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INTRODUCTION
System Requirements: System 6 or 7, any Mac, 1.6 megs free RAM, ±1 Meg disk space
Digital Diary™ gives you fingertip access to the current status of any of your projects, giving you the ability to go back to see all activities on all projects on any day you choose. On a complex project, there could be a dozen or more separate issues being dealt with at the same time, each of which has its own distinct status and decision process. Wouldn't it be great to be able to pull up the history of each of these issues at any time?
Digital Diary™ organizes note entries into project and day files so that current reports of all activities on any given day or project can be instantly viewed. Projects are organized under user-defined categories in a hierarchical pop-up menu. Projects can be easily transferred between categories, making it ideal for use as a convenient project status indicator. Entries are identified with a header containing the type of activity, project name, category, note number, and date and time of entry. 'To do list' entries will pop up to remind you of unattended items at a chosen future date. Versatile report generation can gather, for example, all notes of a given activity type or project status.
While most personal information managers focus on scheduling and contacts management, Digital Diary concentrates on keeping an organized record of your work, allowing you quick and easy retrieval of a project's history when most needed.
Here are a few of the many uses of Digital Diary™:
Business, Sales, and Consulting:
• Project activities and decisions
• Upcoming deadlines, meetings, and appointments
• Telephone and meeting records
• Discussions with suppliers, consultants, clients and co-workers
• Decisions made and communicated to clients, co-workers, and subordinates
• Directions received from clients, authorities, and management
• Decision / activity 'streams' relating to issues within a project
Academic and Scientific:
• Experiment progress notes
• On-going research projects
Educational:
• Individual student progress diary
Home and Personal:
• Personal projects and hobbies
• Special events (weddings, holidays, family reunions, etc.)
Digital Diary™ is not meant to replace your main project file - its purpose is to complement your present filing system to help you find what you need to know now.
Digital Diary™ replaces:
To do lists, diaries, reminder notes, day files, telephone notes and all sorts of other memory joggers. And it's fun to use!
IF YOU HAVE THE DEMO
All functions are operational in the demo until you have entered 150 notes, after which the "Post Note" function will cease to accept new note entries. You can empty the diary as often as you like in the demo, but the purged notes will still count toward the 150 note limit. The sample data is geared toward architects (since that's my field). If you're in this field, you're in luck; if not, you'll need to choose to erase the category types along with the rest of the sample data.
All information and other functions will still be accessible after this point, but without the "Post Note" function you won't be able to add new note entries to your diary.
In order to enable the program to full functioning status, you will need to register your copy. Please refer to the information under "Registration..." under the "File" menu.
You may distribute the demo to as many people and install it on as many computers and shareware sites as you like!
OVERVIEW
Digital Diary™ allows you can keep track of many on-going and complex projects, with fingertip access to the current status of each one. Projects can be arranged in up to 50 main categories. Or if you prefer, you can use the category level for your projects, and use the next level down for detailed project subcategories. You can even arrange your projects over several separate copies of Digital Diary to add yet another level to your project hierarchy.
Digital Diary™ employs a double entry method, which records all notes in both a Day File as well as a Project File. A third location, the 'To Do List', is reserved for certain types of notes that require future follow up, such as appointments and project deadlines. Digital Diary™ ships with note types arranged in two groups. The first group is set to be recorded in the To Do List as well as the Project File and Day File. Note types can be changed, added, or removed at any time. An on-screen reminder appears when the program is opened on or after the date specified for a future event listed in the 'To Do List'. Each project can also be assigned a status from a user-definable menu.
A wide variety of reports can be generated, with information arranged by project name, status, or note type. Varying levels of password protection are available to control access to the program.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
IF YOU ARE USING DIGITAL DIARY ON A POWERBOOK, DO NOT LEAVE THE PROGRAM OPEN PAST THE FIRST LOW BATTERY WARNING. IF THE COMPUTER SHUTS DOWN AUTOMATICALLY (OR CRASHES) WHILE DIGITAL DIARY IS IN USE, IT MAY BECOME CORRUPTED!
HOW TO USE DIGITAL DIARY
Step 1
Digital Diary is shipped with sample data so that you can get a feel for the program right away. The first step is to remove the demo data by selecting "Start New Diary..." from the "Edit" menu. You can choose to keep the category headings if you feel they may be useful. You can now add new categories and projects if you wish (they can be added, renamed, or removed at any time). Return to the Input Window.
Step 2
Select the desired category, project, and note type from the pop-up menus. Note types can be edited to suit by clicking on the button adjacent to the pop-up menu.
Step 3
Type in your note and click on “Post Note” at the bottom right of the screen. Digital Diary will add a header containing the date, category, project, note type, and time of entry and then record it in the appropriate Project File and the current Day File.
Your note will only be recorded in the 'To Do List' if the note type selected has been identified using the "Save Set..." button in the "Note Types" editing window. You can select more than one item by holding down the Command key. The "Show Set" button will hilight the currently saved set of note types that will be recorded in the To Do List.
RETRIEVING INFORMATION
Click on "Project File..." to navigate to the 'Projects' database. From here you can view the project's history (compilation of all activity notes entered previously for this project) or view the project's information, which is a set of nine fields where you may enter basic constant or seldomly changing information about the project (client contacts, consultants, date started, deadlines, etc.). You can also navigate to other projects from here by selecting a project from the pop-up menu.
Click on "Day File..." to open the 'Day File' records. The day file record you first see will correspond to the date of the last entry made, which may not necessarily be the current date. Navigation to other day file records can be accomplished by several methods, the easiest being the hierarchical pop-up menu. Clicking on a date in the calendar bar will take you that day's file record, if one exists. If not, a beep will indicate the lack of a record for that date. The arrow buttons will navigate to the first, previous, next, and most recent day file records, respectively. The hatched outline indicates the day file that is currently on display.
COORDINATING NOTE ENTRIES
Sometimes you may want to revise or add to a note that has already been entered. The most convenient way to do this is to revise it in either the Project File or Day File, and then click on the "Coordinate Notes" button. This will update the note in the other location (notes in the "To Do" list cannot be updated in this way).
SAVING THE DIARY TO A TEXT FILE ("FILE" MENU)
This option will create a specially formatted file for use by version 2 of Digital Diary to enable it to import complete diary information from another copy of the program. This file will seem like gobbledygook if opened, but DO NOT MAKE ANY CHANGES TO IT, otherwise it will not be loaded correctly you need to import it to a future upgrade. Creating a new diary will prompt you to save the present diary contents to a file of this type as well.
EXPORTING PROJECT FILE INFORMATION
Information from an individual project can be exported to a text file by clicking on "Export to Text File" in the "Project File" window. Information will not be deleted from the diary by carrying out this operation. To retire a project (archive the data for a project and delete it from the diary) use the "Archive and Delete" button in the "Project List" window (see also "Gather/Export" function described below).
EXPORTING DAY FILE INFORMATION
Day File information can be exported to a text file by clicking on "Export to Text File" in the Day File Window. You will be asked to choose whether to export only the day file currently displayed or all past day files up to the date displayed. Information will not be deleted from the diary by carrying out this operation. You can elso export all day files together from the "Gather/Export" window.
EXPORTING TO DO LIST INFORMATION
To Do List entries can be exported to a text file by clicking on "Export" in the "To Do List" window, or can be printed directly from this window.
THE "GATHER/EXPORT..." FUNCTION
Information can be gathered from one or more selected projects and displayed on screen before saving to a text file or printing. Projects can be listed in category order or status order (with or without last entry). Notes of a selected type can also be gathered together into one list, so you can view at a glance, for example, all the telephone messages you have left on any of your projects. Project background information can also be gathered and printed from this window.
Note entries are recorded in reverse chronological order since it is assumed that more recent notes are of greater importance.
STARTING A FRESH DIARY
A new diary can be started by selecting "Start New Diary..." from the "File" menu. You will be reminded to make a backup of the present diary first because this operation deletes all the data in the diary completely. You will be asked enter the desired note tracking start number. The number in the field will be the next note number based on the previous diary's entries. This number can be thought of as the ID number of each note entered, and is strictly for your convenience if you wish to identify individual notes uniquely. You can choose to keep your category list in the new 'empty' diary. The lists of note types and status types are always retained, and can be individually edited as always.
And always remember when using Digital Diary, as in most things in life, you only get out of it what you put into it.
DIARY MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES
Project record fields have a 29,500 character limit. The character count for the project record field is displayed in the "Project Files" window. There are several strategies to deal with this limitation. You can start a new project record with a slightly different name when the record's field approaches the limit, or you can archive the project and start a new one with the same name (if you don't need on-line access to the older information, that is).
Different strategies for entering and organizing information:
The following variations illustrate the flexibility possible in organizing your project information. The capitalized headings represent the formal names given to each level in the program.
CATEGORY PROJECT NOTE TYPE STATUS
project type project name activity /billing category sub-phase
project phase project name activity /billing category sub-phase
project name project sub-category activity /billing category phase
Using the Category level for project phases:
Viewing the pop-up menu will give an instant overview of the current phase of each project. This frees up the status indicator for use as a "sub-phase" within a phase. For example, if the Category is "Fee Negotiations", the status choices can be "Preliminary Stage", "On Hold", "Verbal Understanding", and "Contracts Signed". When a project moves into a new phase, it can be transferred so that it appears in the appropriate list by using the "Transfer Project..." function.
Using the Category level for the project name:
This strategy frees up the Project level for use as subdivisions of a project. For example, a complex construction project can have "Owner", "Municipality", "Consulting Engineers", and "Contractor" as separate 'projects' in order to more easily track activities related to one of these divisions, or the project level can also be used to track "threads" in a project (issues that come up that involve a sequence of events for resolution and are more or less independent of other issues). Remember that project names must be unique, so if you want to use similar subdivision names for another project, you must differentiate them, for example by adding the project initials to the name, such as "Owner-HSE" for the "Hillside Estates" project.
Note Types can be:
1) activities: telephone call, received mail, etc.
or
2) billing categories: basic services, additional services, non-billable overhead, etc.
Sub-phases can be the periods within a phase prior to an important event (key approvals, permit issuance, contract signing). One way of adding yet another hierarchical level to your project organization is to use a separate copy of Digital Diary for each major project category. To switch, you just quit the current diary you have open and launch another one containing the project(s) you wish to access.
