ActivityOwner.Com - Getting Things Done with MindManager, ResultsManager, and GyroQ » Mark Task Complete

What is the Next Action for ActivityOwner.Com?

ActivityOwner — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 15:27:03 +0000

Reviewing my ResultsManager review dashboard this morning I found just a couple of projects related to my "blog" area and a long list of someday/maybes. I thought it might be useful to solicit reader guidance on where it would be most valuable for you to focus. Basically I'm wondering whether to focus on discussing, enhancing, or documenting MindReader, OutLinker, Mark Task Complete, Next Action Analysis, or Map2Excel or to focus on discussing my GTD workflow using these tools.

I would appreciate it if you could please click here to take a brief Survey Monkey survey or comment below.

I've recently cleaned up the layout of the site with a new site overview map and new "related post" links added to the entries. I hope it will help folks navigate around the posts on their topic of interest.

Synchronize Outlook Task Lists with MindManager

ActivityOwner — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 02:03:52 +0000

I'm working on improving my Next Action Analysis (NAA) score this week and am faced with a "Project Needing Next Action" penalty for my "Create Macro to Sync up Dashboard to OutLook Task List" project. This was a reader requested script I finished up a few days ago. It looks like the next action it to mention it here, so here goes…

There is a new macro installed by the MindReader installer and also available on the wiki MindManager Macro Library that will do a basic syncronization of tasks between your ResultsManager Daily Action Dashboard in MindManager and your Microsoft Outlook task list.

The macro (ao_nextactions_to_outlook.mmbas) does the following:

Delete previosly transferred or exported items from oulook unless marked complete
If marked complete in outlook, run mark task complete on them in the daily action dashboard.
Transfer new items from Outlook into MindManager via MindReader.
Leave them behind as well but add "ao_transferred" into note to mark them as transferred
Export next actions from daily action dashboard to Outlook task list. Set basic attributes like context, due date, and priority.

Note that this is designed specifically for use with a ResultsManager Daily Action Dashboard.

This basic macro isn't smarter than described above, and will not detect changes in attributes (beyond completion) to sync back to MindManager. Attempting to do anything fancier than this is is buried deep on my GTD someday/maybe list.

I've never had much success in attempting to do this type of synchronization with other "built-in" methods. This provides some basic functionality that might be of use to those who need it.

If you want to have ready access to your next actions from outlook or your smart phone, this can be a good strategy. This also allows you to capture new actions in Outlook and feed them in. For 1-way transfers into MindManager from OutLook, OutLinker provides a more robust approach.

You can run the macro manually or incorporate into the "Put it in front of the door script" for overnight processing.

Next Action: "Waiting for reader feedback on Outlook Task Syncronization".

NAA score +0.1 :-).

A different approach to marking tasks complete

ActivityOwner — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 01:28:03 +0000

Juan has been collecting on his 2008 Next Action Analysis Contest prize with some macro requests. This weekend he asked for a MindManager macro that could take a ResultsManager dashboard with tasks that had been manually set to 100% complete (not processed with the "d" tag or "mark task complete" macro) and process them all at once with mark task complete. Right now you have to select sets of tasks and run the macro to mark them complete.

The new "ao_select_complete_and_mtc.mmbas" macro on in the mindmanager macro library and added by the new install will do as requested by Juan. You can manually set tasks complete (including repeating tasks) and it will process them in 1 shot. You just need to make sure you run it before you refresh the dashboard. Juan envisions having this macro run as part of the "Put it in front of the door" script.

If you take this approach, you want to avoid using the built-in ResultsManager "send changes" command before running this macro as it will permanently set repeating tasks complete if you set them 100% complete in the dashboard.

I figured I put up a quick post in case others wanted to test it or had ideas on how to best implement approach.

MindReader Repeat Category Keyword Updates

ActivityOwner — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 21:43:11 +0000

Marco is working on creating Dutch Configuration maps for MindReader and Mark Task Complete. As part of that effort the language specific code was eliminated for Mark Task Complete and moved to the configuration map. The project also triggered a review of the keywords recognized by MindReader for setting the repeat codes for Mark Task Complete and some improvement opportunities were identified. In particular there is some overlap between strings being recognized as due date codes and repeat codes (e.g. "end of month"). Secondly some common repeat codes often cause false positives. For example "read monthly report" is often a single task with an attachment rather than a repeating task).

With the latest update to MindReader, the following default MindReader category keywords changes have been made. The actual codes in Mark Task Complete remain the same and the program will recognize either keyword when entered as a category.

daily -> rdaily
weekly -> rweekly
fortnightly -> rfortnightly
monthly -> rmonthly
quarterly -> rquarterly
yearly -> ryearly
biannual -> rbiannually

The following category keywords (which also server as due date keywords) are deleted:

end of month
end of quarter

These can still be entered manually as categories or set by MindReader using the endofmonth and endofquarter keywords.

This may evolve a bit further as the Dutch language project progresses.

[edit: Here is the current list:]