Flying Eagle Software's Task Track Analyst
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Flying Eagle Software's Task Track Analyst
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Remember: Right-Click everywhere, Drag-and-Drop everywhere! Step 1: Add some tasks to the task tree To add a task, right click anywhere in the left side task tree, click "Add Task", and then type in the task's description. You don't need to fill in the other unnecessary details to slow you down. Add all the tasks that come to your mind right now, and you can go back and enter more details later. You can re-arrange the tasks hierarchically by dragging-and-dropping them around. You can see where the task is going with the visual indicator as you drag-and-drop. To remove a task, select it and press the "Delete" button. To change its description, simply click the task one more time and you can perform in-place editing, just like when you first add the task. Step 2: Schedule some tasks in the calendar To schedule some work period from the list of tasks, select the day you want the work period to happen from the upper right month calendar, and then "drag-and-drop" the task from the left to the day view on the right. A default work period of 30 minutes is created, and you can drag-and-drop to change the work period to a different time and its duration. For more precise control of the work period, double click on the work period to open the details dialog. At this point, you are all set for the basics. Step 3: See what tasks are active A task is considered active if it has scheduled work periods today or in the future. From the scheduling done above, some tasks are made active. Click on the "Active" tab across the upper left and those will show up. When you have a ton of tasks, this Active list would become very useful. Step 4: See the Task Log and Day Log for a quick summary of your tasks Simply click on the tabs in the upper right hand of the program for "Task Log" and "Day Log", and you can see what's going on with your tasks and their work periods, what has been done in the time period selected (select the report period by clicking on the tabs in the right-middle, and the date in the above month calendar), and their associated time spent or scheduled. You can focus on a particular task by clicking on the task at left, or all the tasks by clicking on the white space outside of any tasks. Try it, it's fun and sometimes quite revealing to see what you have done, how much time you've spent on some tasks, and what are coming up. Step 5: Locate all the work periods of a particular task The task list on the left and the task/day logs on the right are powerful tools to help you find what/where/when in the jungle of tasks that you manage. Click on a task on the left, then click on "Task Log" on the upper-right, select "All" in the middle-right, and all the work periods associated with this task appears. Right-click on any of the work periods, and the program takes you back to the calendar where that work period is located. You can also click on the "Day Log" on the upper-right, select a period in the middle-right, and look at what you have done in the past, or what's in store in the future. Right-click on any of the work periods, and again you are back to the calendar where it belongs. Pretty cool! Step 6: Use Filters to help you sort through the jungle Assign Categories, Priorities, Status, and other attributes to your tasks, give them some eye-catching colors, fonts, and graphics, and you can even better visualize your tasks in a glance. Add them by first clicking on the "Filters" tab on the far left of the program, right-click in the pertinent tab across the top, and add the particular category, priority or status that fits your needs. Give them some color, fonts, and graphical icons, and you're ready to use them in the tasks. Step 7: Give your tasks Categories, Priorities and Status Click on the "Tasks" tab on the far left, and select a particular task you want to work on. As a task is selected, the "Details" tab on the upper right would be enabled, allowing you to edit the task's details on the right. Click on the "Priority", "Category" and "Status" buttons, and those priorities, categories and status that you have added would be available for the picking. Pick one, click the bottom "Accept" button, and see your tasks on the left having a color and font face-lift right away. The work periods in the calendar, as well as the Task Log and Day Log will also have the same face-lift right away. Try it, it's fun! Step 8: Add Contacts and Resources to the tasks and see the program fly To make it even more useful, add some contacts and resources by clicking on the respective tabs on the far left, right click on the left side, and add them. You can organize the resources in hierarchical order as well, but contacts are limited to a flat order. Again, you are not being bogged down by the details until you want to. After you've entered the contacts and resources, it's time to put them to good use. Go back to the task details, click on the respective "Add" button under "Contacts" and "Resources", and you can pick the contact or resource to add to this task. You can add as many as you want that make sense to your tasks. Step 9: See the Active Contact List and Active Resource List Now that you've added contacts and resources to some tasks, you may wonder: "Which contact and resource are active?" - meaning, which one of them would be used or referenced in the tasks that I have scheduled for today and in the future? It's easy, just click on the respective "Active" tabs in the Contacts and Resources pages. Wonder what tasks are using a particular active contact or resource? Turn to the Task Log and Day Log on the right, and the list comes up right away. Select a particular active contact or resource on the left, and the Task/Day Log is updated instantly to show just those tasks that are using the selected contact or resource. Right-click on any of them to take you to their calendar work period. Step 10: Use Filter Tabs to sort through the tasks even more If you want to see a subset of tasks that is, say, of a particular category with a particular priority. No problem. Create a filter for this "category AND priority" condition, and add a "Filter Tab" on the tasks tree. To do this, first go to the "Filters" page, and add a filter on the bottom, give it a name like "Must Do". Then select the particular category from the top, drag it down to the "Must Do" filter on the bottom, and see the description of the filter changes to "Must Do IS Category = your category name". Then click to the Priorities, select the priority you want, and drag it down to the "Must Do" filter again. If you want the AND, drop it down onto the Category location, and see the filter changes to "Must Do IS Category = your category name AND Priority = your priority name". If you want an OR instead, then drop it below the Category location. Finally, go back to the "Tasks", across the top where you find the "All", "Highlighted" and "Active" tabs, right-click to reveal a menu and choose "Add Filter Tab", and then pick "Must Do" from the selection. Voila! A "Must Do" tab now appears next to the "Active" tab and if you click on that, all the tasks that meet the "Must Do" filter criterion will show up. Go back to change the filter condition and see the list of tasks changes right away. Slick! You can build pretty complicated filters by right-clicking on the filter elements and assign it different operators like INCLUDES and NOT, and then use simpler filters as components to bigger filters. Step 11: Show Task-Only, Contact-Only or Resource-Only Calendars Even though the Task Log and Day Log always respond to your selection of task, contact or resource for their display of the work periods, the Calendar typically always show all the work periods from all tasks. If you want to show the calendar of just the selected thing, you turn on the Task-Only, Contact-Only and Resource-Only options by clicking on their respective toolbar buttons across the top-middle. If any of these options are enabled, as you select a task, contact or resource, the calendar will be re-populated with just the work periods that are referencing the particular selection. This gives you an uncluttered calendar look of what you want to focus on. To restore to show everything in the calendar, simply click on those buttons again. Step 12: I want to add a contact to just one particular work period but not the whole task Certainly. We realize that some contacts or resources only show up from time to time to a certain task, and that task should not be bogged down by every single one that ever comes into the picture. You can do this by clicking the "Contacts" or "Resources" page into view, as well as the "Calendar" - "Day" into view, then select the particular contact or resource and drag-and-drop it onto the work period desired. If you click on the work period, you will see in the bottom status bar what contact and resources that this work period is using. The contact or resource thus added would also show up in their respective Active list, Contact-Only or Resource-Only calendars as well. Step 13: I'm on the phone, and have no time to create a new task then drag-and-drop it onto the calendar ... No problem. Simply go to the particular time slot in the calendar where you need to add a new work period or appointment, double click on that work period to open a dialog, and enter a description for that task there. Once you save this dialog, the entered description will be compared against all the existing tasks. If a match is found, it will be added to that task's tally. If not, a new task with that name will be created automatically, and you should find it at the end of the "All" task list. You can then put in back to where it belongs in the task tree hierarchy. Step 14: I want to merge 2 tasks' work periods into one, how? We realize that you may not remember the exact wordings of the tasks every time, and multiple tasks with slightly different descriptions are actually one and the same. No problem. In the task tree, pick the one that you want to be THE ONE, right-click and "Mark Anchor Task". Then select the other tasks that you want to be "absorbed" into the anchor task by right-clicking on them and select "Absorb into Anchor Task". Then all the work periods from those will be merged into the anchor task's, and you've just cleaned up the task tree that much. Step 15: I just want to re-assign a particular work period to another task, how? Again, we've thought of it. Similar to the above, first mark the anchor task, then select the particular work period in the calendar, right-click, and select "Re-parent Work Period to Anchor Task". |
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