Laszlo Systems announced that they have chosen Chandler Server as the back end for a new calendar application they are deploying by as part of their Webtop suite.

In their recent blog post, Chandler Server came up in the open source credits.

“We liked the fact that we could use the CalDAV standard, and that Cosmo supports publishing a CalDAV collection as a single .ics file that can users can subscribe to via external calendar clients. Also, in evaluating scalability, we found that Cosmo performance outpaced other solutions.”

It’s great to see other people using Chandler Server and getting value out of it. We are happy to have them as an open source partner!

I was mucking around on wikipedia last night and ended up on the Open Source Applications Foundation entry page. It’s been a while since I looked at this and I was surprised how out of date the information was, particularly since the restructuring in January. Although I love the charming picture of Mitch Kapor, Katie Capps Parlante is now our acting President.

I also looked at the Chandler entry and found it a bit more current. It does show the new logo although the latest version is listed as 0.7.4.1 and not 0.7.5.1. The screenshot could also be updated to show the new simplified UI.

I hesitate to update these myself, as I know that Wikipedia has a NPOV (neutral point of view) policy and I fear being biased. If anyone wants to help us out, updating the entries to reflect the current state of the organization and the project would be much appreciated!

So for some time I have been meaning to blog about how I am using Chandler. As a member of the Chandler team, I had been dogfooding (to use an old term) and using the application for some time in a work environment. I shared a Product and Design collection with my team so we could keep track of design meetings and tasks people were working on. We also shared an Office Calendar for keeping track of shared meetings and PTO. I have always used various calendaring and task management systems within the organizations I have worked for but had never adopted anything for personal use. Of course this doesn’t mean I didn’t need such a system. I simply resigned myself to emailing myself reminders, leaving myself voicemails and carrying around scraps of paper with shopping lists. Yes, I am also one of those people with a “huge” inbox.

Last July my life changed dramatically with the birth of not one but two babies!

I started out with just a Twins Calendar

Needless to say, I was going to have to be much more organized than I ever was before. I decided to experiment with Chandler and created a collection called “Twins” believing that I would never have time to use it much. We had just released Preview so I wanted to get on board with Chandler somehow. I was so sleep deprived that I couldn’t remember anything. After several lengthy “on-hold sessions with the doctor’s office to double check the date and time of my next visit because I didn’t write it down”, I started keeping a simple calendar with my kids appointments. Having all these dates in Chandler was pretty handy. My husband travels frequently on business so I would email him the appointments so he could arrange his schedule to accompany me.

But, quickly, it grew into more than just a Calendar

As anybody with kids will know, you very quickly expand beyond doctor’s appointments to new parent meetings, support groups, playgroups and a variety of other outings to keep track of. As time went on, I began to build up an extensive list of tasks that I had to keep track of as well. As a new parent, there was a steady stream of things you needed to buy and projects you needed to tackle. This runs the gamut from investigating infant CPR courses to ordering diapers. I realized very quickly that I had few opportunities to do things and I needed to be efficient about it. I would keep shopping lists for various kids stores in the city so when I happened to be out (usually at the pediatrician), I could stop by and pick up the few things I needed. In the old days, I would make multiple trips to the grocery store preparing for a dinner party. The cost of forgetting something was really high and keeping this all in my head was impossible.

I started to put any and all kids related information in this collection. I buy baby supplies online so I keep a recurring diapers.com order and add to my list in the notes field as I see supplies running low. When it’s time to place my next order, I know that I won’t forget anything.

I used Chandler when I was looking for a nanny. I kept dates of phone and in-person interviews and lists of associated tasks. I manage packing lists for trips, questions for my next doctor’s appointment and an endless stream of errands. I belong to a “Parents of Multiples” club that has bi-yearly consignment sales and a very active mailing list on which there are product and activity recommendations.

Why Chandler Worked For Me

It’s true that I could be using other applications to track all these things but there are several things I like about Chandler specifically. Since I am not married to any particular system, I like the way Chandler allows me to put my stuff in the application but doesn’t force me to process it in a certain way. I will sit down, use the quick entry field and just add a whole bunch of stuff and I like the fact that I don’t necessarily have to add any more info, specify next actions or make any decisions at all. I can leave it in the Later section forever! I suppose in some ways Chandler can accommodate my lack of organization. Getting stuff out of my head and into one place was a big step for me and over time has allowed me to create a system a my own pace.

Because I have very limited time, I use alarms for everything and set them for times when I know I will have time to act on something. I set alarms to call about appointments and activities for first thing in the morning. For items I buy or research online, I get pinged after the kids go to bed. The alarms in Chandler are not just pop ups, when an alarm goes off, the item moves to the top of the NOW section in Chandler.

When I sit down at my computer, I can easily scan my NOW section and see what things I can be working on.

Almost every night when I come home from work my nanny mentions something she wants me to buy or investigate. Now I have a place for all that. My Twins collection has expanded to include general family related events and activities.

Sharing with my Husband

Currently, I am managing my Chandler Twins collection independently. I email my spouse an event or a task. Although he doesn’t use Chandler Desktop, I see many ways in which we could collaborate together via the web UI. We have been working on a quick entry widget which is basically a portable web UI that can sit in a Web page. If he had the quick entry widget installed, he could use it to add things to my task list directly rather than telling me verbally like he does today. He wouldn’t need to log into the Hub and could simply plug this widget into tools he is already using ie: iGoogle. Ideally I would love enable collaboration with him via a widget that shares a single item or all items in a collection. He might also like to receive summary reports over email of the changes I have made and the new stuff I have added to the collection.

Wish List

The one feature that I wish I had more of is integration with my iPhone. Obviously, when I am out running errands I am not at my computer. It would be handy for me to easily bring up that shopping list when I am out at the grocery store. My current solution for that is to share my collection and use the Hub to access it via my iPhone from the browser. This is not ideal of course but it’s a workaround solution. This crystalized for me that if we want people to use Chandler as their trusted system for information, it’s important they be able to get at the data when and where they need it.

I would have never predicted that what started out as a simple calendar has now turned into an essential repository of information that I rely on every day.

A while back we conducted a brief survey on the Chandler users list. We received about 20 responses and collected some interesting data on how people were using Chandler, post-Preview. Some of the highlights…

• Almost everyone was using both the Desktop application and the Hub. Three people indicated they were running their own Server. For the others, we assumed they were using the OSAF hosted service to share.
• For most, Chandler was being used both at home and at work. Several people specified they were trying out Chandler with a small workgroup.
• Most people were sharing in some capacity either with themselves or within a small workgroup. Three people indicated they weren’t sharing at all.
• Almost all the users were taking advantage of both the calendar and the task features. We did not specifically ask if they were using the Dashboard collection and/or the triage features.
• Most people are using Chandler exclusively for tasks and calendars. Four people were using iCal and two people were using Sunbird.
• We asked people to list their top 3 feature requests and bug fixes. The responses covered a wide range. Features such as contacts, printing, free-busy, ACL support and performance came up multiple times.

This survey confirmed much of the information we have extracted from the users list and continue to feed into our planning process for future releases. We will follow-up with more surveys in the next couple of months to see how people’s usage patterns may have changed over time and check in on new users that have come on board. Based on these results, we have a number of more detailed follow-up questions we want to ask around the differences between home and work usage as well as specifics concerning the triage features.

So there are lots of releases to talk about in this week’s update.

We rolled out a 0.7.5 version of the Desktop last week which featured a wide variety of bug fixes and UI changes as well as some work to support the security fixes in the new Cosmo release. We did a quick update 0.7.5.1 yesterday to address 2 major bugs that were blocking users from getting started with Chandler. More details are available in the release notes.

0.7.5 Release Notes
0.7.5.1 Release Notes

Cosmo 0.13 was released which includes a major sharing security fix. Upgrading to Cosmo 0.13 requires users to upgrade to Chandler 0.7.5 or 0.7.5.1 to take advantage of the new features so we encourage all Desktop users to upgrade. Randy is moving on to the Cosmo 1.0 bugs in the work queue.

We are progressing well on the Dojo 1.0 work and have another IRC QA session scheduled for 1:00pm today. As always we welcome any testing help from the community. Jeffrey has been away but we will resume work to deploy the Quick Entry Widget when he returns.

Philip is continuing on with his architecture work and working on a proof of concept, “Hello World” for Trellis and SQLAlchemy linkup. He is working on fixing some snags introduced by resent SQLAlchemy changes.

On the marketing front we continue to evangelize Chandler, extract user testimonials, publish blog posts and will be deploying a new landing page and quick start guide soon.

Here’s an update on the current activities…

We are getting ready to move forward with several new releases.

On the desktop side, Chandler 0.7.5 should be released sometime in the next several days. Last week we held a collaborative QA session on IRC. You can download the latest checkpoint for a preview of all the fixes.

On the server side we will be doing two releases this month. The first one, 0.13, contains a major fix to plug a security hole along with a number of other smaller bug fixes. We have been testing this branch and will likely have the release out later this week. You can get the latest release candidate here and the test spec is available on the wiki.

This will be followed by an infrastructure release, 0.14, where the current UI has been ported to Dojo 1.0. We held a test session on IRC last Thursday and have another planned for tomorrow at 1:00pm. We have been testing against this instance and Travis’ test spec is also on the wiki. We always welcome any additional help testing.

We continue to make good progress on the Quick Entry widget. Jeffrey has been working on a few remaining IE bugs. Brian has sent an architecture proposal to the list for the Notifications widget. Philip Eby recently posted on the list soliciting feedback on his Trellis work.

On the marketing and design side, we have been working on a new landing page which we will deploy and try out on users soon. We will continue to iterate on the new design to refine our product message. This is one of many marketing activities we will be tackling in the coming weeks.

It’s time for another update on our recent activities.

On the desktop side we have been working away at the desktop work queue and plan to release 0.7.5 next week. We will send out a detailed list of new features and bugs fixed with the release notes. Highlights will include some printing support, new localizations and some modifications to simplify the UI. Philip continues to make progress on the rearchitecture work, specifically the repository replacement.

On the Cosmo side, we have been testing out Randy’s fixes for the security bugs with an IRC QA session yesterday that uncovered a couple of issues. We will be releasing Cosmo 0.13 with these security fixes in the next week or so. There was some work done on the desktop side to support the security fixes but both releases can be independent.

Travis is continuing to finish up the port to Dojo 1.0 and has been working on a test spec. We are targeting next week to start testing this branch. We are making good progress on the quick entry widget. Most of the polish tweaks have been done and Jeffrey has been testing and fixing some IE bugs. Brian has been working on the notification widget and is getting close to having an architecture proposal ready. You can track the web progress on the wiki.

Jared continues to work on quite a few administration, build and support tasks. We have also held some design discussions to brainstorm the email/sms notification features.

We have also started working on a bunch of different marketing initiatives. We are starting with refining the pitch, our landing page and organizing some of the planning information on the wiki so it lines up with our plan or record. Mimi has done a series of recent blog posts that tackles the user problem we are trying to solve with Chandler.

Here is this week’s project status.

We released Chandler 0.7.4.1 earlier this week. You can find more details in the blog post below. Grant continues to make his way through our desktop work queue and in keeping with our monthly releases, we expect another release out in early March. Philip is starting to work on some re-architecture tasks, specifically investigating a storage replacement for the repository.

On the web side we have made some good progress working out the design for the first several web widgets we are going to implement. Katie, Sheila and Mimi have been working with the developers to define the first set of development tasks and distribute those. We have much better visibility into the web work queue in general. Jeffrey is working on the quick entry widget while Travis finishes up the port to Dojo 1.0. We should be ready to start testing the ported Web UI soon. Brian has started looking into the notification widget. You can read more about the web work queue and track the widgets design progress on the Web Work Queue page.

Randy has been working on some re-factoring to deal with the sharing security issue. This has been discussed extensively on the list. Grant has also made some supporting fixes on the desktop side as well. We should be ready to test out these changes next week.

We still continue to wrap up a few administrative and IT tasks.

It’s been a couple of weeks since our last update.

Some developments on the release front…

• Last week we released Chandler 0.7.4.
• There was also a Chandler Server release, 0.12.0.
• We are close to rolling out a Chandler 0.7.4.1 which addresses a bug that complicated upgrades from version 0.7.3.

We have started making progress on our short term strategy which Katie Parlante outlined in a blog post last week.

We have outlined a prioritized list of desktop bug fixes that we feel address some of the pain points for our users. Grant has started working on many of these and you can track our progress on the wiki. We have already started removing some components of the UI that were confusing users. Our Thunderbird plugin, although still in the work queue, has been prioritized down a bit so that Brian Kirsch is available to help us on the web side for the short term. Phillip Eby is wrapping up his work on setuptools and should have the 0.6 release out today.

On the web side we have been spending quite a bit of time working out the web work queue and floating various proposals and ideas on the list. Mimi recently sent out a list of critical bugs to fix in the Web UI that address some of the barriers for people getting started. We have also been working out the detailed use cases and designs for some of our web widgets. We are currently in the process of prioritizing the work queue and dividing up the work between Travis, Jeffrey and Brian. Travis has already implemented a very early stage quick entry widget that people can play with. He is spending most of his time in the next few weeks porting our current web UI to Dojo 1.0. Randy has been circulating a proposal on the list to tackle a security hole when users share read only items. We seem to be getting close to a final solution.

We are in the process of updating the wiki so that it captures our plan of record and all the work queues and prioritizations.

Lastly, we are still taking care of a number of lingering logistical and administrative issues pertaining to the reorganization.

With so many changes around the restructuring we thought it would be helpful to start blogging about our project status on a regular basis so people get a sense of the ongoing activities.

While we work the strategic next steps, our new team will focus on getting a release out for both the desktop and server.

• Chandler Desktop 0.7.4 will be released in the next week or so. Some highlights…

  • We have addressed a number of sharing and recurrence bugs found through usage.
  • We have added a new German localization.
  • The recorded scripts branch was integrated, which is more of a development item.

• Cosmo Server 0.12 will also be released this week. We fixed a few bugs found during hub usage and addressed a number of security bugs.

A more detailed summary will be sent out with each release announcement.

Over the next several weeks, we will be spending most of our time working out the details of our long term roadmap and goals. Our smaller team will be coming together for an off-site at the end of January where we will engage in a number of sessions around planning, strategy and marketing. We have been using a shared collection in Chandler to collaborate on a number of different projects and have published a public Chandler Project collection so others can track our progress.

We continue to work closely with our current users and are in the process of scheduling a number of detailed user interviews which will help us refine our marketing message and provide us with more detailed information about usability patterns. We are currently actively working on addressing a number of security and usability issues. We are also looking for ways to reach out to more users and are investigating projects such as building a Thunderbird plug-in which was posted on the blog and the design list recently.

Finally, as with any reorg there is a period of knowledge transfer and redistributing responsibilities such as builds, systems support and testing. We are also taking care of a number of administrative type tasks and logistics such as consolidating some of our mailing lists, meetings and revisiting a number of processes to make more effective use of the smaller team. We now have short daily scrum-style checkins.