Overview

The following notes cover the features of the dashboard (triage workflows) currently targetted for 0.6. This will be further details as 0.6 planning and design progresses. These were compiled during a meeting between Mimi and Sheila 2/11/05.

Status

• Present design proposals for 0.6 triage workflows to apps team during apps/design meeting on 2/22 (Sheila/Mimi) (DONE)
• Modify/expand proposal as required based on developer feedback - may require scheduling follow-up discussion (Sheila) (DONE)
  • Specifically interested in developer feedback for implementation of triage sections in UI (DONE)
• Assign dev team owner(s) for dashboard (Katie).
• Mock-up wire frame for stage 1 dashboard view (Mimi).
• Schedule follow-up dev meeting of revised proposal - week of March 7th (Sheila).
• Turn proposal into detailed spec (Sheila) - week of March 14th (Sheila).

Meeting Notes

Proposal

Triaging items centers around the management of things in the Now, Later and Done buckets. All Chandler items, notes, email, events, tasks and developer extended kinds can have a triage status.

Goals

• Provide a more natural way to manage the overwhelming influx of information we receive each day
• Process information faster with fewer mouse-clicks
• Keep track of tasks and follow-up items better
• Consolidate todo lists in a single place where users can get a big picture sense of the state of their life
• Provide a better, low-maintenance way to keep on top of FYI-type information (as in better than the 1-folder per mailing list filter approach)

Stage 1

• The goals of stage 1 are to get the mechanism in place to set item triage statuses and have them appear in the correct order in the summary table view.
• After initial discussions with the development team we decided that the first stage of the dashboard/triage implementation would be a non-section view of the summary view table. This would enable us to set the triage status and get the workflows up and running quickly.
• The features in stage 1 can be summarized as follows.
  • The summary table view for All/All, All/Mail, All/Tasks would be dashboard views.
  • Set triage status - Now, Later, Done
    • Column in summary table view to change the setting (Mimi would like tri-modal selector but popup menu would also work). [OI^?] Probably want to discuss adding Delete item in here as well and coordinating this with item deletion functionality.
    • Detail view setting for triage status. [OI^?] Mimi, can we set the delete flag in the detail view also. MimiYin Yes, I think so.
  • Default sort status for dashboard view [OI^?] Depending on whether or not we have the bug for sorting columns fixed, we can experiment with column sorts and how this changes the default order. * Done - Past->Recently * Now - Old Now -> Recent Now * Later - Recent to come -> Future
  • Purge button on the toolbar that reorders all the items after we have changed the status. Changing the triage status of an item in the summary table view should not move the item until we click the Purge button.
  • Items appear in the correct order as the triage statuses change ie: order in which they became Now.
  • Ticklers, add alarm field to all detail views (Mail, Task, Notes) and have the items appear in the Now section as the alarms go off (might not be in stage 1).
    • Simplifying assumption for 0.6, have the item appear at the top (depending on sort), don't have popup reminder for non-events. Think about status panel for 0.7.
    • [OI^?] Mimi, we need to come up with a list of all the alarm choices that apply to the different kinds. MimiYin How about: EOD (End of day: 5PM), Tomorrow, EOW (End of week: Friday 5PM), Next week (Monday 9AM), Next month (1st, 9AM), Custom date/time
    • See SummaryTableViewSpec#ColumnMappings to see how Tickler dates appear in the Date column
• TriageNoSections^?_20050226.gif:
  

• Stage 2 (revised after stage 1 and running)
  • Improvements in the ordering - imagine we will have some glitches after stage 1.
  • Ticklers (if we don't have this working in stage 1).
  • Look at what fancier widgets, UI we need, color, tri-modal selector, better selector in detail view.
  • Triage sections.
  • Dragging and dropping between sections.
  • Get sorting working correctly.

• Stage 3???
  • Think about being able to "dashboardize" any collection.
  • Whatever else we think of. MimiYin I've been thinking...
    • Use same widget for setting triage status to set Task types: Act on, Write-up, Look into
    • Use same widget for setting triage status to set Meta-task types (aka message history column): Unread, Need to read, Needs reply (Would not work on
    • Figure out a place for the Waiting on attribute
    • Explicit re-ordering of items per section to set relative priority
    • Automatically section new messages into their own "Unread mail" section if it exceeds a threshhold amount (ie. 5 or 10)

Details regarding how items appear in the various statuses

Some of these do not apply to stage 1. Will review with development during next meeting.

Now

• How do items end up in the Now status?
  • Explicitly set an items to triage status = Now.
  • Create a new item, event, task, note, email.
    • Outgoing items
  • Items received, mail, event, event/task, task etc.
  • Items dragged into the Now section (only if we have 3 sections).
  • Tickled items - anything with an alarm, when the alarm goes off.

• What default order do items appear in?
  • Order in which is enters (gets set to) the Now status.
  • Need to understand if dragging items do different locations within Now is possible.

Later

• How do items end up in the Later status?
  • Explicitly set the triage status = Later
• What default order do items appear in?
  • When the alarm is due.
  • If no alarm, then the calendar date
  • If not an event then simply the order in which the Later status was set.

Done

• How do items end up in the Done status?
  • Explicitly set the triage status = Done
  • Shared items (not created by me) all get set to status = Done.
• What default order do items appear in?
  • Order in which the triage status was set to Done.

Alarms

• Attribute of a Note
• Any item can have an alarm regardless of triage status.
• When an alarm goes off the item goes to the top or bottom of the Now list (depending on sort order)
• The item may have previously been a Now as well as a Later and Done. In this case, it simply moves position in the list.
• Items that have alarms automatically change status and move into a position in the list or section. We do not have to use the Purge button for this right Mimi?

Widgets

• Three Open and Closable Sections ( order Done, Now, Later )
  • ok if not for 0.6 but probably worth some initial investigation and scoping.
  • Dependent functionality - drag and drop between sections and drag and hover.
  • Reordering sections.
  • Show/hide sections
  • # counts per section
  • visual color per section.
• Triage status selector in summary table view
  • Tri-modal selector - click and toggles through statuses.
  • Additional selectors to make junk, delete (not for 0.6)
  • color setting for status.
• Purge button on the toolbar.

Ordering Notes

• Triage sections or groupings should show Done at Top, Now in middle and Later at the bottom.
• The default ordering within "section" should be (top to bottom)
  • Done - Past->Recently
  • Now - Old Now -> Recent Now
  • Later - Recent to come -> Future
• Changing the sort using the columns should keep each group together (sort within the section, not full list)

Changing status/Purge

• When triaging items in the dashboard, the user should be able to change the status or delete and item and it should not move section until the user selects the Purge button on the toolbar.

Filters (not 0.6 goal)

• General idea is that users can create filters to automatically assign triage status to certain items as they arrive in the Dashboard view. Users can quickly glance over these items and with a single click of the Purge item get rid of them from the Now section. This might be a good low-maintenance way to keep on top of false-positive Junk and mailing list items without having to remember to check Junk and mailing list folders for new items all the time.