15-Minute Reviews :: RoboTask v2.5.1

Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is RoboTask version 2.5.1 by Neowise Software – An automation solution for your computer.

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“RoboTask enables you to automate any combination of tasks on your computer, ranging from simply launching applications, to checking email, moving or backing up files to uploading or downloading, sending email and much more.

The program allows to easily create simple task, as well as highly complex automations, involving conditional IF/ELSE statements, loops, custom variables and other advanced options.”

Quick Pros

• Interface and building system easy to use
• Lots of actions including loops and If/Then
• Variables for passing information on from dialog boxes or otherwise
• Many different triggers including network port and others
• Two other plug-ins available – CD/DVD Writer and BASIC

Quick Cons

• Hot keys could allow for the Windows key as well
• FTP is not secure
• Could use screen-watching functionality

Expansion

Overall this application is extremely simple to use. The main window you are greeted with has a row of buttons along the top. Below that is a tree structure on the left for organization of your tasks (great if you end up creating a lot of tasks) and a task list on the right, displaying all the tasks in the current folder. Below this you will find a log screen to show you various messages relating to the tasks that have been complete. With this layout, it is very quick to get around and change/add/remove what you need to alter.

Building a new task is very simple. Once you have chosen the folder you’d like to drop it in and clicked on the ‘Create New Task’ button, the application brings you to a window with 3 tabs; One is for actions, the next is for triggers, and advanced settings. Building the actions of a task is as easy as clicking Add and adding which blocks you would like to use. There is a lot of powerful functionality here besides the actions (which in itself is rather large collection). There is If/Then clauses, many different loops, variables for storing information, SQL functionality and much more. There are so many options here; You could build an auto-reply functionality for emails, create backup scripts, make quick-insert text and much more. There are also more plugins available here as well. – a CD/DVD Writer plug-in and a BASIC language plug-in. While it may not be quite as powerful as a raw language to program scripts for performing actions, there is a lot here to make building a task easy, and will cover many peoples’ needs.

After you’ve built a task, you can either finish here, allowing for manual activation of the task, or you can move on to the trigger tab. There are quite a few triggers here; From scheduling, to hot keys, endless loops, file monitoring, network port listening and more. It is very easy to pick what kind you need and set its settings up as well. One thing about the hot keys function, is that (like almost all other applications I’ve tested) will not allow you to use the Windows key in its keypress.

All-in-all, during my testing of this application I built quite a few tasks and they all ran quickly and easily. There are a couple concerns however.

I do believe this application needs to offer Secure FTP as well. With this day and age with the number of malicious attacks out there, it really should be standard on any application out there (Even the default setting, rather than the option). As well, this application could also use some screen-watching functionality. This really can’t be too difficult of a hurdle here; The inclusion of this one aspect alone could enable gamers to use this application, or allow scripts which may not specifically rely on window positioning to be accurate (Chat/IM windows for a business for example where you may want an auto-responder to let them know you’ll be with them as soon as possible, for example.)

Final Verdict

While in the past I have stuck to scripting my own tasks and using other applications, I think this application will be added to my compliment of tools. It is powerful enough to fit many of my daily needs but simple enough to allow me to toss something together quickly. While I did not have the chance to use the BASIC plug-in, I suspect this will add that extra level of power some may need, though granted in a less-used language. For free, if you have any scripting need, or hotkey-to-text needs or otherwise, this may definitely be worth snatching while free. As for paying $99.95 for this title for personal use ($149.95 for business use), while it is a killer application, I would really find it difficult to warrant this price tag and possibly stick to my scripting instead, though for some that may need a script-like engine that is easy to use and don’t want to learn a scripting language, this still may be worth the price tag.

Posted by BladedThoth on Friday, September 28, 2007