Accomplished
(2.5) - status meeting
(4) - continued to explore Windows Vista on laptop
(5) - began preparing document for Monday Development Plan review
(5) - did some ad-hoc testing to find additional bugs in the Planner
(2) - added more bugs to the spreadsheet
(1.5) - updates via email, etc.

Planned

• Work with Pedja and William to finalize plans for prototyping this quarter
• Revise Development Plan and schedule based on feedback from review meeting
• Focus on fixing bugs and developing new features (based on Development Plan)
• Continue to document, clean up, and become familiar with the source code
• Review reference task paper by Whittaker

Issues/Problems

• none

Discussion

When I met with Jim Gemmell, he pointed me to some potentially useful resources, which I'll copy here...

The System.IO.FileSystemWatcher class can be used for tracking changes in a folder. The code for opening an Outlook item is lengthy so I won't copy all of it here, but the main idea is to execute a special process by using "System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("outlook:" + entry_id, null);". I need to do a bit more research, but it should be possible to walk the ids in Outlook and find what we are looking for. The code should be able to open the target email message, appointment, contact, task, etc. without making a copy. The code snippets for this Office integration are known only to work for the current version of Office and NOT Office 12 (2007). Similar functionality must exist, but we'll need to research to find out how it works. As far as I know, Jim hasn't begun targeting Office 12 in this way yet.

Accomplished
(2.5) - Development Plan meeting
(8) - worked on and revised Development Plan
(2) - met with Pedja
(0.5) - met with William
(2) - status meeting
(1) - updates via email, etc.
(4) - poked around in the code and revised schedule

Planned

• Work with Pedja and William to finalize plans for prototyping this quarter
• Focus on fixing bugs and developing new features (based on Development Plan)

Issues/Problems

• none

Discussion

I've attached the latest version of the Development Plan, incorporating the revisions we discussed at the meeting last week. Since the main content is a Word outline, it's not possible to combine that with the final two pages at the end (date listing and calendar) and print, so I created a PDF. With a final completion date of 3/6, we will have some time before the Spring Quarter begins. Several of the items listed under "Additional Features for Future Fieldwork Version" could be considered and included for the initial fieldwork release, but I suggest we go forward with the current plan, and then make changes along the way, if necessary. Ultimately, I believe the goal should be to have a stable, working version of the Planner with the work items scheduled in this document. Once that is complete, we'll have a "safe" version to use for the fieldwork, and if another revision is stable enough to use for the study, we can use that instead.

I included "demo" dates (during status meetings), to indicate progress and discuss.

Accomplished
(2) - status meeting
(1) - assisted Andrea with email application
(2) - updates/discussion via email, etc.
(15) - fixed bugs and implemented features according to development plan

Planned

• Focus on fixing bugs and developing new features (based on development plan)
• Prepare for Wednesday status meeting presentation

Issues/Problems

• none

Discussion

I'm feeling a bit better about my understanding of the code now. Implementing the delete menu item took longer than expected because it took some research to find out how to do it properly. It turns out there is no "delete" method on a text area, unlike for copy, paste, cut. I started researching and implementing a way to do it by sending a "delete" keypress to the control, but then I read about how such support for sending keystrokes is broken in Vista, so I looked for a different method. It turns out the answer was simple, but unintuitive -- you have to set the "selectedtext" property to an empty string. That actually does the delete, and works. All the features under "General Cleanup and Bug Fixing" have been completed except for the greying of the "demote" button under certain circumstances. The "promote" button is correctly greyed out, however. I plan to finish the "demote" button disable/enable and then move on to the next chunk of work (ICC) in the schedule.

Accomplished
(1.5) - preparation meeting for status meeting
(2.5) - worked on powerpoint/presentation for status meeting
(2) - status meeting
(1) - met with Pedja to discuss preparation for NSF response
(2.5) - create mockup images, Word document visuals for NSF response
(2) - updates/discussion via email, etc.
(8.5) - fixed bugs and implemented features according to development plan

Planned

• Review NSF response
• Help Andrea as a participant in her practice session
• Focus on fixing bugs and developing new features (based on development plan)

Issues/Problems

• none

Discussion

I think we had a very productive meeting last Wednesday. I tried to summarize some of the major points that came up and sent out an email yesterday -- if anyone has additonal stuff to add, then please do. I'm particularly interested in the ideas that came up for the icon/text placement for ICC and D&L since that's related to the current code I have on my plate right now. Speaking of which, I'm falling a little behind on the schedule that I had put together. Although I put buffer time into it, my time this past week has been occupied mostly with the status meeting and the NSF response. I'm hoping to find an opportunity this week to spend a good chunk of time (at once) on the code and be able to offer a first look at the enhanced ICC.

Accomplished
(2.5) - updated NSF response image/text, email
(1) - Suzy Soroczak's talk
(2) - status meeting
(2.5) - updates/discussion via email, etc.
(1.5) - participate in Andrea's practice session
(2) - prepare my computer at RCB
(2) - research and review items from Suzy's talk (see below)
(6) - fixed bugs and implemented features according to development plan

Planned

• Help Andrea as a participant in her 2nd practice session
• Focus on fixing bugs and developing new features (based on development plan)
• Provide feedback and information for Beth, regarding website
• Post stuff to Tales of PIM website

Issues/Problems

• Getting a good chunk of time to work on coding proved difficult last week
• I think I've picked up the cold/bug that is floating around (so far sinus pressure and aches...)

Discussion

Suzy's talk on Wednesday was interesting, although not directly related to the focus and goals of the Project Planner. She was concerned with project management and workflow in software/hardware development teams in the corporate world. However, as part of her research, she encountered several other tools being worked on in other research settings that were worth looking at. I'll list them below, with links to more information if anyone else wants to do further research.

TaskNavigator was mentioned, and I did some digging and found several interesting sources of information. The precursor to TaskNavigator was FRODO TaskMan and more information can be found here:
http://www.dfki.de/frodo/taskman/
The gnowsis Semantic Desktop is another related project done by the same group:
http://www.gnowsis.org/
I found an abstract pointing to a paper published in the ACM online library about Tasknavigator, and I downloaded a copy, read it, and made it available here:
http://students.washington.edu/adcockm/p522-holz.pdf
I think the scope of what they are trying to do far exceeds our notion of the Planner, but they've done some really interesting work. The concept of "task-oriented proactive information delivery" is really quite cool. :-) I'd love to get my hands on BrainFiler too, but I digress...

FASTDash was also mentioned at Suzy's talk. It's something coming out of Mary's team at Microsoft Research. Here's a link to a ~15 minute video about it:
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=239232#239232
It looks like an amazing bit of technology for software development teams, but I don't think it really relates to what we are doing.

Denim, was also mentioned, and a link can be found here:
http://dub.washington.edu/denim/
I don't think this relates to us at all, really.

I was so busy, I didn't submit a status report for this week!

Accomplished
(2.5) - status meeting
(1.5) - updates/discussion via email, etc.
(0.5) - posted latest working build and sample projects to N: drive (N:\Project Folders\Research Projects\KFTF\Prototyping)
(15) - fixed bugs and implemented features according to development plan

Additional Time Spent on PIM-related Activities
(1) - Zhang's ER article
(1) - discovery and cursory look at Scrybe (see discussion below)

Planned

• Focus on fixing bugs and developing new features (based on development plan); ICC update is in progress (see below)

Issues/Problems

• - Still trying to be more efficient in time spent on coding -- it's difficult to accomplish much in small free blocks of time
• Have slipped according to my original schedule, but have a clear plan and feel that much of the code for ICC can be leveraged for D&L fixes

Discussion

A new build of the Planner has been posted to:
"N:\Project Folders\Research Projects\KFTF\Prototyping\Build - 2-19-07"
The folder contains two different setup files, but you only need to run setup.msi. If for some reason a computer doesn't have the Microsoft support files for MSI packages, then the regular executable can be used. (Both install the same version of the Planner.)

What's working in this version:
- all "general cleanup and bug fixing" complete
- menus work as expected (cut, copy, paste, delete)
- tooltips for buttons are correct
- buttons/combo related to fonts have been removed
- Demote/Demote All/Promote/Promote All buttons will be disabled when the option is not available. (Can't promote at top of tree, etc.)
- changes "under the hood" for ICC are in progress and nearing completion, with one functionality change...
- save filename dialog has been removed
- a new node/item will still be created with the link, but filename will be taken from text on currently selected line
- D&L functionality has not changed from original version (yet)

The ICC behavior will be fixed in the next build, to show the icon on the same line, and not create a new node. The current functionality is there as a placeholder until I finish the remaining changes to support icons. (I figured it was better to have something that worked right now, than break ICC entirely!)

I discovered a new PIM tool a few days ago called Scrybe (http://iscrybe.com/main/index.php) that is in a limited beta release. I signed up for access, but have no idea when the will send me account information. There is a video on the site that describes the product. It's a web-based tool that can be used in online or offline (!) mode, and has excellent visuals and some very compelling features. While it doesn't do everything the Planner can do, they have an amazing calendar interface (using a sort of fisheye view) and seem to be focused primarily on the problem of maintaining user context when switching views. While I didn't see a concept identical to ICC or D&L, their smart parsing routines can convert pasted text into automatic lists. The only feature I considered odd was their proud support of a "paper" interface, but I guess they are capitalizing on the Getting Things Done user base. A nice thing about their solution is multi-platform support; since it's a web based application it will run on Windows or Mac machines. They appear to be using only HTML, JavaScript, and Flash to implement. Future versions will be focused on collaboration and sharing of information. Anyhow, I'm very impressed and I highly recommend watching the 7 minute video!

I was so busy, I didn't submit a status report for this week!

Accomplished
(1) - met with Andrea and Pedja to discuss Google study pilot results
(1) - updates/discussion via email, etc.
(12) - fixed bugs and implemented features according to development plan

Planned

• focus on fixing bugs and developing new features; ICC update is in progress
• status meeting
• meet with Andrea and Pedja to discuss new Google study design
• send old version of Task Management application to William
• examine Task Management, suggest (and/or implement) possible improvements, write user/help documentation, get EULA, release to Beth (to add to website)
• create new example plan for Planner demos and publications using "house remodel" concept
• check on installation issues for Planner
• discuss web vs. PC version of Planner with Jim and William

Issues/Problems

• I will likely be short on time this week again, due to end of quarter commitments for classes. However, I plan to spend a significant amount of time over the break to take care of Planner features and the other items listed.

This is finally the last blog entry, #10!