Don't for Android until the app gets an update recently released the Do Social Productivity app for Android. Will Kelly gives us his review.

During a recent round of updates to the social task management application, Salesforce launched the Do Social Productivity app for Android. It joins their free Do - Social Productivity iPhone app for enabling users mobile access to their projects and tasks. I use for managing some reoccurring midsize projects, so I recently spent some time using their new app on a Google Nexus 7 tablet. While you can use it from an Android smartphone, the app makes nice use of the extra screen real estate tablets offer.

When you open the app, you have the option to login using either a Google Apps or account. If you don't have a account yet, you have the option to create a new account directly from the app.

Create tasks

When you open the Do Social Productivity app, a list of your assigned and available tasks greets you. The tasks are written in white text on a black background, which can be harsh on the eyes. It's the one part where the fabled Salesforce user experience stumbles in this app. I found the white text on a black background hard to read even on a tablet. Figure A shows an example of the task list. Figure A

The task list shows your tasks by section.
When you tap the plus sign [+], it brings up the Create a Task screen (Figure B). I tried to assign a task to another user, but the assignees feature wasn't picking up anybody from my address book or the test email addresses that I shared with the project. However, a Salesforce representative said that the Do development team is about to submit an update to Google Play that will allow users to add new assignees via an email or through the device's address book. On a brighter note, the calendar interface for the due date is well designed and easy to use. Figure B

Create a Task screen.

Unfortunately, when I tried to add the task to an existing Do project, the Do Android app crashed repeatedly, and I was never able to get the feature to work when I was writing this post. I followed the prompts to report the crash, which brings up a rather intimidating Google legal agreement that you have to accept or decline before sending notice of the crash and your system data to the minds at Google. On a corporate or BYOD tablet, this would be inexcusable. The only workaround at this time is to add tasks from the web and only use the mobile app to strike tasks from your project.

Access and create projects

The Projects list is way more readable than the list of tasks. You can scroll through all of the projects you have access to in, with direct links to Tasks, Projects, and Notes. The scrolling was responsive on my Nexus 7 tablet. Figure C shows how the Do app presents Projects. Figure C

Projects in the Do Social Productivity app.
You can create new projects using the Android app. It works like a charm. To add insult to injury, actions like finding assignees and creating a new task worked flawlessly in the new project I just created. Figure D shows the Create a Project screen. Figure D

Create a new project in

Add Notes

The notes feature (Figure E) is pretty bare bones as note-taking features go. One immediate reaction is you can only type text above the line in the note -- it's not a space for a heading (if it is, then that's another thing that didn't work for me in this app). The notes I entered using the Do Social Productivity app didn't synchronize back to my project. Figure E

A blank note in

Wait for the update

While the web version of Do recently gained Do Contacts, a contact management feature, and Do Deals, a lightweight CRM feature, you'll have to wait for these to appear on the Do Android app. However, if you have a task associated with a Deal or Contact from the web app, it will still appear in the Android app.

The Do Social Productivity App for Android has great potential, but the readability issues and multiple crashes make it seem like a beta app when put up against the high quality cloud application. I can't recommend this app right now, because the significant quality issues make it unacceptable for business users. I advise waiting in hopes the development team resolves the quality issues and delivers an update on par with the social task management application.




Amit here from the team. Will, we’re bummed to hear you had a difficult experience with our app for Android. Just yesterday we released a new version of Do app you reviewed that should resolve some of the issues you encountered, available on Google Play. We build Do based on customer/user feedback so we really appreciate you sharing your thoughts – keep ‘em coming! Stay tuned for new feature rollouts in the coming months.