal use for it. I simply read my email, think properly about what I need to do about it, then word an appropriate task and tag it etc and put it in the right place in my app. That’s it. I don’t usually want to go back and re-read the same email again. And if I do need to re-read that particular email or read some other supporting documentation that I might have saved previously about that project, I’ll just go and get that. A task manager app can never be a substitute for a proper reference system.
Good Morning, I just wanted to check on the status of this? File attachment is really crucial to me.
Thanks.
Hi Susan - It’s high on our list, but we haven’t started work on it yet. Working on a few other necessities first. We understand how important this one is to people though. Thanks!
A task manager app CAN be a substitute for a proper reference system if it’s integrated with Evernote. Evernote is the perfect reference system and when integrated with your task manager, wonderful things start to happen. 
Another option is Google Drive or Cloud storage. I don’t want to hunt for reference documents related to a task that originated from an email. I want to make that email a task, rename the title if needed, and have all the supporting documents right there with the task. Practical and simple.
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Yes, quite a few people have that wish or need. Others seem to view it more as an unnecessary complication. You can find representatives of both these extremes in abundance over at the DA forums.
Personally I want a permanent reference system that allows me to change list apps as I please without having to change my reference system. And I do not need any linkage. If the list app allows me to link or include reference material I see that as a minor (very minor) nice-to-have.
The main problem I see is that reference integration seems to be a very complicated and time-consuming thing to develop. Zendone, who are probably the ones that have gone furthest, seem to have had little time left for any other development. And IQTell seem to be suffering from this problem, too. I am not sure I would want to advise GTDNext to venture down that route (they are bound to be miles behind forever.)
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I disagree. Nirvana does not have Evernote integration and they are miles behind on development. It’s not Evernote that makes development difficult, it’s the size of the team and the funds available to invest in the features they wish to implement.
Having Evernote integrated with my GTD system is more than just “nice”, it’s a major boost in productivity workflow. If I moved to a different system, my Evernote stays with me.
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Well, i am on @Folke’s page here: I do not need attachment support in my GTD tool.
I also do not need mobile device support.
Both these features are expensive to develop, and i personally will have no benefit from them.
So while i see and understand that these features seem to be in high demand, i will be no supporter for them.
We all need different features based on our way of working. Not having attachment support in today’s world of connected apps is a huge mistake.
Most of my “To Do’s” come from email and a large portion of them have attachments that I need in order to accomplish the tasks at hand. Forwarding these emails into my GTD system with files in tact simply makes sense. Why would I want to take the extra steps of stripping these files out of my email, come up with a place and method of storing them, linking them somehow to my task manager that originally contained the files in the first place.
I am not saying everyone needs attachments, but having an app without the option does not make much sense in today’s connected world with all the cloud options that make this much easier than ever.
I don’t think anyone would quit using an app because it has attachment support. You don’t need to use attachments if you don’t require them. But I bet you many people have left an app because it lacks attachment support.
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@Proximo:
Understood, it does make sense for you, while it does not for me:
Attaching internal documents onto an external site would be a good way to get me fired…
Yes, i can happily ignore attachment features.
I am only a little bit sad when i think of all the effort that goes into features i will never use, and what could have been done with these efforts to support my style of usage.
But that’s life and i will quit whining about it right here!
Yes, I agree, and to make it even more sad there seem to be a few areas of functionality that almost all of the tiny developers tend to get lost in, whereas other areas of functionality are ignored by everyone, totally up for grabs for any developer, and potentially very useful.
I think it was a brilliant move of GTDNext to begin on hierarchies and sequentialisms, not mainly because I want it for myself (although it can be a very-nice-to-have) but because there are lots of people asking for it and no developer who offers a good solution. It is often desirable and smart to be the first one out and to make a mark, and then to keep working really hard at it and maintain a distinct lead even when others try intently to copy and get ahead. Hierarchies and sequentialism (“future plans integration”) seems like a very viable such “profile feature” for GTDNext. It is not virgin territory, because Omnifocus and MLO are also addressing that, but it would be possible for GTDNext to be the first proper solution offered in a web app and also, with a bit of work, to be the best of all these apps functionally speaking.
But I think it would be almost impossible for a small team like GTDNext to surpass Zendone and IQTell when it comes to reference integration, where the other two have battled for years and almost gone down doing so and now have very good and popular web apps in place. The approach I would recommend for GTDNext in this “reference integration” area of functionality would be to find the “tolerable/passable” level of sophistication. What that level would equate to in concrete terms, currently, is hard to say, but I know that not all apps even have attachments yet, whereas clickable links to reference seems almost ubiquitous. So maybe somewhere between a clickable link and an attachment - LOL, a clickable attachment link 
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That is the big challenge for a developer.
What makes you sad, makes others happy. What makes others happy, will make you sad. It’s all based on what features are important to us. I moved from a GTD app I really loved to another, because they ignored the attachments issue. The security provided by most services are enough to pass our IT guidelines, unless you work for NASA or some other sensitive top secret organization.
I think it’s far better to leverage the storage options from other services that to build your own. If I were a developer, I would have no interest in creating a storage solution for my GTD app. I would use a well known and respected service to tie my app into. This will minimize how much I need to invest and allow me to focus on other important features.
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I’m keeping up on this thread and enjoying the dialog. Keep it up - we are monitoring. Thanks!
I have been using several great GTD apps and after some time I realised that with the attachment support is managing of my tasks so much easier that I moved my tasks to the app with less features but with attachment support.
The most of my tasks comes from emails and many of them include attachments I need by managing the tasks in the GTD app. When I used the GTD app without attachments support I had to switch many times a day to my emails to find the right email with attachment I needed … very uncomfortable.
I realized the attachment support in some way is one of my must have features in GTD app I use.
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I personally have no doubt that the world is in fact moving slowly in that direction. In five years time maybe more than half of all apps will have attachment support. The main question here I guess is how fast or slow GTDNext should follow the trend to what extent - willingly, as a key player, or more reluctantly, knowing that this game will be won by others.
The fact that attachment support is popular I assume is because it lets us procrastinate. We humans love to procrastinate. Instead of “processing” the “collected” item (these are GTD expressions, if they sound funny to you), if we have attachment support we can just dump the whole thing unprocessed onto our lists and process it some other time. Tempting, I am sure.
Even for those who do not actually procrastinate, and do their processing as they should, a few very interesting statistics become very important:
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How often does an email, if it requires action, result in exactly one new task? For me personally, this happens quite seldom. Often an email results in amendments to one or more existing tasks, or leads to several new tasks or a whole project. So there is seldom a one-to-one relationship between the email and the tasks. It is therefore also often unclear to which task the reference information should be connected.
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How often, when you need reference information, do you only need information that came in one single email? Don’t you often have to look at several sources that arrived at different times in different forms?
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How often does the input come from email? For me personally, although I get plenty of email, I also talk to people a lot, and do my own thinking etc. and I even receive stuff in the form of paper. I need a system that can cope with all of this, which I have, and I have a preference for keeping that system as consistent as possible, given all the differences, which I have. I simply do not know why I would attach emails to my tasks. Would I attach an audio cassette of every conversation I have? No, this material needs processing, a decision about what to to. Once I have made that decision, I often need no further information, and when I do I prefer to copy the exact pieces of information that I really need (say a phone number) into the task itself. I would not want to have to hunt it down again in the attached email or document.
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Question 1: Extremely often. Most of my emails generate single tasks while a smaller number are related to a project.
Question 2: I use Evernote to link multiple reference materials to any given task or project. This is why I love Evernote integration. It’s the ultimate reference system that allows me to link multiple pieces of information easily.
Question 3: Most input comes from email, in fact, if you talk to me while in the hallway, I would tell you to email it to me because I like to have documented proof of the conversation. Nothing worst that working on something because someone verbally asked you to and then they pretend they never asked for you to do it. Not all my input comes from email but the majority of it does.
I personally don’t see how keeping information readily available in a GTD app makes you a procrastinator. This makes no sense to me because I feel the opposite is the truth. People get disorganized when they need to take extra efforts to have things they need in a easy and accessible fashion. This can cause people to procrastinate because they don’t want to take the extra effort to process the task with it’s reference materials at the moment. So my though is the opposite.
Processing something quickly while at the same time keeping relevant information together with no extra effort makes me productive and prevents procrastination. Maybe I am weird that way. Make something easier and I tend to get it done faster.
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You see! Those statistics explain why attachment support is so important for you, and which is why you have chosen to use Zendone, the “best” app when it comes to reference integration. How good would GTDNext have to be to rival that?
For me, the statistics are almost the exact opposite. I currently use Doit; I almost never use their mail-in function, and have never bothered to check if it supports attachments 
(I don’t think it does, but I have actually never checked.)
That’s how different we humans can be
But I agree it is important to have a good reference system. It needs to let you find anything you need, when you need it. It needs to comprise electronic and paper info and various physical objects. I use a combination of computers, bookshelves and boxes for mine, with various indexing devices. I even use Evernote, mainly for memos of conversations.
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I’d like to add my perspective. I see a lot of value in the workflow Proximo has and wish i had that latitude.
But I’m one of those who cannot use the feature. It would violate the IT security practices of my company and clients. They need to keep information secure…posting info to the cloud (especially Evernote) is not allowed.
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I completely understand your perspective and I believe many companies are similar in their security measures. I hope more and more companies are embracing technology and the advatages it provides. I understand that new technolgies also present new or different type of risks. Leveraging technolgy and risks is a tricky business but many companies are adjusting to take advantage of technology. This is harder for some companies than others.
Would it be a stretch for an app to have cloud and local storage?
It’s also important for a developer to identify who their audience is. If you are building an app for the end user, cloud storage should be a focus. If you are building a business app, you may consider your own storage solution.
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