Handpicked Software

Numerous Mac applications attempt to pick up where Address Book and iCal leave off, but nothing I know of comes close to Daylite. Whether you’re a solo web designer or a small business that needs to share calendars and contacts—even track resources like meeting rooms—with up to 50 users over a network, Daylite Productivity Suite 3.0 is the closest thing you’ll find to a fully integrated business productivity suite on the Mac. That’s not to say that it’s fully integrated; Daylite’s Address Book and iCal support, while functional, isn’t seamless. But if you need a serious application that can manage calendars, contacts, tasks, and much more, Daylite is your best bet.

Powerful Data Manager

Like Objective Decision’s OD4Contact (which I reviewed for Macworld), Daylite is a powerful contact manager. But it doesn’t stop there. Daylite has eight “objects:” Contacts, Organizations, Projects, Opportunities, Groups, Tasks, Appointments, and Notes. Daylite is feature rich and somewhat complex (the list of impressive things Daylite can do is too long to mention here—you’ll find details on Marketcircle’s web site), but you’ll be rewarded for taking the time to master its many features.

Daylite 3.0’s refined interface offers a multitude of views to give you insight into your data. The Calendar offers Day, Week, and Month views. When viewing other objects, Daylite can display a list with columns, show linked items (such as Appointments linked to a particular client), and display a summary of details of the selected item. In the Tasks section, there’s also a “brainstorming view,” which lets you quickly change due dates, categories, and details (you can also change attributes for multiple items in other views by selecting them and choosing Bulk Edit from the Edit menu). A bottom pane offers even more details, depending on the object, including all of the activity associated with the selected item (for example, select a Contact to view all associated Appointments, calls, emails, Projects, Tasks, and Notes).

Digging into your data is easy, too. Like Mail, Daylite lets you create smartlists, filtering your data by different criteria, such as categories or due dates. A Quick Find panel lets you search commonly used information (Contacts, Organizations, Projects, Opportunities, and Groups), while a Global Find lets you dig even deeper, searching the entire database. And since you can link just about anything to anything else in Daylite, it’s easy to see how your information is interconnected. Creating links—between clients and Appointments, or Projects and Tasks, for example—is as easy as drag and drop.

An optional Daylite Mail Integration Module (DMI) lets you link Mail and Daylite. When the Mail Integration Module is installed, a new drawer appears in Mail. If a Contact in Daylite matches the email of the message, you’ll see the Contact listed in the drawer along with any associated items (such as Projects). Checking a box next to the list item will import the email into Daylite as a Note and link it to all of the checked items.

Organizing Information and Managing Workflow

What really sets Daylite apart from other contact managers and calendars is the ability to organize and link information, managing it in a way that matches your workflow.

Let’s say a new prospect shows interest in retaining you for a project. You set up their contact information and create an Opportunity in Daylite, which lets you track the process as you turn your prospect into a customer. Contacts, Appointments, Tasks, Notes—all related activities—can be linked to the Opportunity. If you repeat the same activities with each prospect, you can create an Activity Set, a collection of related activities (sending out a proposal or scheduling a follow up call, for example) and add them to new Opportunities with a couple of mouse clicks.

You can monitor the status of the Opportunity by updating a custom Pipeline, a visual map of your progress (see image below). You can even prepare an estimate for the project, or a create a custom form to store data (for example, a series of questions you ask all new clients). When the prospect becomes a client and the Opportunity turns into a Project, you can create a Project, which works in a similar way.

To track your activities, Daylite lets you create reports. The selection of included reports is skimpy, and while the interface for creating and editing reports is much improved, mastering the process takes some time. Fortunately, Marketcircle offers online video tutorials to show you the way.

A Lot to Love, And a Few Flaws

Daylite has a lot to love, but it has some flaws, too.

Notifications, or alarms, are easy to miss. When a notification is triggered, Daylite will come forward if it’s in the background and display a notification window listing all reminders, and the dock icon will bounce—once—but that’s it. You don’t have any of the basic alarm options you’ll find in iCal—no popup message, no alarm sound, no option to run a script or open a file. Worse, if Daylite isn’t running, you’ll get no notification at all. As a result, I still find myself relying on iCal when I need to be reminded of an important task.

Daylite synchronizes with Address Book and importing contacts is a snap, but keeping them in synch requires manual updating, and importing is not perfect. For example, Daylite won’t import your pictures from Address Book and notes are stored separately, though linked, in Daylite’s Notes section. Editing contacts in Daylite requires opening up a separate tabbed window, which makes entering data less convenient than Address Book’s single window. You can import and export iCal calendars, but not synch them, and again, importing is less than perfect. For example, Daylite doesn’t import floating holidays properly.

At first glance, it’s all there. Daylite is a productivity tool that covers the bases for small businesses, letting you track and link Contacts, Calendars, Opportunities, Projects, and Tasks. It takes some getting used to, but Daylite has a lot of muscle to flex. You’ll find yourself falling in love with Daylite, but sticking with it requires overlooking a few imperfections.

Bottom Line: Daylite isn’t perfect, but nothing else comes close to it on the Mac (tell me if I’m wrong).
From: Marketcircle
Price: $189 Productivity Suite; $149 Daylite; $49 Daylite Mail Integration
Platform: Macintosh