PS. Re Point 8... Is there any hotkey way to give focus to the Importance and/or Urgency sliders on a task? This is an IMPORTANT requirement for me... !
J On Friday, November 28, 2014 10:26:06 PM UTC, Dwight Arthur wrote: > > Hi, John. My answers are a little different from Joel's. > > Just to get it out of the way, I will start with #12. I'd like to break it > into three parts: Listening to users and being guided by user requests, > quick turnaround on requested enhancements, and communicating plans and > status back to users. > > In my opinion (others may disagree) a substantial amount of the > development of MLO since I got involved with it a few years ago has been > based on, and guided by user requests. There are some long-standing > requests that have not been addressed but I do believe that the development > team deserves credit for giving serious consideration to user requests. > > MLO seems to have a longer development cycle than many other apps. I won't > speculate as to why, but I will say that it's not uncommon for the time > between releases to be quite long, and for users to become quite impatient > with the wait for features that have been promised but not yet delivered. I > don't view this as unresponsiveness, it's a different issue. > > Finally, MLO developers are not good at keeping users posted about what's > on the way and when to expect it. We have seen several attempts to make > this better but as of today the problem remains. > > Moving on to your other items > > 1. It would help to know what mobile platform you intend to use. On > Windows the Rapid Task Entry (RTE) window is fairly effective. Unlike Joel > I find the Add-Task widget on Android to be more effective than RTE. I can > open a new task in one to two taps, type the task name and then save it in > one tap. If I want to set priorities, categories, schedules etc one more > tap brings up the full task properties menu. I don't know anything about > what happens on Apple, though. > > 2. Subprojects and subtasks are solid features. > > 3. You can toggle project status with a single click or the hotkey > Ctrl-Shift-P. Note that you can find lots of hotkeys (and redefine them if > you like) in tools>options>general>hotkeys. There are also a number of > users who exchange scripts for MLO under AHK (AutoHotKey) in this forum. > > 4. The built-in Next Actions view should provide what you want. > > 5. if you sign up for cloud sync (an extra-cost service) you will be able > to set up an email address for your tasks at the cloud server. Any email > you forward to this address will be added to the cloud copy of your tasks. > The next time you sync, the task will appear in your task list. There is a > scheme for encoding parameters like context, importance, etc into the name > of the task when using RTE; if you turn on the Parse option RTE will decode > the parameters and apply them to the task. (the parsing syntax is a little > obscure especially with respect to dates but once you get the hang of it, > it works well.) There's no parsing in the email to cloud service, but once > the task is in your profile you can select it an hot some hotkey (I don't > use this so I'm not sure of the hotkey, maybe it's alt-enter?) and MLO will > parse and apply the parameters at that time. > > 6. You can set importance and urgency separately. There's also something > called computed-score which takes importance, urgency, schedule issues, the > tasks' parents and other stuff and creates an overall priority. Computed > score is written up in the User Guide - I don't use it because it's too > complex, but some people really like it. You can use autoformat rules to do > the highlighting and formatting that you seek. It involves creating rules > like "if importance is greater than 100 and less than 150 and task is not > completed then font color is orange." There's a bit of a learning curve to > this stuff but it's worth it because it's very powerful. > > 7. In MLO there are often many ways to do one thing and you should chose > the one that's easiest and most effective for you. (Which might be > different from the one that's easiest and most effective for me). I would > use the "star" which can be turned on with a single click or by hitting > ctrl-shift-s. Other people might define a flag called "inFocus" and > associate an appropriate icon. > > 8.OK, it's time to talk about position-in-outline versus > position-in-report. Every task has a position somewhere in the outline, > alongside of its siblings, above any subtasks, subfolders or sub-folders > (collectively "children") and (unless it's at the root) its parent and > grandparent etc items (each of which can be a task, folder or project). > Position in the outline is helpful for finding a task and it matters for > "complete tasks in order" and has a big effect on the calculation of > computer-score. But position in the outline is not necessarily related at > all to what tasks to do next. A view showing all tasks in their > hierarchical structure is an outline view, a view showing a selected subset > (eg tasks in a certain context) in their hierarchical structure is a > filtered outline. People often find it helpful to work in the outline when > analysing and designing their projects. When actually getting things done, > many people prefer to work in a to-do list, which is a flat (no hierarchy) > filtered and sorted view of things to be done. Sometimes there is a > legitimate need to move a task around in the outline, but usually when > people ask about this, they are wanting to move a task up or down in a > sorted list. Again, there are a lot of methods - my favorite is to sort the > list by importance then, click on the importance slider and hold down the > left arrow or the right arrow on the keyboard. The slider starts to move > and the importance numbers start to climb or dive. At the same time, the > task jumps up or down the listing as its position in the sort order > changes. When the task has landed where I want it, I let go of the arrow. > > 9. You must be familiar with the PC application program by now. There's no > web program at this point. > > 10. mobile and desktop apps can sync by either wifi or cloud sync > facilities. Wifi syncs between two devices on the same IP subnet. If your > mobile device is out of range of the wifi then sync will have to wait till > it's back in range. If there are more than two devices (eg a desktop, phone > and tablet) you have to set up sync between two of them (say, the desktop > and phone) and then exclude the phone and reconfigure the desktop to sync > with the tablet. It's free and the data never leaves your subnet so > security is less of an issue. With cloud sync, each device syncs separately > with a cloud server. There is a monthly charge for the service. You can > sync any device whenever you want. Conflict resolution is nicely > implemented on windows-to-cloud syncs but is a bit more primitive on the > Android side. You can have lots of devices syncing (and sharing) the same > task list. You can email a task to the cloud server and it will show up on > all of your devices. Security entails the use of standard SSL for > communications to and from the cloud server. Databases on Android and > Windows are encrypted only if the user has set up some sort of encrypted > volume using OS utilities, MLO remains unaware of any such protections. At > this point there does not seem to be any way to cause the cloud database to > be encrypted. The cloud service is apparently hosted at Amazon, which has > better than average security as compared to other unencrypted cloud > databases. This was clearly an acceptable level of security for nearly > everyone when the cloud sync was implemented but the number of people > seeking improvements such as encryption of cloud data are increasing. > > 11. security was discussed in item 10 above > > 12 dealt with at the top. As others have noted, communication is somewhat > better with those who apply for and are accepted into the beta program, > which entails committing to spend some serious time testing beta versions > of MLO. Full disclosure: I'm a moderator in the Android and Windows beta > teams. > > Best of luck to you. > Dwight > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MyLifeOrganized" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to mylifeorganized+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to mylifeorganized@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/dc57e8ed-ecfb-4962-a2c8-ac0d4a3429eb%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
