Hello folks, welcome back to the Keep productive YouTube channel it is
Francesco here. Now in today's video i'm gonna be diving into a application called columns
Which is now out of beta now
We first saw this application on product ton back in december roughly and they've now released the official
Version of it. It is like a columns checklist application with a little bit of a twist because you can create these columns or checklists
Using different sort of guess like sort of micro statuses from checklists to dots
To bullet points. I will guide you through this application over on the laptop
so i'm going to give you my first impressions details about the application and also
Recommendations on who this is most suitable for so let's film over to laptop and dive into columns
Okay, folks
so here we are with columns and you can find it at
Columns dot m e now the sort of premise of this application is check lists arranged in columns
Now they say here that it's used for keeping thoughts notes tasks project and watch lists
And what a great is it works with teams and individuals. So as you can imagine it's becoming quite popular
It was in beta back in december. So imagine gonna go and build some boards whilst i'm talking to you here
So as you can see the design on left-hand panel you get an account you get today
Which is pre-built for you with to do
Watchlist later and archive so very simple sort of columns to get you started
they also have this my project area which is
Really simply laid out like sort of a Kanban you can move cards between these
You can even move cards between boards and that's really essentially to get you started
You've also got two trash as well for any deleted cards and down to the bottom right in corner
You can actually empty the trash there now in the bottom left hand corner. You can add a new workspace
so if you wanted to create one for your team and
Is also preferences here. You can hide the sidebar
You can also change the language and follow them on Twitter, but currently there is no pricing confirmed
So let's go ahead and show you around the application by adding a few tasks
So let's say I wanted to add a very simple task of a shop now
What you can do is naturally add some notes below
you can also add a file you can simply drag it on there if you wanted to and
You can set a date
I really like the drop out menu and they do have natural language input apparently
So if I selected today as you can see that picks out for today
So I could go below and add a few items. Ok
So as you can see the shop is created here
And if you open these up, you can see that you can tick the item off. You can set another date if you want to
And that works with for example Nestle next week. It will come up and you can even set a color for them as well
so if you wanted to highlight this one in blue, you can also add attachments from here and
Move it in different statuses. So for example, if I showed I was doing the tasks it's sort of like half done and
Mark is done would be checking off completely. But in this case, I'm just gonna mark it as it to do now
I can copy the link and if I was working in a team I could send that to other people and I can switch
Notifications off for this if any updates come from team members as well so over here
You can also start adding notes or comments below here and it also works with markdown so you can add any markdown
Text below
Which might be helpful something you can do is if you go to my profile you can actually upload a photo here, too
So we have shop in there. So tomorrow I actually need to edit a video. So I'm also going to put that as tomorrow
in my
Area and press ENTER on it. So as you can see the task appears just below so next week
I need to call charity shop. I'm going to put here next week
So as you can see tasks begin appearing pretty neatly over here and it becomes very linear
So what you can go do is press the settings or options and go to add heading
so for example if I wanted to create a next week heading
So I can sort of see the tasks for next week
I can begin dragging items
below and as you can see that looks a little bit neater now in any of the headings if I wanted to add a
Description I can do that here. So if I wanted to change the title of this column specifically I can go and do that
So they go I've updated the title and the description now any of these columns I can actually go ahead and delete it
Give me a little bit of a confirmation
But I can actually go and clear all of this out so I can also go ahead and add a new column at any given
Time and as you can imagine I can add whatever I want to below in this case
I'm gonna keep this one pretty clear for now. So what's really cool is below today
I can actually change the color of this one so that the pin actually comes up on the left hand side with another color
I can change it to whatever I like
I can also go ahead and edit the board as well so I can give it some notes and what the board is about
I can change the title. I can delete the board as well, which is incredibly helpful and I can change it from checkboxes to
Arrows apparently so you can see the arrows appear there. So that's just a slight preference change
you can even change it to dots if you wanted to which might be more suitable for those who like outline our applications and
Dashes as well. Now you can even have nothing if you didn't want anything at all in this case
I'm actually just going to keep it as dots. So the other thing you can do is add boards below
So if I wanted to for example change the shopping list into something a little bit stronger
Say I wanted it in dots and I wanted to create a ongoing shopping list. This could be helpful. I can move this around
However, I like and it acts as a project
So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to actually create an inventory so it can start
tallying all the stuff
I already have
So as you can see
I have three separate columns for that and what it can do is actually go down here and create different sections
for example, I could say
groceries and as you can see, it's very simple to start adding that and
Can do is for example if I know that I'm gonna be planning and using this on the mobile application. They do have a mobile
Web version they don't have a mobile app just to be clear
But we can steal and utilize the heading and I can actually remove some of these for example
So as you can see, what I could do is for example, as soon as I'm out of items in the inventory
I could just move them over to the relevant section. So in this case, it would go underneath the groceries
So this can be a handy way to plan in a sort of style Kanban experience
now if you and your team were say planning a
Roadmap of releases I could for example use this for a Content calendar. Let's see how that would look like
So, for example, I'm gonna go with dashes for this one
So for example here
I've given some say weeks that I want to release these on and
Let's say I wondered break these up in terms of headings as well
So as you can see
I've sort of created a template to some extent very simply by creating these headers and also this title here
So what I might want to do is go up to here and press duplicate. So as you can see I
Duplicated this here. Now. What I could do is actually drag this one to the end
and what I can do is press edit column and take out the main number at the top and
what I could do is simply minimize this so in order to minimize it all I have to do is press on the center and
As you can see it disappears
So that could be a good way to create a very subtle
Template inside of checklists and quite a neat way to do it in that below here
I can add all of the cards and details etc
And for example if I wanted to add some details about this one
I'm filming so I'm gonna set this one to today now
The thing that I noticed is you can't for example when you set that as today for it to appear in this today
section, so that's one of the things that I think they probably could add for example being able to
actually set a
Link to a say an inbox or a today area which may help you to?
Correlate all of the things that need doing for a specific day
So for example if I went ahead and completed that week
I could minimize it like that and focus on the weeks ahead only so that's quite a neat way in being able to plan a
Roadmap or content without necessarily building a timeline view
So for example, another thing you can do is drag files into the area
So as you can see there, the image comes up as a preview. So that's something that you can do
you can also tap the image to go into it and
Also hide the image as well if you don't want it appearing up but that's specifically helpful the heads of a few Pokemon
Demonstration of this but that could be a good way to visually see. Okay folks
So this was a very basic demonstration of the application
But if I'm honest I was actually pretty impressed at the way this application works. It's not too cluttered
It allows you to focus on what matters and what who is on this side
They're not restricting you to following a process
so checklists lovers will fall in love with this application instantly now who I most
Recommend this for I really recommend this for those who are looking for a simple checklist
application that builds them checklists in a very visual fashion without being too
Overwhelming in Kanban it is perfect for those who are building very simple lists
you want to be able to keep a tally of the things you need to watch the places you want to go and
All of that sort of stuff then this is a perfect application for you
It's super lightweight and works very well and even how some I guess advanced
Customizations that I think a lot of people would appreciate now if you're a team you can actually open up a new workspace
So for example in this case, let's create one for keep productive
So as you can see when you've got a new key productive area that appears on this left-hand side getting you started and separating the
Information there's some capabilities for teams and also solar users as well now. I'm incredibly impressed by this application
I really like the way that it blends a task manager and sort of outline a concept together in one application
Now in my opinion they could do a few things with the task relationships, but I'm very impressed
This application is free at the moment. So we don't know the pricing. We don't have a mobile application at the moment
And if I'm honest I did notice some slight
delay in
Duplicating experiences. But again, it's very early days for this applications
It's bound to have a few bugs and issues when you're getting started so folks
Thank you so much, and I will talk to you all very soon
Please do subscribe if you're brand new and I look forward to keeping an eye on this application. Actually anyway, folks cheerio