Informant - Interview with the developer of a fantastic app

Did you have any prior development or coding experience?

I have been with the company for 15 years and presently work as the Product Manager and curator of the history of Pocket Informant. I work very closely with the developers but I am not a developer myself.

What was the most challenging aspect of developing mobile app?

Pocket Informant for iOS is our flagship product and largest seller. With that said speaking to the iOS development, one of the most unique features of Pocket Informant is its capability to display its own local calendar and task data in parallel with the devices' own iOS Calendar and Reminders data both visible in the same application. This was one of the greatest engineering feats and most unique features of the application.

_{Wesley Sandlin - Product Manager - Informant}

The interviewee, Wesley Sandlin, is the product manager and the global support manager of Informant; the flagship product of Fanatic Software. Fanatic Software focuses on mobility software and strives to provide the highest quality software for iOS and Android.

Name a few of your favorite apps and reason you love them.

We are a little on the boring side here. One of our favorite apps is LastPass Password Manager. We have been a fan of this application for a long time as we have a lot of various passwords to deal with each day and this app has been an invaluable ally in keeping us working efficiently.

Another application that’s a bit more off the beaten path is EchoLink. One of our staffers is a Ham (Amateur Radio) operator. This application essentially turns a mobile device into a Ham radio and allows communication around the world via EchoLink enabled repeaters. It's an easy way to talk in the Ham (Amateur Radio) world without having separate radio gear available. Users do need to be licensed as Amateur Radio operators to use the application.

How long have you been working on this app?

I have been working in various capacities on the application for 15 years. Our current development team has a combined 27 years of Apple development experience with about half of that time being dedicated to Pocket Informant.

What need of the user did you have in mind when developing this app?

With Pocket Informants original roots in Windows at the start wewanted to take a lot of the functions of Outlook of the time and enhance them and fill in the gaps that we and others had noticed in that application. Since then our customers have directed our development and helped lead us to what Pocket Informant has grown into today. For example, direct syncing to services such as Google and Toodledo, implementation of the Getting Things Done and Franklin Covey task management elements and many other features.

In what way do you think your app is better than similar apps on the market? Please describe in detail what innovation you think you bring and what you are proud of in your app.

Pocket Informant allows the parallel usage of iOS Events and Reminders with its own local events and tasks. In addition, it can sync to Google Calendar, Google Tasks, Toodledo, and Evernote directly. This provides unprecedented flexibility. Pocket Informant is also very flexible with its settings, a user can literally configure Pocket Informant to be as simple or complex as they wish with regards to their task and event management.

What are your future plans and expected features of the coming new versions of this app?

That is a very good question. Our customers have given us many new ideas and suggestions over the last year. We are in the process of culling through those and getting list of things that fit within the product scope and that can be implemented in a reasonable amount of time and budget. With that said I don’t have any specifics that we are ready to share at the moment. iOS 13 was a true game-changer and we are also in the process of updating a lot of the back end parts of Pocket Informant to fully take advantage of the new features of iOS 13. For more details on the new features, I would urge users to watch our blogs and social media websites.

Assuming new users of your app are reading this page. What do you want to ask them to do (contact you about X, Share the app, etc.)?

We would ask that potential new users take a look at our family of products for the macOS, iOS and Android platforms. The mobile applications are free to try. To get a feel for the full features users can also create a trial Informant Sync account which adds even more functionality to the free mobile applications. We also offer free unlimited technical support for our products. Please go to our website pocketinformant.com for more information.

Thank you for talking to us today!