ActivityOwner.Com - Getting Things Done with MindManager

How to improve MindManager?

ActivityOwner — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 12:43:51 +0000

Mindjet has a new mindjet.uservoice.com site where users can suggest and vote on new features for MindManager. I learned of this after Andrew Wilcox posted a suggestion on the mindmanager yahoo group for adding an option to disable new multiple hyperlink feature.

I added a suggestion for adding a "Left Map" map layout option.

This venue to add suggestions in an organized and prioritized way is a nice offering. In general it feels like MindJet has improved its customer strategy with the release of MindManager 2012. Several former add-ins are built into the product (Sharepoint, PowerMarkers, JCV-Gantt). This enhances the product and simplifies purchasing/licensing for organizations. The introduction of free online MindJet Connect should aid in increasing personal use that will increase their user base. I have not tested it yet, but I understand the new free IPad App is much improved. The previous $7.95 version was vastly inferior to IThoughtsHD and not serving them well.

MindManager 2012

ActivityOwner — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 03:32:36 +0000

Updated add-ins for MindManager 2012 have been posted for Map2Excel, MindReader, MarkTaskComplete, MyMapMacros, and Omni2Map.

Map2Excel 2012

ActivityOwner — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 04:19:20 +0000

The Map2Excel add-in is now available for MindManager Professional 2012.

In addition to exporting maps in outline or tabular format, Map2Excel has the ability to export useful hyperlinks either to map topics or external links.

The source code for the older SAX Basic version Map2Excel was released under Creative Commons 3.0.

Omni2Map: Export OmniFocus to MindManager

ActivityOwner — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 03:28:27 +0000

As I mentioned in my earlier OmniFocus for IPad Review, I recently adopted OmniFocus as my home project management system for Getting Things Done (GTD)

In the review I noted several weaknesses of the IPad app that I thought I might be able to address with a MindManager Add-in (Omni2Map). As a Windows user, I particularly I wanted to avoid having all my plans stranded in my IPad. I also was interested in aiding my (occasional) weekly reviews with Next Action Analysis.

After a bit of debugging today and some help from a brave early adopter, I think the add-in is working fairly well now. The new menu tab added is fairly limited — just a launch button and ha help button:

Omni2Map will import your OmniFocus data into a MindManager map and mark up your projects and tasks with due dates, contexts, etc.

More information and screen shots are located on the Omni2Map page on the ActivityOwner.com wiki where you can download the latest version. It is only compiled for MindManager 8 and 9 at the moment.

OmniFocus for IPad Review

ActivityOwner — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 14:32:20 +0000

As I mentioned in my last post on Declaring GTD Bankruptcy, I recently decided to switch my personal GTD system to make better use of my new Ipad 2.

Why Switch?
Besides the value of having to reconsider all my priorities in the migration process, the main driver was to get away from my home desk a bit more. I spend a lot of time at my office keyboard and was spending a correspondingly high amount at my home desk for a variety of things. The Ipad can get you away from your desk for many activities where you are just consuming information (reading/deleting mail, news, searching) and reduce desk time to more focus on creating things and keyboard-intensive activities.

Using the information and tools on the ActivityOwner.com site you can do quite a bit to synchronize information back and forth between your MindManager maps and mobile-accessible formats (e.g. dropbox), but that can be a bit clunky and it introduces a delay between when you add or complete something and when you next refresh your dashboards. I continue to use ResultsManager at work, although to be honest I spend most of my time just taming my inbox with OutLinker.

Why OmniFocus
I tried a few web-based tools including Remember the Milk and Nozbe but they didn't resonate for some reason. Nozbe's reoccuring cost is reasonable but a bit of a deterrent. I initially stayed away from OmniFocus for Ipad since its is an Apple application and has no Windows counterpart, but the reviews and functionality looked good. At $39.95 it is not cheap for an Ipad App, but I figure you get what you pay for so I took the plunge.

The Pros
OmniFocus for Ipad has been on the market for awhile and there are many reviews of it available, so I'll just enumerate the things that jumped out at me as a long-time ResultsManager user and GTD add-in developer:

It is great to be able to capture/process/plan/review/do on the move away from my PC as time permits. The quiet Sunday morning "Weekly Review" is a nice concept, but doesn't always materialize.
OmniFocus organizes itself in realtime. There is no dashboard refresh step between when you change something and when it shows up in your lists.
OmniFocus tracks your "Weekly Review" on a project by project basis. By default, each project puts itself up on the "Review" list on weekly basis, but you can change this default to any frequency you wish. This is a nice way to ensure your "Someday" items get a once over at some frequency and that you continue to have the right next steps for your active projects. This means you can do a partial review of your projects and pick up where you left off when you next have time. This concept could be a nice addition to the Next Action Analysis framework and would just require a standard way of leaving another type of date stamp on a project (perhaps as a tag).
OmniFocus lets you organize your projects in a folder structure and also allows for sub-contexts. You can choose to limit your "focus" on a folder or sub-folder of activity or on a context.
OmniFocus has a very rapid "Search" feature that gets you to tasks and projects quickly.
You can easily convert tasks to projects or move tasks to a new project. Reorganizing contexts and folders is also easy.
Its repeating task capabilities are fairly good. Its not quite as advances as Mark Task Complete, but is more than adequate.
The program and data are native to the IPad. It doesn't suffer from web delays and does not require an internet connection.
As a stand-alone fully capable GTD application, $39.95 is not a bad deal.
The functionality seems "just right" for the task. I am not familiar with the desktop version of OmniFocus, but I get the sense that the developers have slimmed down from its (perhaps bloating and complex?) function set down to the key features.

The Cons
If veteran OmniFocus users find any of these observations off-track, let me know, I may not fully understand the capabilities at this stage.

If you are not a Mac user, your data is relatively stranded and not backed up. It it synced to itunes when you sync your Ipad, but you don't necessarily do that very often, and doesn't provide that much peace of mind when you do. If you misplace your Ipad you need to buy a new one to get at your lists?
It doesn't highlight "Projects needing next steps" like ResultsManager does, although timed periodic project review helps catch those.
It doesn't highlight "aging" tasks like Next Action Analysis.
While you can email individual tasks, you can't export or print a full to do list.
It doesn't provide the month-based archiving of completed tasks that Mark Task Complete provides.
Its not a team-oriented tool.
Typing speed is slow and there is no MindReader to facilitate mark up.
Its ability to prioritize is limited to whether something is flagged or not.
It doesn't include a time-required field
Attaching information to a task or project isn't that easy. You can send web links from Safari to OminFocus.
Its not web-based, so you have to keep your ipad handy (e.g. carry it to work rather than pull up web app at lunch).

The first four items were somewhat concerning to me, particularly the stranding of data and potential disaster recovery issues (I don't need involuntary GTD bankruptcy at this point). After a bit of googling, I discovered that OmniFocus uses xml as its native data storage format, which liberates the data in an albeit cryptic organization. MindManager can actually open xml files, which allows the content to be processed with macros. I used this approach several years ago to develop import routines for BaseCamp and (non defunct?) nactionr.

I found I was able to take a similar approach with the main contents.xml file that stores the OmniFocus information. Getting access to the data is a little involved if you are a PC user. I needed to set up a webdav folder with DreamHost to sync the data with. This wasn't a big deal since I'm already set up with them for the blog. Disclamer — referral fee goes to AO charity if you sign up via that link. Setting up the extra sync destination made sense in any case as a secondary backup/restore strategy. If you are a mac user of the desktop application, you can probably get the contents.xml file directly.

The first version of the Omni2Map addin is now available for download (version 9 only). It will export your OmniFocus data into a MindManager map and mark up your projects and tasks with due dates, contexts, etc. It uses ResultsManager conventions, which enables the exported information to be processed with ResultsManager and Next Action Analysis on a periodic basis. I've only used it a few times, but it addresses concerns 1-4 for me now (and likely #5 as well once I unfilter completed tasks).

This is an early version that is sure to have bugs and usability issues and needs a blog post of its own, but I figured I'd share it now for those that are interested in giving it a try.

Declaring GTD Bankruptcy

ActivityOwner — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 02:57:05 +0000

I would venture to guess that the typical person has at least a 100 items flow to them during the course of their day that are candidates for their to do list. These may show up by email, by phone, by mail, or by walking past an newly arrived home repair project.

David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology provides a 5-step methodology to process and filter input into the the trash, "waiting for" lists, delegations, ticklers, calendars, plans and next actions lists.

But here is the problem.

If you are processing 100+ inputs per day, then you are processing 3000 inputs per month and over 36,000 per year. IF your methodology works 99.9% of the time in separating the wheat from the chaff, after a year of GTD you accumulate 36 items that take up space on your project and task lists. These are the items have developed antibiotic resistance to your methodology. The triple-digit ages of the tasks are the first give away – "What part of someday/maybe don't you understand?" Unfortunately many of these tasks are typically the "someday I really should/have-to" items.

A few dozen stale items may not seem like a lot, but it doesn't take much to take the vitality out of your next action lists. A next action list is most effective if you can chew through it like a three course meal rather than snack on it like a buffet.

In my experience, a good "GTD" day might involve knocking off 15 items from your list. You probably do a lot more than that, but many items are immediate or 2-minute actions that don't flow into the system. If you are knocking off 15 items, then a 100-item list is about 7 days of activity. If your 100 item list has 36 stale/"overdue" items that cause you to avert your eyes, your are not going to make as much progress on the vital ones. Even when you do make good progress, it will involve knocking your 100 item list down to 85. That doesn't feel like a lot of progress. What you typically end up with are a few fresh items (0-3 days old) flowing through a swamp of aging tasks.

I developed the Next Action Analysis system as a way to try to keep vitality in my lists with mixed success. When I checked my home lists a few weeks ago, I found that I had only 60 next actions, but over half were over two months old and 12 were over 6 months old. While I generally practice strategies for dealing with aging tasks (see fire the oldest 10% of your tasks), the antibiotic resistant strains had accumulated. I also had several projects with a waiting-for task that had gone stale.

I got an Ipad 2 this summer and was experimenting with syncing dashboards over to it using DropBox, but decided to use the occasion to try a different track.

I declared GTD bankruptcy.

There are a number of ways one might go about this. I decided to start from scratch in a (gasp) different GTD software package. This forced me to go through the "Chapter 11" process of entering in my projects and tasks from scratch. I would guess that folks that adopt paper-based GTD systems fare a bit better in keeping their stale items at bay through the process of transcribing them. You can do this without changing your system by just printing everything out and then working selected items back into an empty system.

This process facilitated some renegotiation with myself on some aging tasks. One example stale item was "reconcile credit card transactions in Quicken". In practice, changing this to "reconcile end of year credit card balance with placeholder transaction" was really sufficient. In the end, most of my "committed" tasks have migrated over, but a sizeable chunk of my stale tasks have been renegotiated or dropped. I'm surprised this concept isn't common out there in the GTD venacular beyond an entry from Penelope Trunk.

I'll review the software I migrated my home GTD system to as well as a new add-in that brings the content back to MindManager for visualization and next action analysis in future blog entries.

New OutLinker feature — create set of topics with links contacts, notes, tasks, or messages

ActivityOwner — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 03:58:35 +0000

The OutLinker package has a new feature. If you select a set of any type of item and run the SendLink2MindManager macro, it will add topics below the selected topic in a map with the text of the item in topic/note and with a link back to the item. You could use this, for example, to create a map with topics for all the appointments you have for the week or for a set of contacts. As I understand it, this might fill a gap for some left by removal of OutLook Linker by MindJet.

The main OutLinker package is geared toward processing mailbox items into map or task list items and archiving the messages to a folder. This feature leaves the items into place.

Thank you

ActivityOwner — Sat, 28 May 2011 00:52:12 +0000

We have accumulated US$200 in donations since adding the donate page. This morning I mailed off a check (along with a match from myself) to support research in hereditary spastic paraplegia.. My hope in setting up the donations page is to see enough money flowing through to this cause to rationalize purchasing Visual Studio 2010 to continue to support and develop the MindManager add-ins after my trial expires.

If you find yourself making good use of the various tools on the site, please consider supporting this cause.

José Miguel Bolívar on using ResultsManager and MindReader

ActivityOwner — Thu, 26 May 2011 00:16:25 +0000

José Miguel Bolívar, an early adopter of the Mindreader add-in, has a couple of recent blog entries on how he uses the tools for GTD at his optimoinfinito.com site. See MindReader: The brain of my GTD tool and ResultsManager: The body of my GTD tool along with a post tying things together on How to use GTD in practice.

Buttons to send topics to other maps

ActivityOwner — Sun, 15 May 2011 23:00:05 +0000

The MindReader add-in already has a button to bring up a dialog box for you to enter a destination keyword to send a topic to another map but, faced with a very full daily capture map, I thought it might be handy to have a set of buttons configured to send topics to some of my most frequently used maps. I found this quickly let me distribute my inbox items to the dedicated maps I have for key focus areas.

The lastest version adds nine buttons you can configure with keywords under the options button. It also modifies the "Next Action Analysis" button so that it automatically refreshes the dashboard before running the analysis.

Map2Excel exports topic notes as Excel comments

ActivityOwner — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 11:01:40 +0000

Thanks to Sam S. for sharing some of his improvements of map2excel, particularly around how to add notes as comments. The latest version (1.0.0012) of Map2Excel now can take notes in MindManager for all the topics and add them as comments in the excel export.

For example, exporting this branch as an outline

yields:

You have to select this under the new "options" button. The options dialog also has an option to not limit the export to only visible topics (e.g. those that are not collapsed or filtered out).

Comments open on MMDevX

ActivityOwner — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 13:02:17 +0000

You can now comment on add-ins on the MMDevX add-in site.

The site has entries for MindReader, Mark Task Complete, MyMapMacros, Map2Excel, and Outlinker.

New users might be encouraged if they see comments from other users on how these are working for other users.

MMDevX Launches and MindMappers.ning.com Re-Launches

ActivityOwner — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 00:18:52 +0000

Nigel Goult, the generous developer who provided the 7 steps to create a MindManager Add-In guide continues to do great things to support the MindManager community.

As you may recall, Nigel's guide and template enabled me to convert MindReader, MarkTaskComplete, and Map2Excel into installable add-ins and to add MyMapMacros to the mix.

He recently cleaned up and relaunched mindmappers.ning.com, a community/social-networking site focused on visual information management.

The content and activity there is rich and growing. If you are finding your way to this site, I imagine you will enjoy the mindmappers site as well.

Today Nigel launched MMDevX.com, a showcase of add-ins for MindManager, including those from this site.

This promises to provide a convenient way for MindManager users to quickly identify add-ins to meet their needs.

ButtonReader: 40 configurable buttons for MindReader

ActivityOwner — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 23:54:04 +0000

Several people had asked for customizable context buttons in MindReader. In part because Stefan has teh biggest donation to date, I jumped right on the task. As of yesterday the ribbon has had an options button that lets you not only change the contexts but allows you to re-purpose the context, due, and time tabs to any keywords of your liking.

After using this new feature for a bit, I found that having just 12 keywords accessible via the mouse wasn't so helpful, as I found I had to switch over to the keyboard and "mindreader" dialog for the less used keywords I couldn't fit on the ribbon. Reflecting on this I realized the ~40 keyword markup options provided by OutLinker was probably closer to what I needed day to day marking up tasks and projects for my MindManager maps.

This morning over an early breakfast I added a new floating form that gives you 40 configurable buttons that you can use for whatever MindReader keywords you like. You launch the form (pictured below) by hitting the "markup" button on the MindReader tab. To configure the buttons, you just need to check the "click to configure" box at the bottom of the form.

Hopefully the add-in is stabilizing now and I can spend more time Getting Things Done (GTD) than programming!

Example of Map2Excel in use

ActivityOwner — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 10:10:16 +0000

Wojciech posted a nice example of how one might use Map2Excel on his blog.

MyMapMacros: Launch your MindManager Macros from the Ribbon Toolbar

ActivityOwner — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 23:38:28 +0000

While MindManager macros can be very useful for automating repetitive operations in MindManager, it can be a little tedious to launch them. You either need to enable the developer tab and then click on "developer, macros, macro editor, run" or assign the macro to the topic context menu (which can get crowded and requires a few clicks).

In the past I've used the strategy of using GyroQ tags to launch macros. This has worked well, but I've always wanted to be able to put macros onto the ribbon tool bar. I've recently been able to do that by creating add-ins for MindReader, Mark Task Complete, and Map2Excel.

I used what I learned in those exercises to create a generic add-in (MyMapMacros) that will enable anyone to put their macros on the MindManager tool bar. All you need to do is create a "mymapmacros" directory in your "My Maps" folder and place your macros in it.

The add-in will recognize them and place them on the toolbar and give you the option of adding them to the quick-access toolbar as well. Up to 10 macros can be added in this manner. You also have the option of adding a image file in jpg or ico format to associate with the command. This can make it easier to recognize on the quick-access toolbar.

You can download the add-in from the MyMapMacros page on the wiki.

Update on the ActivityOwner.Com MindManager Add-ins

ActivityOwner — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 04:29:51 +0000

I wanted to provide an update on my project of converting tools on the activityowner.com site to MindManager Add-ins.

The wiki.activityowner.com now has three independent stand-alone add-ins installs with domains that point to them:

and of course http://outlinker.com.

Each add-in is really stand-alone now and will be less intimidating for new users to understand and install separately. The buttons on the toolbars can be added to the quick-access toolbar as well. The add-ins only act when their command buttons are pressed, so one should expect any impact on performance or other incompatibilities by installing them.

Map2Excel interface:

It has been an interesting puzzle to convert legacy MindManager macros to more modern (and faster executing) VB.Net code. Thank you to the folks who have tested early version of these. I think the major bugs have been worked out, but there will be a few more for sure. Please kick the tires and comment below as you encounter them.

The new add-ins are no longer depend on GyroQ or the legacy setup/installation, but they backward compatible and share the "legacy" MindReader for GyroQ configuration files, so old and new can be used in parallel. OutLinker still needs to be ribbon-ized in OutLook to simplify its installation.

MarkTaskComplete interface:

The wiki has been overhauled to point to the new add-ins. All four should have some appeal to regular MindManager users. You don’t need to be ResultsManager user to make good use of them. With some menu elbow room they should grow a bit in functionality over time (e.g. new button to open last months completion map, analyze it, etc).

Note that Mindreader install brings along dashboard buttons, NAA, and Outlook dashboard syncing, but hides them unless user has RM installed.

The site is up to about $85 in donations (thank you), so we will need to see if this can be sustained once my Visual Studio trial expires.

MindReader interface:

New version of Map2Excel uploaded

ActivityOwner — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 02:01:35 +0000

Some users uncovered a bug in the 1st version of Map2Excel that only showed up if you hadn't previously installed the ActivityOwner Tools Add-in for MindManager. It is fixed now, so if you had trouble installing, please have another go at it and report your results:

http://map2excel.com

ActivityOwner Page on Facebook

ActivityOwner — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 01:02:55 +0000

There is now an ActivityOwner page on Facebook.

No related posts.

Map2Excel Add-in Available

ActivityOwner — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 15:13:37 +0000

The Map2Excel tool has been converted to an easily installable MindManager add-in. More information is available here. The add-in also incorporates Map2Table and Map2Outline.

To download the free add-in, visit http://map2excel.com.

Note that the ActivityOwner Tools Add-in is also fairly functional now and ready for testing and feedback.

SAMPLE INPUT:

SAMPLE OUTPUT:

Any Interest in an ActivityOwner Tools Add-in for the Ribbon Toolbar?

ActivityOwner — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 01:24:16 +0000

The blog has been relatively quiet for past several months so I'm not sure how many regular readers and tool users are swinging by the site or following by email, RSS, or twitter, but here is a question:

How much interest do you have in an add-in that adds an "ActivityOwner Tools" menu to the MindManager Ribbon Toolbar?

Based on some tips and a template provided on the MindManagerDev Yahoo Group by Nigel Goult of Olympic Limited on how to build a mindmanager add-in, I've been able to figure out how to create a prototype ActivityOwner Tools Add-in. Here is a screenshot of the menu:

You can install the current prototype to see how it works. The add-in assumes you have already installed the latest version of the existing setup program for the site's tools such as Map2Excel, MindReader, Mark Task Complete, and Next Action Analysis. Although several of these tools are oriented towards ResultsManager users, several have general use as well. The Ribbon provides a more convenient and expandable interface than the current method of using GyroQ or manually assigning macros to the topic context menu. As one example, there was discussion recently about how inaccessible the "save all maps" option is under the file menu. This was easy to add as a button here. It may also be less intimidating to new users in terms of the startup and learning curve.

Pursuing this beyond the 30-day trial I'm evaluating for Microsoft Visual Studio, will require an investment on my part, so I'd like to gauge interest first.

I've pursued this blog on a strictly non-for-profit basis over the years. I plan to keep it that way, but have always thought that perhaps at some point I might use the platform to raise some money for a charity. Unfortunately a cause has come along, in the form of a rare disease that is impacting a close family member. I'd like to raise some money to send to a university research center that is focused on this disease and that has been supportive of the family. To that end I've added a DONATE page to the site.

If enough interest shows up in the comments below, and particularly if it interest turns up in small paypal donations, I'll spring for the cost of Visual Studio and continue developing the ribbon add-in based on your needs and feedback.

How to create a MindManager add-in with Microsoft Visual Studio in 7 easy steps

ActivityOwner — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 14:46:10 +0000

There was a discussion over the past few days on the MindManagerDev yahoo group on the relatively limited documentation of the MindManager Object Model and the challenges for new developers to get past the learning curve for creating add-ins for MindManager.

Nigel Goult of Olympic Limited has now generously shared a 7 step tutorial on how to make a simple "Hello World" add-in for MindManager using Visual Studio.

In testing this out I found (with a fresh install of visual studio 2010), I had to change the .net target from 4 to 3.5 to get the add-in to work. On first use MM complained it was going to disable the add-in, but it worked, and did not give errors on subsequent uses. After adding the MM9 type library to the references, it still didn't show up in sidebar after refreshing dependencies. Next step for me is to figure out how to put a button on the toolbar. As it turns out Nigel has also provided a full working example for download that includes the ribbon portion.

There is additional information on add-in development here. Here is some very old information on adding commands to the user interface.

New developers and hobbyists may also find the source code for MindReader in the MindManager Macro Library and the the VBA Code for Outlinker useful for seeing examples of how to interact with the MindManager object model.

Rather than continue to edit in information to this blog entry as I figure things out, I've created a wiki page to capture How to create a MindManager add-in using Visual Studio.

Nigel's contribution here along with the regular assistance provided by him and Nick Duffill to the community is much appreciated. I will try to give this 7-step process a try and report on the results.

Mark Task Complete updated for MindManager 9

ActivityOwner — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 04:27:54 +0000

In making the recent updates to Mindreader to address changes in how MindManager 9 works with task dates, I totally overlooked the need to also adapt the code in Mark Task Complete. Mark Task Complete needs to deal with start dates correctly in order to properly advance repeating tasks when they are completed. Thanks to Erik for catching this issue. The latest beta setup160.exe addresses this issue.

OutLinker for Microsoft Outlook 2010

admin — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 02:31:57 +0000

See the activityowner wiki for some quick screen shots of steps needed to get OutLinker working with OutLook 2010. If you get stuck post a comment below and I'll help you out as soon as possible.

If you have gotten this working, feel free to contribute by editing the wiki to add some further narrative to the limited instructions.

MindManager 9 Task Date Issue accommodated in ResultsManager 2.9.2/1 (Part 6)

admin — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 01:42:01 +0000

IN Part 5 of the series we enumerated some of the issues that emerged for ResultsManager users with the new ways that MindManager 9 handles task dates. One of the main issues (which I didn't recognize at that time) was that the way duration is now handled in MindManager was causing ResultsManager to add due dates (= start date) to tasks with a start date but no end date. Gyronix has addressed that with a new version 2.9.2/1 available today. I have tested this version for a few weeks and all seems to be well. MindReader has been modified so that it can successfully change start and due dates without changing the other. You need to download the latest beta version of the MindReader Setup if you are using v9 to get start date keywords to work correctly. You also want to run through the MindManager setup tips to make sure you do things like add weekend days to your calendar.

The main residual annoyance with v9 at this point is that once you add a start and due date to a task, you need to manually remove the date information if you want to go back to the point of not having a due date. The "ndd" mindreader keyword will not do it nor will the ResultsManager "edit activity" dialog. So I guess this means you need to finish your task instead of removing the due dates :-).

For my purposes I'm going to mark my project map done and archive it and close the 6 part series. The remaining issues are still summarized on the wiki. I have seen occasional "untagged items in your queue" messages associated with the latest version of GyroQ released with version 9 that I still need to track down in terms of root cause. Let me know if you are running into this.