So I’m in the rather cool position of working on Extreme Agenda 5.0 and also using the evolving product to plan the work to be done.

So let this be a little preview of what is coming in Extreme Agenda 5.0 as well as the power it will provide. We have decided to double down on power features, and have some that only a handful of other apps may have, but you won’t find them all in one place like this. Our direction is now defining EA to be the premium app for organization with power and flexibility. It always has, but we want to make that a more solid position in the premium space.

So a lot of this feature planning falls into our already powerful Reminder List, using a Getting Things Done(GTD) like system on the iPhone. Check out our older blog post on GTD in Extreme Agenda for more help.

The first big thing is that we have made this list have 3 levels of sorting(effectively 4 as name is used as the last one if not used before). So our setup is to sort by Status( Actions like “Next Action“, “Planning”, and “Active“), then Completed, and then Priority. So as we move features we are adding in to groups like the Next Action group, we can have a few in the group and then use the tap-n-hold popup toolbar to change the priority to move them up and down the list. And with this setup the completed reminders drop down to the bottom of the current group.

The second, and arguably one of the biggest new game changing features of EA 5.0, is that you can add lists to reminders and events. So now each feature reminder can have a sub-list built right in that I can access and check off as I complete the smaller pieces that make up the feature. We can’t begin to explain how handy this feature is. Wait until you see it’s implementation and uses. And best of all they are embedded into your notes, so they appear anywhere you look at the event or reminder.

We also have added color to the flat icon set, and are using that to our advantage. Another way of grouping our new features is that we added several categories to the system based on size of the feature(approximately how many hours or how much effort). We set all of these categories to the same flat ruler icon(denotes size) but gave them all different colors. Now at a glance when looking at the reminder list I can tell by color whether this feature is Large, Medium, or Small. I can also re-sort based on category, status, completed, and see what is left for big chunks of time.

And finally we are taking advantage of updates to the template system, so we can tap n hold the + button, select the template choice and then select a template from the list for say a “Small, Next Action, High Priority” reminder and fill in the name only, and we have a filled in reminder.

So with Extreme Agenda 5.0, get ready to be even more organized. This is just the start of what new features are going in to version 5.0 to make it the best planner on iOS.