PIM stands for Personal Information Manager. PIMs are software programs which help you to manage your personal data like appointments, tasks, notes, emails and contacts. A PIM can be seen as an electronic form of your organizer.

A good PIM should remind you about upcoming important appointments and tasks, so that you don’t forget them. It should allow you to manage all your different contacts and categorize them into different groups like personal and business. All information should be easily accessible and editable. The PIM should support you with your daily organization – not constrain you.

A lot of PIMs store their data on a web server. This enables you to access it, mostly with a modern browser, from every place with an internet connection. But this solution has several big disadvantages. What will happen, when you don’t have an internet connection? And what happens when the web server goes offline for some reason? You simply won’t be able to access your data. So it’s better to rely on a PIM which stores all data on your local hard drive. This is much safer and often a security measure. When you still want to access your data on the way, there are lots of PIMs who offer a web frontend, too.

Most users have more than only one computer they work with. You often have a computer at home, one at your office and probably a laptop when you’re on the way. A good PIM should offer an easy way of data synchronization, so that you have your data available on every computer and should not be concerned about your data condition on every computer you use.

Additionally your new PIM should allow you to share your information with other people. When you need to work in a team, it’s a good thing when you can allow others to access your data. Of course there should be some permission management which secures your privacy. Even when you’re actually working alone, you should use a PIM which offers team functions. You then can turn them on when it’s time for it. This way you’re ready for every future challenge.

Alexander Bartz is lead tech developer at soft-evolution, a software company which has developed the personal information manager Pimero.

categories: personal information management,pim,personal organizer,personal manager,teamwork,organization,collaboration,organizer