Chandler Server is a server and Ajax web UI for managing and sharing calendars, events, and tasks. It implements open data standards including CalDAV, WebDAV, Atom, and Atompub.

This is a bugfix release to update the visual treatment on the login page and add a new widget specific Javascript build.

Chandler Server 0.14.2 is available for download as a ready-to-run bundle at:

http://chandlerproject.org/serverdownload

and the source code is available from subversion at:

http://svn.osafoundation.org/server/cosmo/tags/rel_0.14.2

Send us feedback at the open mailing list (no subscription required):

chandler-users@osafoundation.org

We look forward to hearing from you!

While my closest friends all checked their e-mail hourly, many of my other friends had work that wasn’t sitting in front of a computer. Many of them got e-mail accounts only grudgingly, and checked them maybe weekly. I was constantly wasting time expecting people to have read my email proposals. Eventually, I learned that I had to kill trees if I wanted people to hear what I had to say.

Applications, even paradigm shifting applications, are only useful if you use them. Obvious though this may be, it’s critical in determining whether a tool is valuable in practice.

In my day to day use of Chandler, I often close the application down and forget to open it up again. When I want to go check whether I can schedule an event, or find some other specific piece of information, I go and load Chandler, no sweat. But when I have an idea or something I need to remember to do, I often just create an (electronic) sticky or emacs file or send an email to myself to track it.

This is a hassle! I love Chandler’s organization of my calendar, random thoughts, and tasks, especially the ability to set something to come back to my attention later. But I’m not getting us much advantage from this as I’d like, because I still have so many tasks not in Chandler. The truth is, I don’t need all that organizational power most of the time. Often, I’d just like to quickly jot down a task.

To make it easier for everyone in my position to add tasks to their Chandler collections, today we’re announcing Chandler Quick Entry for iGoogle. OK, maybe this doesn’t make anything easier for Nepalese babies. But hopefully it’ll be helpful for people who use Chandler Hub and iGoogle.

If your homepage is set to Google and you’ve never used iGoogle before, it’s worth a look. You can quickly add a few gadgets with blog feeds, news, or whatever else you’re into. And, now, you can create notes and quickly send them to Chandler Hub. If you use Chandler Desktop to sync your hub collections, your new note will appear in Chandler the next time it’s open and syncs.

Give it a try and let us know what you think!

 [Note: at the moment, you can’t use Google’s Directory to add the gadget, the directory contains an old, non-functional version of the gadget.  You need to click on the image above to successfully add.]

It’s an exciting time to be in this area of software development. Software companies are finally turning their attention to small organizations, businesses and households; groups that are less structured than traditional corporate environments.

Chandler falls into this new category of personal and collaboration tools for small, loosely structured workgroups. There are 2 significant ways in which Chandler departs from enterprise-scale collaboration tools:

One. Traditionally, many collaboration tools have been structured around “clients” and projects, which were presumed to have start and end dates and concrete deliverables, that once delivered meant the project was complete. Delivering for each client was assumed to be a relatively “straightforward, process-oriented” affair that could be mapped out in “workflows” that remained constant from one project to the next.

By contrast, Chandler assumes that new projects (or tasks) will continuously emerge from existing projects. Old projects change or become irrelevant before they’re even begun. As a result, “work” becomes a never-ending, ever-changing procession directed towards a higher-level goal. To be sure, deadlines and milestones exist along the way. But they are markers in a continuous progression as opposed to tidy endings to bounded projects.

In short, Chandler is designed for groups that are constantly re-inventing what it is they do and how they do it.

As a result, building and maintaining project and workflow structures for managing and organizing such a constantly changing morass of tasks, dates and unresolved issues just doesn’t seem worth it.

Instead, Chandler is intended for users who are actively looking for something that lets you stay “organized” at their own pace. They specifically don’t want to feel like they’re being pressured to set deadlines they’re not ready to set. They don’t want to be harassed about tasks you entered but no longer need to do. In other words, Chandler users want a “Don’t call me, I’ll call you.” kind of tool.

Two. Traditionally, collaboration tools have focused on coordinating hand-off of information and shared resources (documents, media, etc) so that each member of the team has access to what they need in order to focus on their work.

By contrast, Chandler assumes that ownership of responsibilities is shared and passed from one member of the team to another with relative fluidity.

As a result, Chandler sharing isn’t modeled as a fileshare that gives everyone access to everyone else’s work. Instead, Chandler collaboration assumes that people need help working on the same thing together.

Sharing in Chandler is less about “watching” other people’s task lists and calendars and more about sharing a group collection and calendar where individual tasks are passed around or simply worked on in parallel by multiple people.

This doesn’t mean that “personal” collections can’t and shouldn’t be shared with others. It’s more a matter of “What is Chandler’s special sauce?” when it comes to collaboration.

This fluidy in collaboration also explains why Chandler is first and foremost a personal tool with built-in collaboration as opposed to straight-on groupware.

Our belief is that the line between “my work” and “your work” and “our work” is now sufficiently blurred such that tools that draw a hard line between personal and group task management simply erect unecessary hindrances that break common workflows.

Note: This is yet another way in which Chandler aspires to mimic email. People see email first and foremost as a personal tool. But fundamentally, email is about communicating and working with others. Nevertheless, the collaboration aspect of email is framed as an extension of the personal.)

1. Separate detail view windows: This has been requested fairly often in the past. We’re nailing down the final UI for opening a new top-level window for a given item, but otherwise the code is done and has been checked into trunk. There will probably be a more detailed post at some point about using this feature: I personally have found it handy to use separate windows for items I update regularly but sporadically, like my grocery list.
2. Automatically checking for updates: I’ve added some data on our website to enable Chandler Desktop to check periodically (weekly is the default) for new releases. The app will pop up a dialog that tells you what the new release is, and allows you to click a button to download it in your web browser.

Besides this, there are quite a few bugs addressed in 0.7.6. You can find the full list here.

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!

Juggling my schedule and that of three young learners — plus all their extra-cirricular activities — isn’t easy. I need to be able to look at a calendar and tell who needs to do what (and who needs to be where) at a glance. To stay organized I use Chandler, an app so feature-rich that I don’t even use it to it’s fullest capability. I love the way it color codes whatever I throw at for easy sorting and retrieval. It also keeps a running to-do list for me, and it’s a snap to create new events, messages, and tasks.

The idea of a “running to-do” list is interesting. To me, it sounds like a task list that is unpredictable, always changing.

When building a task manager, it’s tempting to go down the path of developing features to map out projects with complex task landscapes: dependencies, time estimates, urgency and priority rankings, start times and end times, intermediate milestone dates, etc. There are certainly projects that require this kind of project / task manager (and as an open source project, Chandler can be extended to support such functionality).

However, the kinds of task lists Chandler serves best are precisely “running to-do lists” (or at least my understanding of what a “running to-do list” is.) Task lists that change so quickly, it’s not worthwhile to invest a lot of time inputting and maintaining a lot of meta-data about your tasks. Instead what’s important is a snappy way to get stuff out of your head and onto the task list, plus some basic affordances for tracking (Triage Status + Tickler Alarms) and organizing (Collections + Calendar) your tasks, so they don’t just pile up into one big, insurmountable mountain of to-dos.

Chandler Server is a server and Ajax web UI for managing and sharing calendars, events, and tasks. It implements open data standards including CalDAV, WebDAV, Atom, and Atompub.

This is a bugfix release to patch a bug in which users with non-url-safe characters in their usernames or passwords could not log in to the Web UI.

Chandler Server 0.14.1 is available for download as a ready-to-run bundle at:

http://chandlerproject.org/serverdownload

and the source code is available from subversion at:

http://svn.osafoundation.org/server/cosmo/tags/rel_0.14.1

Send us feedback at the open mailing list (no subscription required):

chandler-users@osafoundation.org

We look forward to hearing from you!

The bugs fixed in this release include:

• #11956: Calendar ui double-escaping authentication request

Use Case: Setting up and Following-thru on a Meeting.

Edit, Evolve, Send and Re-Send the same item of information as your task to schedule a meeting turns into an invitation turns into a scheduled meeting on your calendar turns into an agenda list turns into meeting notes.

A simple meeting can often generate a dozen or more separate bits of information for everyone involved; bits of information that each person then needs to manage independently.

• You create a task item to schedule a meeting;
• Send out a separate email message to invite others to the meeting;
• Follow-up with a whole thread to work out the meeting agenda;
• And add the meeting to your calendar.

• As the meeting shifts around and the agenda changes (all information that arrives via more email messages), you update the event on your calendar.

• During the meeting, you write up notes and send them out in yet another email; which in turn
• Prompts responses as others amend your meeting notes in follow-up emails

When you go back to look for the definitive record of what was discussed and decided at that meeting, where do you start? There are so many bits to collate and reconcile into a “single source of truth”.

By contrast, in Chandler you have 1 item that you edit and amend over time with changes and new information.

Your task to schedule a meeting can be sent out as an invitation email and then put on your calendar once everyone has agreed to a suitable time. In parallel, you can pull together a meeting agenda on that same meeting event item. During the meeting, you can take meetings notes, again in the same meeting event item. All the while, you can send and resend the same task/event item to notify people who aren’t sharing through Chandler.

1. Collecting Agenda Items for a Meeting in a “Task List” View

2. Reviewing Meeting Notes from the Calendar

3. Sending an Update to the Event with Notes from the Meeting

More importantly, all of this use and re-use is plausible because you can access the same information item from different contexts (the calendar and the list view, multiple collections) and there is built-in support for “losing” and “finding” information. Otherwise, recycling and evolving notes and events would quickly turn into an onerous workflow you would not bother with.

In Chandler:

• Meetings on your calendar can be managed like tasks in a list view; and vice versa,
• Tasks can be tracked from the list view *and* put on the calendar to mark important deadlines and milestone dates;

• The LATER “Triage Status” allows you to “disappear” stuff you can’t deal with right now without losing it forever;
• Tickler alarms and event dates automatically re-focus your attention on things you need to follow-up on

This Recycling Workflow works for maintaining lists (shopping lists, lists of questions, thank you notes, etc) and working on drafts as well. Really, it applies to anything that evolves and changes over time.

Reducing sidebar organizational clutter: In Chandler, you get 9 different views of your data for every 1 Chandler collection you create.

• In the sidebar, you can generate 3 views of your data for every 1 collection you create. For example, rather than having a Home Calendar + Home Task List + All Home Stuff, you create 1 Home Collection and slice and dice it by navigating the Application Areas in the Toolbar.
• Within each collection, the 3 Triage Status sections give you 3 more ways to slice and dice each collection/application area.

Reducing duplication of information between your email, task list and calendar. In Chandler, you can:

• Manage calendar events as tasks in a list; and vice versa, you can
• Manage tasks by putting putting them on the calendar to mark important deadlines and milestones
• Address any item and send it out as an email

Reducing the # of information bits you generate by recycling your data with Triage Status, Tickler alarms and integrated Calendaring.

You can use and re-use your information items in Chandler by continuously editing and evolving a single item over time, even turn into a completely different kind of item.

Here’s a task to re-schedule a dentist appointment that turned into the new appointment on the calendar. This item originally started out as a confirmation email from my dentist, which I moved into Chandler and re-purposed as a reminder to re-schedule my appointment.

Sending, Editing and Re-Sending Email

With email, once you’ve sent a message, you can’t edit it anymore. Amendments can only be made by sending a new message. However, it’s not enough to just give people a way to keep editing a single item over time (which is what most task managers do).

Yet, one of the reasons email is so appealing is precisely because we can forget about everything that’s come before. Every new message is tabula rasa. There is a natural rhythmic cycle to work. We make a little bit of progress. We get stuck. We stop thinking about it for a while as the issue percolates in the nether regions of our brain or as we wait for someone else to get back to us. And then we pick it up again. In the meantime, email’s great at helping us “forget” about problems we can’t make progress on. The problem is, once you’ve lost something in email, it’s hard work to get it back.

Nevertheless, any effective alternative to email has to do a good job of disappearing and reappearing issues, in the right place, at the right time.

In Chandler, Triage Status allows you to forget about stuff (for a while) without losing it forever.

Instead of having a binary choice:

• Keep this in front of my face OR
• Lose it and forget about it forever…

You have 3 choices:

• Keep this in front of my face OR
• Keep this, but shove it off into LATER for now OR
• Lose it and forget about it because it’s DONE! or Obsolete.

You can move items in and out of your focus (NOW versus LATER) as many times as you need in order to finish the job. And if there are important deadline and milestone dates to remember, you can assign a Tickler Alarm or put the item on the Calendar and Chandler will re-focus the item for you on those dates.

Reducing duplication of information that is relevant to multiple contexts.

In Chandler, notes and events can appear in multiple collections. This means that events you and your spouse are attending together can appear as the same event on both of your calendars. Issues that need to be resolved for several projects can be tracked as the same note-item multiple project collections.

Tasks can show up in the context of a project collection and in a collection organized around a person, department or organization or a location (e.g. Things I need to discuss with Jan, HR stuff, or Home Office).

This allows you to organize your information in whatever way is most helpful to you without the up-keep of updating multiple versions of the same information.

Reduce the # of bits of information you exchange by Sharing.

This is somewhat self-explanatory. Instead of emailing back and forth, you could be editing the same lists, drafts, and meeting agendas with the people you work most closely with. When you need to alert people who aren’t sharing through Chandler, you can send (and re-send) the notes and events you’re working on via email.

These are some of the high-level design concepts. Stay tuned for a more specific scenario!

The first changes I’m excited about are, like our latest release, less wholesale modifications than improvements and commitments to stable APIs with performance enhancement sugar to sweeten the deal. Dojo’s internationalization (i18n) and event APIs have matured to the point where developers can expect to rely on them without fearing a future change like the one we’ve just experienced. As a result we’ve begun the process of migrating our custom i18n code to Dojo’s API, away from the custom, backend dependent code we’ve used in the past. We’ve also started streamlining our use of Dojo’s topic APIs to make our code easier to read and understand. Both these processes are works in progress, so keep an eye on this space for more detailed information in the future.

Several components have also seen essentially complete overhauls, most prominently the XMLHttpRequest wrappers and Dijit, the full featured HTML/CSS UI toolkit built on Dojo Core. Instead of using dojo.io.bind and passing callback functions, method, and header information dojo.xhrGet, dojo.xhrPost and a handful of other methods accept a variety of arguments, make HTTP requests and return dojo.Deferred objects. This return value, a port of the asynchronous task management API introduced by Python’s Twisted networking library, provides an easy way for developers to manage complex sets of asynchronous actions like server requests. Since our Web UI data APIs already used dojo.Deferred internally, this change led to a very nice code reduction.

Dojo’s user interface building API, Dijit, has been greatly improved since Dojo 0.4. In addition to moving to its own namespace as part of Dojo’s overall API flattening, Dijit is better streamlined, better tested, and easier to use. A number of Chandler Server UI components have been ported to the Dijit APIs, and are, as a result, better tested, more modular, and closer to being embeddable outside of our Web UI.

The Dojo team has also been hard at work putting together the next generation of Javascript tools to support high performance rich applications on top of the Open Web. Two of these tools are already finding their way into heavy use within our code base, and are poised to become critical pieces of our infrastructure over the next year.

The first, dojo.data, is “uniform data access layer” that allows UI components to be built without worrying about backend data formats. Our user administration interface has been essentially completely rewritten, but required almost no new UI code. All we had to do was implement a dojo.data store on top of the Cosmo Management Protocol (CMP) and hook it up to Dojo’s Grid widget to get full in-place user field editing, “infinite scrolling” for handling large numbers of users and a handful of other goodies. While our end-user calendar and item list UIs have not been moved to this API, the ongoing web widget project is being built on a new dojo.data store that we hope to eventually integrate into our current UI.

The second piece of new functionality that I’m excited about is dojo.query. This do-it-all CSS query function is the go-to guy for finding pieces of DOM to manipulate. The beauty of this and other query functions is that they are based on features most web developers eventually expect to be supported natively by all major web browsers. By allowing developers to start using these features now we can build advanced web applications that will get trivially more performant with time, and motivate browser developers to continue implementing this critical functionality.

In addition to improving the tools we use to build our Web UI, Dojo’s 1.0 line has introduced some major infrastructure improvements in the form of a DOH, a new Dojo-independent testing harness, and a from-scratch rewrite of the Dojo build system. We’ve managed to port all of our tests to DOH by writing some wrappers to avoid a completely rewrite, which has allowed us to take advantage of the very nice test harness bundled with Dojo. Nearly as important as this test framework is the build system that plays a key role in transforming over 1MB of Javascript into a much more digestible 138K loaded in several different stages. The Dojo 1.0 line makes this process much cleaner and easy to understand, as well as offering advanced functionality like layering, which allows us to break our Javascript into large chunks appropriate to different pieces of our UI.

Dojo has been an integral part of our project to build a new kind of information and knowledge management ecosystem and we are lucky to be able to rely on a vibrant community of developers producing a first class piece of software. If you’re interested in digging deeper and helping us integrate even more of the exciting new functionality provided in its latest release, Dojo 1.1, please don’t hesitate to ask questions on our development list, or via IRC on irc.freenode.net in the #cosmo channel.