Looking for a great... ummmm... tab manager, topic manager, project manager, notes manager, tasks manager, resources manager, productivity app hub, and team coordinator? Well, in my nearly six months of use of Workona as of the time of this writing, I can say, at least for this distributed software systems architect, Workona is a great facilitator for all of the aforementioned productivity aids. Workona has increasingly elated and surprised me during my MASSIVE research and development phase for my current project.
Before I continue with my review, lest you think this GLOWING review is an ad masquerading as a review, nope. I have no affiliation with Workona other than being a happy user. I present my review for your benefit, as I truly believe that once you get the hang of Workona, you'll find it as handy, useful, and organizing- and productivity-increasing as I do.
Next, when you consider some of the other reviews here, take note of the date of their submission. As with any software, Workona has matured and improved over time, so for older reviews, ignore the "buggy this" and "buggy that", as that is commonly true of most software products in their early days. I've experienced no bugs (May - Nov. 2022). For those recent reviews that mention usage problems, it's probably due to not giving themselves time enough to flow with Workona's organizational and usage paradigm, or they simply weren't using Workona optimally, or had a misunderstanding of the premise and goals of Workona and expected it to be and do something other than what it was built for.
I can say as far as my usage, it was a growth process. At so many turns, the elation and surprise I mentioned earlier, erupted each time I tried something that I hoped Workona would do... and it did it! Primarily, this was concerning drag-n-drop -- it's pervasive in Workona. Everything is draggable for easy reorganizing. Further, if somehow you lose tabs. Workona backs up your work at each change, and allows you to recover any given Workspace back to any prior state.
What exactly is Workona built for? Well, coming from my perspective, I'd say research, team, and project management. However, it has so many flexible facilities and capabilities that I can't imagine someone not finding it useful in their workflows, for both personal and professional use cases of many kinds. Imagine being able to categorize your daily browsing in multiple conceptual Workspace Sections containing multiple Workspaces, into each of which you can add multiple Note Sections, Notes (rich, with attachments, images, and full-text formatting), Task Sections, Tasks (with due dates, attachments, and rich text), Resource Sections, and Resources (links, documents, folders, each with optional description). Note that that's PER workspace! Meaning, your projects can be as small or large, and as thin or fully documented and cross-referenced as you like. To top it all off, Workona allows your team to contribute to and share this common body of well-organized information -- with REAL-TIME editing updates! You whole team can stay onboard and collaborate far better than with emails, text messages, and forwarded documents. All important information in one common repository. Workona is a fantastic tool for personal and collaborative use.
At first glance, one might perceive that Workona has one glaring omission: TAGS. There is no formal declaration of tags in Workona. I was so disappointed when I discovered no mention of "tags" in their literature, help, or even in Google searches -- no mention. :( Well... no problem. Workona includes full-text search across all workspaces and elements. Given that, you can define your inline tags however you like. I use the common #tagword syntax. Just place a #, or your preferred tag-designation symbol, before a word you wish to tag... that's it. Then, when you need to find all elements with a given tag, typing Alt-S on Windows brings up the Workona Universal Search, into which you can type and search for your #tagword. Problem solved! Well, not completely. Hopefully, Workona gurus will formalize tags and allow searching for multiple tags at the same time, thus filtering only for those elements that have all selected tags. One other suggested feature if Workona personnel happen to read this is to add link preview on hover. That would be a very handy aid-to-memory and time-saver.
On optimal usage of Workona: Sure, it will allow you to have many, Many, MANY tabs open in your various workspaces, and keep them there between work sessions and browser reload. However, I've found the optimal way to use Workona and to conserve browser and computer memory is to consider ANY and ALL open tabs as just temporary work and research items. Open them in whatever workspace you like, but I try to move to the workspace for whose concept I'm currently focusing on or researching, and I do my searches and open tabs there. When I've opened and researched as many tabs as I like, whether that's over a few minutes or several days, my intent is ALWAYS to either bookmark them in the browser bookmarking system AND/OR bookmark them as a resource in an appropriate resource group within the current workspace. Once a tab has been bookmarked with either method or both, close it -- you can always reopen it by clicking on its resource, and it will show again in the list of open tabs. Managing open tabs and resources this way will keep your workspaces, and browser/computer memory uncluttered. Consider it as you would consider clearing your physical desk at the end of a work session. You do keep a clean desk, right? :D
Ok, that's about it. I hope what I've written here has been helpful in giving you some glimpse into the facilities, usefulness, and benefits of Workona.
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