Chandler is built around 3 organizing principles.

1. 2-Dimensional Faceted Sidebar Navigation

Chandler like most traditional personal information managers consists of Mail, Task list and Calendar. However, unlike most traditional PIMs, Chandler's primary means for 'organizing' information: collections are heterogeneous, meaning they can take information of any kind: notes, email messages tasks and calendar events. The two-dimensional 'faceted sidebar' provides an easy way to navigate these multi-faceted collections.

Across the top are Chandler's application areas: Mail, Tasks and Calendar and the All application area, which provides you with a view across the 3 other application areas.

Down the left-hand side are your collections. At the top are the out-of-the-box Chandler collections: Dashboard, In, Out and Trash. Below that are collections you create. The Dashboard collections provides you with a view across all other collections, unless otherwise specified by you. (More on that.)

You can think of the Dashboard collection in the All application area as the point of origin (0,0) in a 2-dimensional grid. From here you get a view of all you data across all application areas and all collections.

To narrow your view, simply click around. Click down the sidebar to switch collections within an application area. (e.g. Review all my Click across the top to filter whatever collection you have selected by application area.

2. Stamping for Information that Evolves

Second, Chandler items effortlessly traverse the 3 application areas: Mail, Task list and Calendar. Note items can be addressed and sent as messages. Messages can be added to the task list. Tasks can be scheduled on the Calendar and then Addressed and sent as an invitation. In other words, information items in Chandler are shape-changers. They become whatever you need them to be, whenever you need them.

Doing so is as simple as pressing a button. At the top of the detail view, you will find what we call the mark-up bar. From here you can:

1. Address items.
2. Add an item to the task list.
3. Add an item to the calendar.

3. Managing Information with Triage Status

The third, Triage Status is your primary mechanism for 'managing' as opposed to 'organizing' information or more specifically, Triage Status helps you manage what you pay attention to and when.

There are 3 Triage Statuses: NOW, LATER and DONE. Their meaning is self-explanatory. How you choose to make use of them is up to you.

Triage Status is built on 2 assumptions:

1. There are really 2 different kinds of unfinished tasks or todos, things you need to deal with right NOW and things that need to be tracked.

2. Rarely, if ever are tasks completed in a single pass. Instead, we tend to iterate on information across several passes before we're technically 'done' with it. In the meantime, the inflexible model that most task managers offer us (done, not-done) makes it harder than necessary to keep track of half-finished tasks.

The second is the free-flow of information across application areas. This manifests itself in the user experience in two ways.

Making use of Triage Status is very simple. Triage Status is the right-most column in the table view. Sorting on Triage Status will section your items into NOW, LATER and DONE. There are 2 ways to assign triage status to Chandler items.

1. In the table view, click on the Green, Yellow or Black rectangles on the right-hand side to assign Triage Status.
2. In the detail view of any given item, click on the Green, Yellow or Black rectangle in the upper left-hand corner to assign Triage Status.

When you are done, click on the Triage button in the toolbar to auto-sort the items into their appropriate Triage Status sections.

Sharing

With Chandler, you can share with anyone you want regardless of whether they use Chandler as well.

• See: InstructionsPublishInvite

Calendar

Email simply as a mode of communication

'Email' in Chandler also has special properties. For example, Chandler messages can be edited and resent as Updates. The sender of a Chandler message can be different from who the message is 'From'. In fact, you can write in whatever you'd like in the 'From' field: The Boss, Adam and Eve, etc.

However, messages will be sent out as emails and all recipients in the To:, CC: and BCC: fields with valid email addresses will receive them both in their email applications and Chandler Desktop, assuming they use Chandler. However, only Chandler users will be able edit and update Chandler messages in Chandler.

To get started with Email in Chandler:

1. Set up you email by going to the File>>Accounts... menu

Once you're done setting up your accounts you can

1. Sync your email to pull down any messages you've dragged into your special Chandler IMAP folders
2. Pull down any messages you have in your Inbox sent by other Chandler users
3. To send out an email, xxx

-- MimiYin - 03 Oct 2007