[Design] Feature request re repeat enhancements

[Mimi Yin]

Hi Keith,

Thank you for your detailed write-up...see below for more in-line...

On Oct 19, 2007, at 6:03 PM, Keith Winsor wrote:

> Normal routine involves a lot of calendar use, shuffling  
> appointments, taking bookings, dealing with sales reps in the day  
> job. This is where month view or, better, multi-week view would be  
> a boon - dragging an appointment from one week to the next, instead  
> of having to highlight and alter dates (pop-up calendar would be  
> nice). I know both of these have been discussed, so I won't labour  
> the point, save to say that it's things like entering dates,  
> something that I do many tens of times a day, that at the moment  
> can make Chandler feel clunky. The same applies to the 'Go to date'  
> feature, useful but fiddly at present, both of these perhaps in  
> part due to my using tablet and UMPC in slate mode - an interface  
> that allowed a few simple taps and no typing would be a big  
> improvement.

As in a mini-calendar drop-down from the date/time fields?

>
> On the other hand, triage is so simple and effective that it's  
> already made Chandler my organisational tool of choice. Any spare  
> five minutes will see me in triage table view, reviewing Now then,  
> time permitting, Later. Again, the already discussed issue of  
> sorting of Later is a barrier at the moment. I think Mimi's  
> proposal to sort Later by 'date of impending triage to Now' pretty  
> much nails it. I'm inclined to agree with the 'Now' proposal as  
> well: sort in due date/time order but float changed items to the  
> top for immediate attention.

I'm still not sure about this one, but I will write a more detailed  
response to the list in response to the 'Triage Sort in the NOW  
sections' thread. http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/design/ 
2007-November/007836.html

> I'm not a great fan of the 'auto-triage to Done' idea -  I'd always  
> worry that something I hadn't notice would be marked Done without  
> my noticing it. However, disabling it for items stamped as tasks is  
> a step in the right direction. Maybe disabling for zero-duration  
> events could be included - I have a good few of those, in lieu of  
> recurring tasks.

Yup. I think this is going to be our proposal of record for Auto- 
triage to DONE.

> A few general comments:
>
> Some of the 'clickables' need to be made to look more like they can  
> be clicked - I only discovered a couple of hours ago that clicking  
> on a day name in calendar view switches to that day in day view.

Yup. This is something we're hoping to address as we integrate the  
Month/Multi-Week view with the Week/Day views and we gain more  
control over how we draw our widgets.

> Many of the icons used, especially the status icons (needs reply,  
> draft in, etc) I don't find sufficiently intuitive. I find I have  
> to keep a lookup close to hand to work out what a 'clockwise arrow  
> on top of two blocks' actually means.

Yes. We're continually tweaking these status icons. Part of the  
problem is that 'draft status' (the blocks your describing above)  
shows up *whenever* you 'Address an item' or edit a sent/received  
email...whether or not you intend to send that item as an email or  
send you edits in an update email. I sent a proposal to the

I think your next paragraph is exactly the kind of scenario that  
results in confusion over the 2-blocks 'draft-status' icons.

> I haven't used any of the email sending functions with regard to  
> updating appointments. If I get a B&B enquiry from a customer, I  
> drag it into a Chandler folder to generate an event (<<Name>>  
> double, 2 nights) and wait for my wife to sync in order for her to  
> become aware of the appointment. Initially, I wasn't sure what  
> would be sent to whom and so we worked around it by just waiting  
> for autosync to occur. I promise I'll play with this more :-)
>
> I think a 'conflict resolution' screen should pop up whenever a  
> sync is carried out. Because my wife only uses Chandler as a  
> calendar, she doesn't get to see the warning icon in triage views,  
> which then stops her calendar being updated, making us fall out of  
> sync. A screen listing all sync conflicts and permitting 'Accept  
> all', 'Deny all' and the other single-item-at-a-time options would  
> be a big improvement.

Yes that sounds like a serious problem. A good interim solution might  
be to put up an conflict icon in the sidebar, next to the  
collection...prompting her to go take a look at it in the All- 
Application Area.

I've logged a bug to track the issue: https:// 
bugzilla.osafoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11317

> Even if it doesn't pop up, some form of warning icon, visible in  
> every view, would be an improvement, bringing up the conflicts to  
> resolve list. Also some of the conflict message themselves could be  
> a little less cryptic: Rrule, followed by an apparently random  
> string of digits and letters, could puzzle a more naive user.

Yes! Thanks for piping up about this. We're working on building a  
translation layer between the 'data model' and the end-user content  
model so that we have more control over what we display.

>
> I hope this, my first full-length novel, has been useful. Let me  
> know if I can flesh out more detail. But it's 2am here and I'm off  
> to bed!
>
> Good night all.
>
> Keith
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