What's New in Chandler 0.7alpha4

What is alpha4 ?

Alpha 4 is our first Dashboard release. The Dashboard[1] is in part, inspired by GTD methodology and many of David Allen's insights into the problems with the ways in which people process information and get too easily sidetracked from important tasks in today's interruption-prone information workplaces. The Dashboard is the runway view of all of your information. The closest thing users have to a Dashboard today is their email client Inbox.

In addition to incremental improvements to calendaring and sharing, our goal in this release is to deliver a rough sketch of what Chandler will be by our first Preview release, which is scheduled for Spring of 2007.

In terms of functionality, this means:

• a basic framework for triage workflows
• support for lightweight information processing
• and rudimentary communications.

Workflows we're supporting in Alpha4

• Maintain a simple personal task list.
• Send notes, tasks and invitations to others via email.
• Schedule tasks on the calendar.
• Defer items add alarms to keep track of them.
• Share a simple task list with others.

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Highlights for Alpha4

Restore Settings:

Alpha4 has a new feature to help "dogfooders", those of us who are trying to use Chandler on a daily basis as our shared office calendar - eating our own dogfood as it were. This feature enables users to easily save and then restore settings to shared calendar collections when installing a newer version of Chandler. Installing a new version of Chandler often wipes out your repository, however you now can re-establish previously published or subscribed shared calendar collections in a single step. In addition to the shared calendar events, your collection color choices, number hours viewed in a day, as well as timezone settings are also restored. This only works if you are re-establishing your shared collections from the same server. BEFORE you install a new version of Chandler go to the Test->Save settings... menu item. This stores a chandler.ini file on your desktop (or to another directory if you choose). Once you have installed a new version of Chandler go the Test > Restore settings ... menu and select the chandler.ini file. You will notice that individual dialogs popup for each share that is getting restored. You can continue to use Chandler while this is going on in the background.

Important note for those upgrading from any previous version to 0.7alpha4:

Changes in both the desktop client and the server software make alpha4 no longer compatible with older Chandler data. This includes data that has been published to a Cosmo Sharing Account. You will NOT be able to restore previously shared collections from any Chandler version prior to 0.7alpha4. To preserve your data -- before you upgrade to alpha4, using your current version of Chandler you must export your calendar collection as a local iCalendar.ics file and then import that file after you install the alpha4 version. [2]

Keep in mind that if you have non-shared collections, you will have to use this same technique and export and import that data prior to wiping your repository during the upgrade.

There is also a shortcut to save and restore your account setup information when you install a new version of Chandler. This is useful if you're one of those users who simply has to have the latest Chandler checkpoint build to try out. Once you've installed alpha4, after configuring your information under the File > Accounts... menu you can save this information to a Chandler.ini file and then restore it the next time you run a new version of Chandler. Look for this feature under the Test > Save settings... and Test > Restore settings... menus.

Startup Options for Chandler:

If you find yourself unable to launch Chandler due to start-up errors, (on all platforms) hold down the Ctrl-key when launching Chandler and you will be presented with a dialog of startup options. This allows dogfooders to try several options in order to get Chandler to start without having to wipe out all your repository data.

 

Chandler Dashboard

In 0.7alpha4 we continue work on the Dashboard by adding some finishing touches to the basic table functionality introduced in 0.7alpha2 and introduce Triage status and custom-date Ticklers (alarm notification) for all Items, not just Calendar events. For more details you can read the Dashboard Specification document.
Navigating to the Dashboard Users go to the Dashboard by selecting the Dashboard collection in the sidebar. If we want to see the Dashboard for all our Items, we go to the Dashboard in the All application area. Alternatively, we can see Dashboards for just Messages, Tasks or Calendar by clicking the appropriate Application area in the Application bar. In this respect, the Dashboard is simply a type of view and users will have various Dashboard views which can be narrowed depending on what type of they want to have of the data.
Task, Reminder, Communication, and Triage Columns There are 4 important columns that provide the user with visual affordances and feedback to manipulate items in the Dashboard. The Task column is the most straightforward. It shows, and allows you to toggle, items stamped as a task. The Communication column purpose is to provide a wide range of visual feedback ie: read, unread items, and whether items have been sent, received, updated etc. The 0.7alpha4 milestone release only implements a small subset of these. The Reminder column indicated whether or not the item has event information and/or has a tickler alarm associated with it. The Triage column organizes your items into sections depending on when you need to pay attention to the item. See the section below for more details on Triage Status. Users should be able to sort on these columns by clicking on the header. It's important to note that we will not have a (descending or ascending) sort arrow displayed in the header for these columns. It's less important that we different between ascending and descending for these columns because the columns are iconic don't have an alpha-numeric order
Triage Status Triage centers around quickly processing information into Now, Later and Done buckets in order to provide users with a better framework for managing their focus. All Chandler Items regardless of Kind: notes, communications, tasks, events and eventually resources and newly defined Kinds have a Triage status. Triage statuses are mutually exclusive. Out of the box, there are 3 status values: Now, Later and Done. In the future, we imagine that user will be able to define their own and add and remove status values. For now, we have chosen to NOT have a separate section for NEW items to separate NEW items from those that appear in the NOW section. Why do we think our target users will use the triage status? Assumptions derived from user interviews: Less of a cognitive burden: Users can process information faster because making a Triage decision requires less knowledge about the Item than making a filing decision Easier interaction: Users can process information faster with fewer mouse-clicks than dragging and dropping Items into folders or tagging Items Tickling allows users to get information out of their face without worrying that they'll never remember to look at it again. Triage + Tickling allows users to iterate on Items over time, as opposed to feeling like they need to get things Done in a single sitting or keep Items flagged in front of their face for weeks and months because they're afraid they will lose track of them. As a result, users will be able to maintain their focus more easily on what they need to get done RIGHT NOW. We feel strongly that Triage will be especially useful for our Hub users. Therefore, getting something up and running in order to dogfood it and work out the kinks is very important.

 

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What's NOT working in Alpha 4

Keep in mind, this is a work-in-progress toward features for Chandler 0.7. There are a number of known problems and limitations with the current Dashboard view that may be confusing to users who wish to start playing with it. The following is a summary of what is not yet working:

In the All view, the Who column is not yet context sensitive. It therefore does not display the correct attribute depending on the particular circumstance of the item. Instead, it always displays the From: attribute, if there is one.
If a new item appears in a shared collection, but has not been Addressed to be sent as a message, you will not be able to see who created it. If you send an item out, you will not be able to see to whom you sent the item in the Dashboard table. However, you will be able to see that information in the Detail View. If a shared item is edited by someone else, you will not be able to see who edited the item.
.	The Communications Status column in alpha4 is semantically-poor. You will not be able to: Differentiate between Read and Unread messages. Mark messages as Needs reply. Differentiate between Drafts, Queued and Sent messages. Be alerted when there has been an Error sending a message

We are not providing robust support for: Receiving items from other Chandler clients. Easily add items to Chandler from your existing email client You will not be able to manually re-order items in the Dashboard. There is not yet support for Labeling or User-defined Attributes

In the Detail View, the Addressing fields aren't working entirely to spec: You still cannot edit the From: field. We have yet to de-couple who a message is From: and who actually Sent: it. You still cannot edit and update an item that has already been sent. There is limited support for Stamping items to add or change Kind attributes.

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[1] Dashboard Specification document

[2] Exporting and importing to preserve collection data during the upgrade to 0.7alpha4 - for detailed instructions including how to also preserve non-event items in your repository, refer to the following Chandler [DESIGN] maillist posting.)

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Highlights of Features introduced in the previous version:

Take a look below at some screenshots of the Chandler 0.7 features that are making their initial appearance in 0.7alpha3. Remember that as we roll out new features, we don't expect them to be complete, robust, pretty, or bug-free, and the following are no exception. But they will give you an idea of what Chandler is going to be in the future. With the new features and performance improvements we suggest if you were using a previous version of Chandler that you switch to 0.7alpha3. If you do want to begin using the 0.7alpha3 milestone you should follow the instructions on the Chandler Project wiki for migrating your data from 0.6 to 0.7alpha3.

Background sync

• Synching calendars as well as publish and subscribe operations now run in the background. This means you can continue to use the application while a sync is running.
• By default, calendars sync every hour.
• Using the Collection->Synchronization preferences menu you can change this option from every 1/2 hour to once a day.
• Users will still have the option to force a sync manually.

Intel Mac support

• Chandler can now be built and run on the Intel Mac platform.
• We also provide separate downloads for both the PPC and Intel Mac on the downloads page.

We have made a number of architecture changes to improve performance

• Some operations were loading all items in a collection -- we changed this behavior with a series of fixes
• The column header renders faster (use of freeze/thaw in the column header when changing text)
• Optimizations in looking up events for a given week, including use of the "sub-index" feature to look for recurring events

Further progress on internationalization

• Integration with wxWidgets i18n (dialogs are now localizable)
• Unit and functional tests cover non-ascii characters in all displayable strings, non-ascii filenames, etc.
• i18n egg support
• Numerous i18n related bug fixes

Other stuff

• Hold down the Ctrl key on launch to bring up a start-up management dialog
• Zanshin free-busy query support
• Numerous bug fixes reported by users: alpha3 is first dogfoodable release since 0.6.1
• License change to Apache 2.0

For a complete list of major known bugs see list at http://chandlerproject.org/Projects/ZeroPointSevenAlpha4KnownBugs

 

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Background Synchronization
Repeated synchronization of calendars, as well as the initial publish and subscribe operations now run in the background. This means you can continue to use the application while a synchronization is executing. By default, calendars sync every hour. But, using the Collection->Synchronization preferences menu you can change this option from every 1/2 hour to once a day. Choosing the "Manually" option turns off the automatic background sync. Regardless of the background sync preference, users will still have the option to force a sync manually either by using the "Sync All" button to the Task Bar, using the File->Sync->... menu, or using the Test->Sharing->Start a background sync now option.
Under the Test->Sharing menu there are some additional options to initiate a variety of sharing and syncing operations.
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Intel Macintosh Support
Chandler can now be built and run on the Intel Mac platform. We also provide separate downloads for both the PPC and Intel Mac on the Chandler 0.7alpha4 downloads page.
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0.6 release highlights
Chandler 0.6 was a significant milestone for us here at OSAF. We delivered experimentally usable software into the hands of users for the first time. This allowed us to start building an active user community as well as collect valuable feedback as people start to use the product on a day-to-day basis. See Chandler 0.6 Read Me for more details. [top of page]