The Chandler Project Blog

For a couple of months now, Chandler Hub has supported the ability to sync all of your Chandler data (not just events) onto other iCalendar or CalDAV to applications and tasks.

Chandler notes (starred or plain) should now show up in other iCalendar or CalDAV calendar applications (e.g. Apple iCal, and Lightning) as Tasks (VTODOS).

Here are instructions on how to subscribe to Chandler collections from other calendar applications. (Unfortunately, some Chandler-specific will be lost. e.g. NOW and LATER triage status will both be interpreted as “Not-Done”. Anytime events will look the same as All-day events.)

I also demo this in the second half of the new 3-Minute Feature Tour. Also available (lo-res) on YouTube.

Has anyone made use of this feature yet?

We are pleased to announce the release of Chandler 1.0, a “Note-to-Self Organizer” designed for personal and small-group task management and calendaring.

Chandler consists of a desktop application and Chandler Hub, a free sharing service and web application. You can also download and run your own Chandler Server.

Chandler is open source and standards-based.

What’s different about Chandler?

Chandler aims to provide a more integrated approach to managing information with:

• A Quick Entry Bar to enter everything from ideas to reminders and
  appointments.

• NOW-LATER-DONE Triage List to collect, process and track everything from deadlines and meetings to drafts and ideas.
• Tickler Alarms to auto-re-focus deferred (LATER) items to NOW
• An integrated, full-featured calendar designed for tracking meetings and events and tasks and deadlines.
• Back-up and Sharing: Manage personal and shared lists and calendars side-by-side. Back-up to the Chandler Hub sharing service, sync with other calendar apps and services, and sync your data across multiple computers and access it from the web.
• Lightweight integration with Email.

You can download Chandler Desktop, sign up for a free Chandler Hub account and get a tour of the product. Check out the source. And get involved in the project as we set our sights on growing our community. And send your feedback and questions to: chandler-users@osafoundation.org or chat with us on IRC!

We look forward to hearing from you!
The Chandler Team

What’s changed since Preview?

Chandler Desktop

• simpler interface
• streamlined upgrade experience
• streamlined set up for backup and sharing
• ability to re-order collections in the left-hand sidebar
• detachable detail view

Plus, 11th hour volunteer contributions for:

• clickable links in the notes field
• custom recurrence rules

Chandler Hub/Server

• streamlined sign-up experience
• better experience for subscribing with other apps and services (Apple iCal, Google)
• ability to invite others to share
• calendar overlays
• streamlined detail view
• new iGoogle Quick Entry widget that can also work on Linux desktop
• ability to sync all Chandler data (not just events) with Apple iCal, Lightning…
• upgraded web interface to Dojo 1.0.2
• back-end support for importing .ics calendar files
• back-end support for notifications
• back-end support for managing collections through the feed service.

Significant Bug Fixes

Chandler Desktop

• recurring events keep popping to NOW, marked as Unread
• sort LATER section chronologically

Chandler Hub/Server

• patched read-write sharing security issue
• make Triage Status sort consistent with Desktop
• occurrences more than a month in the future don’t show up in the Triage List

Complete lists of feature work and bug fixes for Desktop and Server.

New and improved documentation:

• New website: http://chandlerproject.org
• New Product Tour with a new demos
• Gallery of User Stories
• New Get Started Guide
• Updated documentation for Chandler Server

Recently, a new user wrote in to the Users List asking if Chandler would be useful for maintaining Family calendars.

David Read responded that he was using Chandler in exactly that way:

Liz,

My family uses Chandler just the way you are describing. Each individual has a calendar and Chandler makes it easy to view each as part of a unified schedule.

The big win for me is that whether I’m home, at work or out of town, I have a way to check upcoming events to be sure I don’t schedule something in conflict (like missing a Parent-Teacher conference).

My mother and in-laws are also local and they love having a way to see upcoming events like the grandchildren’s concerts and dance recitals.

Prior to Chandler (we’ve been using it for over a year now) we maintained a paper-based calendar (really the school calendar with our notes). I can’t imagine going back to that.

Regards,

-Dave

Note: Not Real Data

Keith recently wrote into the users list about how he uses Microsoft OneNote with Chandler and how he’d love it if the new clickable URLs feature worked for OneNote links as well. (Emphasis, mine.)

As I posted in my user story, I am hopelessly disorganised. I have a theory that if I buy enough plastic boxes, I’ll attain the miraculous state of ‘in control’. Bits of paper containing ‘notes to self’ used to be found months after they’d been written, by which time it was too late to do anything with them.

OneNote has become my one piece of paper. On my tablet PC, I can hand write notes as I’m on the phone to customers. I can use it creatively for something like mind mapping – free-form, different colours, engage both sides of the brain. I can print web pages to it, embed photos and web clippings, possible solutions to problems – anything relating to anything, and all shared between whichever machines I’m using at the time.

Chandler provides diary and task management capabilities, shared between myself and my wife. I tend to use OneNote for the ‘capture’ phase and for organising my thoughts, then Chandler manages the next actions, appointments, and reminders.

Typically, I create a list of actions in OneNote, hit a hot key in AutoHotKey and the selected action will be copied to clipboard and pasted to a new task in Chandler.

One feature of OneNote is a right-click “copy this page’s URL to clipboard” and I’m envisaging modifying my script to create a task in Chandler and then paste the URL of the OneNote page into Chandler’s notes field, providing a one-click link back to the original OneNote page. Also, I’m looking at an AutoHotKey script to copy a task in OneNote and paste it into Chandler’s search box, so that I’ve got a kludgey but fairly seamless each way link between items.

So nothing too complicated, just a quick means of linking items in each app to each other.

Note To make it so that Chandler recognizes OneNote URLs, you must first apply this patch. However, if enough OneNote users pipe up with feedback that this would be very useful, we will up the priority on making it so OneNote URLs work by default.

Note: Not real data.

As part of our 1.0 release, we’ll be hosting special live chat sessions on IRC for developers and users interested in contributing to the project. If you happen to be in the San Francisco Bay Area, you’re also invited to bring your laptop and join us in person.

User Support Hour

When: August 4, 2-3PM PDT
Where: IRC
Channel: #chandler

To kick things off, we’ll be holding User Support Hour. Please join us
if you’d like to share or learn how others use Chandler or simply want
help getting set up or troubleshooting a problem.

Then stick around and provide input for developers:

Scratch Your Chandler Itch

When: August 4, 3-5PM PDT
Where: IRC
Channel: #chandler

If you know a little Python, and would like focused help from the Chandler development team, we have a few projects we think might make good starter projects both for introducing Chandler’s code to new
developers and addressing real pain points in the product. Please feel free to add your own!

• More alarm snooze options
• Shortcut from the reminder pop-up to the item details
• More commands for the Quick Entry field (e.g. for filing items, etc)
• Download flagged emails (IMAP)
• Customize App Bar: Add Tasks, define a “Notes-only” area, etc)
• Print Triage List

See full list.

If you want to participate, start by checking out Chandler using SVN

Hack On Chandler Server

When: August 5, 3-5PM PDT
Where: IRC
Channel: #cosmo

We’ll finish off our community sessions with a session aimed at people conversant with Java or Javascript who’d like to improve the server.

• Port the iGoogle quick entry widget to iPhone, OSX Dashboard, Vista
  Sidebar, Yahoo Konfabulator

• UI for setting up Notifications (via email)
• UI for importing .ics calendar files through web UI

If you want to participate, start by checking out Chandler Server using SVN.

RSVP

We’d like to get a head count of who might participate. If you’re planning on attending, or if you’d like to participate but can’t make those times, please let us know by this Friday.

Thanks,
The Chandler Team

We recently released an early version of 1.0 which includes new support for clickable URLs in the notes field.

I’ve mostly been thinking of URLs in terms of web URLs, but a couple of users have been testing out the new URL functionality with file system links. Chandler can recognize URLs for files, folders, and applications.

So in addition to web URLs, you can also keep track of documents you’re working on with triage status, tickler alarms and the calendar.

Aspiration, an organization that connects non-profits with software solutions will be hosting a free Chandler seminar to introduce Chandler’s personal and small-group task management and calendaring capabilities to potential non-profit users. Sheila (our product manager) and myself (product designer) will be there to demo Chandler and answer questions. Other members of the OSAF team may attend as well.

The seminar will be held at the San Francisco Technology Center at 1370 Mission Street near 10th Street on the 4th floor on Tuesday, July 22nd at 5PM.

If you work for a non-profit and would like to attend, please RSVP here.

We have been having a rather interesting conversation over at TechSoup, an online forum where non-profits can discuss and learn about available technology solutions.

The thread, originally begun with the title: “Chandler maturing as an Outlook alternative” has grown into a more general discussion of sustainability and open source projects and in particular, our own plans for building a volunteer development community.

Much of the conversation has revolved around how we maintain a user-centered focus as a project as we work to attract volunteer developers. (A challenge all consumer-facing open source projects face.)

Don C in particular has had some useful words of advice based on his experience on The Sahana Project.

One scenario Chandler can be useful for is pulling together meeting agendas and maintaining a log of meeting notes.

Meetings are the perfect example of how calendaring and task management are inextricably intertwined. It is a problem area that highlights Chandler’s ability to cross boundaries and integrate information by letting you manage events from a task list and vice versa, manage tasks with a calendar.

****

Many organizations rely heavily on email for coordinating meetings: to schedule them, collect ideas for the agenda and disseminate meetings notes.

Emails fly back and forth…which means the ‘final list’ of agenda items always needed to be manually collated by somebody. This sometimes involves sifting through a dozen or so emails.

After the meeting is over, notes need to be written up and sent out. Sometimes a wiki is used to create an accessible log of meeting minutes.

Anyone wanting to read those notes needs to either sift through email or try find the notes by navigating the wiki.

By contrast, in Chandler, the same thing can be done with a single event item that:

• Represents the meeting on the calendar;
• Can be managed as a task, both when preparing for the meeting and follow-up with meeting notes;
• Functions as a “shared workspace” for brainstorming agenda items and logging notes.

For example, if you have a daily check-in meeting on the calendar. Anyone can add agenda items from the calendar or the Triage List. Each person can see the agenda items others have already added. You have what amounts to a shared, asynchronous “whiteboard” where you can brainstorm without having to be in the same room.

As the agenda begins to take shape, the meeting event can be sent from Chandler as an email invitation.

When it’s time for the meeting to start, the event drops into the top of the NOW section with the agenda right in the notes field.

During the meeting, notes can be taken right in the meeting event, which can then be re-sent via email, now updated with notes from the meeting.

Others wanting to get caught up on the daily check-ins can simply browse the calendar from Chandler Desktop or Chandler Hub on the web.

You start out with a simple email. Perhaps notes from a meeting…

Hi!

Here are some of the issues we noted during out meeting.

1. …
2. …
3. …
4. …

It occurred to me that I actually have a number of questions about #2. Off the top of my head, some of them are:

• …
• …
• …

I’m sure I’ll think of more.

We also talked about looking into these options as possible ways to resolve ….

• …
• …
• …
• …

Unfortunately, I don’t know the status of …, does anybody else know? Should we look into this more?

Here are some other next actions that came out of the meeting:

• …
• …
• …
• …

Am I missing anything?

This 1 email might generate 15 separate threads of conversations.

People respond with:

- More open issues
- Questions about the open issues
- Questions about #2
- Answers to your question re: the status of …
- More next actions
- Status updates on next actions they’ve already started
- Stuff you forgot

You make progress as a group. But all of your work is buried in 1, 2, 3, 10 threads of emails.

Each message opens up more open issues to track, more questions to answer, more next actions to do.

You end up with dozens to hundreds of flagged email you need to react to in some way. But before you have a chance to reflect on what’s already been said, new information comes in.

By contrast, how might this work in Chandler?

You take the first message and you immediately break it down into separate items:

- List of open issues
- Spin out issue #2 because you already know you want to start up a list of questions about it that others can contribute to and perhaps answer.
- Possible options to resolve … becomes it’s own list
- Split out option … as it’s own item because like issue #2, you already have more information about aaa that you want to track.
- Each next action becomes its own item

Now, you and your group have a loosely structured space to fill in as you make progress on closing open issues, answering questions and completing next actions.

People can “respond” by:

- Adding more open issues to the open issues list.
- Spinning off issues as independent items as soon as they start working on resolving them
- Adding more questions to the questions about #2 item.
- Creating more next actions as they emerge.
- Update their status on next actions on the next action item itself.

In this way, Chandler allows you to “break apart” complex discussions into their component issues, questions, next actions and running lists so that as you progress (individually and as a group), you have a modicum of “organization” where you can create issue-centric places to collect and store ideas, thoughts, questions, status updates, etc. As a result, “discussion” about open issues happen on items dedicated defined around the issue, task, idea you’re grappling with, not mixed up in long email threads that cover a potpourri of topics relevant to the project.

That is the key difference between Chandler and Email.

Email collaboration unfolds around discussions, which can meander and bloom into unmanageable, tangled threads from which it becomes impossible to extract a “source of truth” about what’s actually going on.

In Chandler, collecting a list of open issues or questions becomes a shared task in a shared workspace where everyone can see and edit the same list.