Priscilla’s Usage of Chandler 0.6.1 in April 2006

Here are some top issues I ran into this month:

• Usage of sending invitations to an event - had difficulty when meeting dates are often changed/cancelled to update the information to everyone invited to the event.
• Missed or confused about meeting times when I forget to update/sync my calendars. Interestingly enough, I don't ever use the 'sync all' button at the top becuase I think it would take too long. (note to self, I should time that). So I ususally sync one by one calendar at a time. And usually only mine. Once in a while, PPD calendar.
• Beta Google calendar release this month. My observations on using Google calendar.
• Working with Jeremy to view his calendar on my machine. Quick interview as to what Jeremy had trouble with when looking at how to send his ticket to me.

Notes on Chandler 0.6.1 Usage:

4/10/06 - 4:02PM Received the e-mail from Sheila for a meeting on Friday. I copied and pasted her email into my Chandler and added my reply at the top. Then copied and pasted the cc: e-mails into the To: field in Chandler. Then I realized I forgot to add Sheila into the To: field and had to add her as well. Selected sent and it worked fine. The feedback on if the e-mail was sent was a bit poor. I had to click on the 'Sent' twice because there is no feedback that it was actually sent. This may be a performance issue again, as I didn't see the beach ball that it was sending or anything.

4/12/06 So I missed my meeting at 2:30 on the PPD calendar 'cause I was looking at my 3PM vision appt. Which I was told was changed. Woops. The meeting updates really need to be more apparent when I sync my calendars. I can't seem to tell which meetings have been updated/changed. It also occurs to me that there needs to be some way to notify people when an event is changed by the other people who are also in charge of maintaining the calendar. The PPD calendar is shared among the four of us, and although I have made changes before, see the March entries, I'm feeling a bit timid about making changes to the calendar from past experience, (the long performance issues I had, and difficulties in changing one event time to another).

4/17/06 3:17PM Well I did it again. I set up an event. Sent an invitation to people to attend the meeting, and then I just realized after my meeting today, that I had set up the meeting on the wrong date. I changed the date, but realized I cannot resend my invitations.

4/21/06 8:16PM I confused the time for a meeting I had today at 2PM as I forgot to sync my PPD calendar. As I rushed to get back from the gallery today I had realized the one thing I really have problems about electronic data–the start up time as it was very easy to just open my New Yorker desk calendar. Though don't me wrong. There are definite strengths and weaknesses to both. If my computer was only set to sleep on my desk, then accessing Chandler data would not be testing my patience.

I also had a Chandler error today, where it unexpectedly quits. I really ought to send in all my bugs, as it starts to pile up. It's been unfortunate as Scooby has been taking so much of my time.

I also started to put my data on the Google calendar everyone has mentioned on the list. I think it's important not only to view an application from its first debut, but also to really test to see how it fits over time to see if it's solving any of my problems. The biggest things that struck me as many other people have mentioned is the natural language. I'm able to type meet Jeremy at pasta pomodoro in the castro at 7pm. It's able to place my event at 7PM on the calendar canvas. It's able to locate the restaurant, Pasta Pomodoro, or at least give me a map to all the Pasta Pomodoro in the area. They just did a very good job in linking their search and mapping products. I added a couple of RSS feeds, once again part of their search engine, it's easy to just search for items of interest and put it on your calendar. Of course, I thought about sending a particular event to a friend, and was surprised I was not able to do. Nor did I see any of the Google Chat available, which would be interesting, especially if there was an event I'd like to discuss with friends.

The one thing I didn't mention about my New Yorker paper calendar is that I dislike having to purchase a new calendar every year (spilling out $30 is a pain). And for recurring events, it is much more useful to have that stored on my computer then to have to keep writing my weekly Scooby meetings that fall on the same day, all the time. In addition, I just received word from my Uncle about a family reunion in Hong Kong set for next year in 2007. My paper calendar does have a bunch of miniature calendars of month ahead, but to take notes on the main calendar it's only extended to the first week of January.

4/24/06 - 10:09PM Jeremy and I finally sat down so he can share his calendar with me. Here are the notes in which I watch him stumble through it. First thing, start at the collection menu. Clicked on 'share my calendar'. Alert message, you don't have a webDAV, need to sign up. Brought him to the account preferences and sharing was selected. Only description and sever 'cosmo' demo was filled out. Took a minute to scan, say 3 secs and found the 'Sign up for account' button. Nothing happened. Then though about entering in the name and password in and then click sign up for an account. Thinking "oh I need to fill the form in first then 'Sign up for an account'. Second time, clicks on sign up for an account. Nothing happens. So then he clicks test this account button, just to see if it works. And got a message 'Access was denied'. Maybe there is something on the server web site, copies the server web browser and pastes it into firefox and did signed up for an account on the web page. (FYI. the browser was already opened, but when clicking on the 'sign up for a new account' it did not launch on the web site). Signed up for the account in Cosmo, ended up on Client Setup page and copied and paste all the information on the first box area, ie. server, path, username etc. Pasted it back into Chandler, account settings. Hit test and it was successful. Went to the 'collection menu, 'share my calendar'. Brought up a Collection Sharing dialogue, checked share events status and hit ok. (Didn't read too carefully). Share alarms, other ppl also get his alarms. 'Share event status' will share the, 'Tentitive', "share all the decoration.

Progress bars runs, gives two URLs. I'm terrified that if he hits the done button, the dialogs box will go away and then he will need them. Clicks on the 'copy to clipboard', can't select them. So now going to hit the done button. Going to try and see if he can find the URLs again. Go to menu 'collection/manage share'. Looking to see if there is any confirmation if the URLs are there. Saw nothing except copy URLs to clipboard. Hit that again and pasted it into his clipboard just to make sure they are the same.

Now he's going to email one of the URLs to Priscilla.

***So we're syncing Jeremy's calendar. I'm given read/write access and notice a extra 'new event' and decide delete the event. I delete it then realize I did the wrong thing and try to undo. No undo. Items under the undo was disabled. In the meantime Jeremy had update the event details of the event I deleted. Then he then syncs his calendar and it syncs to my change, where the event is deleted. Oh no! How do I recover?

4/26/06 - 5:21PM So Chandler has been open on my desktop all day. It's launched automatically from my mac dock. I have several things opened throughout my day, firefox web browser, mac mail, adium, sometimes photoshop. I also have iCal open. I like to use both and compare experiences. Even though I am hard core putting everything into Chandler. I noticed today that when I was jumping from application to applications, it seemed to me that when I clicked over to Chandler, the response was nil. I would click to the application a few times and just think oh, it's that darn performance thing they're telling me about. Well in turn, I noticed after a few complaints to Grant (my officemate) that Chandler is ignoring me. I noticed as I clicked over to Chandler, the application was greyed out as if it were in the background. I'm usually clicking on the calendar canvas when jumping from application to application. Though once I noticed it was greyed out, I clicked on the top of the application, on the title bar. Still, no reaction. I can't event try to move the application window out. I'm thinking it might have froze. Lastly I shift tab over to Chandler and it slowly recognizes that it's being called up to the front application. So now I wonder, it this is 'something' related to my alarms not popping up in front of my window? Darn I should probably re-open that bug, but am anxious if it will have the same result with the next milestone release?

One terrible last thing. The time recorded is actually a bit skewed as I tried to enter in the event earlier in the day and ended up putting it in my iCal first. Two events. One for interviewing a candidate in the east coast to play with the timezone drop down menu. Second for an event several months ahead, ie. June 22nd. I used the mini cal to jump to that date to add my event.

-- PriscillaChung - 28 Apr 2006