We have a new language file for French (thanks Alain Leroy) and the complete documentation in French too. You can find the French documentation in the documentation page (it was not included into the installation package so it will not get one megabyte bigger!)

Thanks to everyone for reporting and supporting this little project.

List of changes in 5.00.4

• Added: Inbox split archive button
• Added: Inbox archive Only function to archive tagged mails without creating an action (ctrl+B)
• Fixed: Return to master list extra field bug
• Added: Masterlist sort columns
• Fixed: Custom settings location setup from install.hta now works
• Changed: Inbox toolbar delegate split button group with incubate and review
• Fixed: The tag insert and date insert from the toolbar now do the correct thing for advanced mode in collect.  The bottom tool bar “Collect” button now recognizes the advanced mode.
• Changed:  Combined the 2 versions of advanced date handling so that task popups and collect advanced date handling are now the same
• Added: Action form, there is a new link at the bottom to show the body text of the task item
• Fixed: If a message item has been copied to a task, the ticklers screens were not handling it correctly.
• Fixed: Action list tag combobox was asking to add existing tags sometimes
• Added: Important widget actions now showing tags too
• Fixed: Vertical scrollbars on settings pages
• Added: Collect/postit popup with shortcut Ctrl+0 (zero)
• Added: home screen content can be a popup accessed from anywhere.  No key binding, but click on top menu bar.
• Added: Appointment times on weekly printout calendar
• Fixed: Action attachment cannot remove first item bug
• Added: Ability to add a link to a file instead of attachment to an action
• Fixed: Settings/Utilities/Import All Outlook categories from action folder function
• Fixed: Runtime Error in various views when Outlook item category contains invalid characters
• Fixed: Fix orphan tags was not producing an Orphans folder
• Added: Fix orphan tags function re*creates all predefined root folders (system, projects and tags)
• Added: French Language file and documentation by Alain Leroy
• Added: Column reordering is now saved in user’s settings
• Fixed: Inbox saves column widths now
• Fixed: Masterlist and Tickler screen is able to reorder columns
• Added: Inbox due dates can be removed by clicking on the calendar icon next to the item’s subject
• Fixed: System shortcuts (Next Actions, Waiting, Review etc) can now be removed
• Fixed: Home function keys don’t execute now with ctrl or alt pressed
• Fixed: Tickler widget title and column status update
• Added: Messages are marked as read when viewed from Jello preview pane
• Fixed: Getting mail preview from secured fields of emails bug

Please test this changes and if you have reported them in the forum take some time to post the result of the update to mark those issues as [RESOLVED].

Another update: There is also a Facebook Jello Dashboard group now where you can show your support.

Happy GTDing!

I got some requests back to the version 4.00 of Jello Dashboard for digital clocks and gadgets into the homepage. Later, as I was coding for the new version and created the new homepage I though of running a couple of tests using google gadgets without any real expectations.

Then for a strange reason and despite of Outlook’s web browsing limitations some gadgets worked!

After working with some more widgets I have found some ways of using almost any gadget from google’s repository. So you can safely add an Web page widget into your Jello Dashboard homepage and paste the following URLs to their web address parameter:

Clock and date:
http://www.gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://www.canbuffi.de/gadgets/clock/clock.xml

Word Clocks:
http://www.gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://www.ljmsite.com/google/gadgets/worldclocks.xml&up_messageid=0&up_mode=ana2&up_servertime=1&up_meetingplanner=1&up_digiformat=12&up_digifontsize=14&up_analogformat=12&up_dateformat=date&up_showseconds=1&up_tz1=UTC&up_tz1name=Clock%201&up_tz2=UTC&up_tz2name=Clock%202&up_tz3=&up_tz3name=Clock%203&up_tz4=&up_tz4name=Clock%204&up_tz5=&up_tz5name=Clock%205&up_tz6=&up_tz6name=Clock%206&up_tz7=&up_tz7name=Clock%207&up_tz8=&up_tz8name=Clock%208&up_tz9=&up_tz9name=Clock%209&up_width=10000&synd=open&w=320&h=300&title=__MSG_Title__&lang=en&country=ALL&border=%23ffffff%7C3px%2C1px+solid+%23999999

Dictionary.com search:
http://www.gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://rmicka5478.googlepages.com/dictionary.xml&up_boxcolor=%23c0c0c0&up_textcolor=%23000000&synd=open&w=320&h=100&title=Dictionary.com&border=%23ffffff%7C3px%2C1px+solid+%23999999

You can test any widgets copying the code from the Google gadgets directory keeping in mind the following rules and limitations:

• If gadgets use any pipe characters into their parameters they cannot be used
• Gadgets using cookies cannot be used. Cookies are blocked by Outlook
• In some cases, not all user defined settings can be used (it depends on the resulted url)

So select the desired google gadget, press the Get the code button and go to the HTML code field.

Copy it to the clipboard and paste it into any text editor

Now you got something like this:

<script src=”http://www.gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://www.matt.org/modules/GoogleClock.xml&amp;up_vsize=240px&amp;synd=open&amp;w=320&amp;h=200&amp;title=Google+Clock&amp;border=%23ffffff%7C3px%2C1px+solid+%23999999&amp;output=js”></script>

The strip the <script src=” characters from the beginning of code and the &amp;output=js”></script> from the end.

http://www.gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://www.matt.org/modules/GoogleClock.xml&amp;up_vsize=240px&amp;synd=open&amp;w=320&amp;h=200&amp;title=Google+Clock&amp;border=%23ffffff%7C3px%2C1px+solid+%23999999

Try pasting the remaining code into a Jello web page widget and see what happens. Some gadgets won’t accept any user settings (the URL part after the first &amp;). In that case you can try removing all of user settings having a lot smaller URL (eg http://www.gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://www.matt.org/modules/GoogleClock.xml)

Now choose your favorite gadgets and experiment. Who knows? Maybe you will be able to use it inside Jello Dashboard!

Russian language updated and added the German language.

A new weekly print out also was added which will display a weekly calendar with your ticklers, a list of actions, blank lines for on paper notes and two more smaller user defined tag lists. Ideal for keeping just a next action/ticklers printout with you everywhere (available from any action list’s utilities menu).

Changes:

- Added the ability to have a tickler popup window while in the Inbox view.  CTL-l will pop up a tickler window that displays the next 2 weeks of ticklers.  You can get ticklers for other dates, create appointments, view ticklers, etc from this popup.
- Added: Tickler popup from any screen using the top menu
- Added: Setting for duration (days forth) the popup tickler will display
- Fixed: Collect screen simple mode tags addition
- Added: Javascript version info in settings/info
- Added: Tool button for postit widgets to collect entered text directly
- Fixed: 12 hour time display in tickler views
- Fixed: Duplicate tags after addition from quick add text box in action lists
- Added: German language file
- Updated: Russian language file
- Fixed: Tree scrollbar hiding problem
- Fixed: Inbox, Trying to open a non existing item removes it from list
- Added: New printout from the action list: Weekly calendar with tags and note space
- Added: Review screen button and setting to show/hide empty tags to the review panel
- Fixed: Review screen previous/next buttons do not show private tags
- Added: Action form due date field ability to accept smart dates (tomorrow, next week, monday etc)

Thanks everyone for your bug reports and feature requests. I think Jello Dashboard is getting real better…

Until one user reported using a Microsoft utility to manage hotmail accounts inside Outlook: The Microsoft Outlook Connector.

I immediately downloaded the product and installed it. Started Outlook and tried to run Jello.

As you can imagine I found an incompatibility with Jello Dashboard. For reasons unknown Jello Dashboard cannot run in Outlook if the Microsoft Outlook connector is installed.

Fortunately, you can run it without problems though standalone using the jello5.hta file.

I hope I will be able to find a solution to this eventually, although it seems realy hard…

So if you have been unable to run Jello Dashboard from your Outlook, this might be the reason.

If you don’t afraid of big brother’s intentions navigate to the bottom of the homepage, join in and don’t let me be alone.

There are a couple of new features too.

Changelog:

• Fixed: Settings application title blank title displays default version text
• Fixed: Not showing action completed when canceling an item deletion
• Fixed: Titles on multiple tickler widgets
• Fixed: Archive untagged item in outlook widget inbox does NOT create task
• Fixed: Linked emails with no subject are now showing in action form
• Fixed: Inbox removing entry the position remains in last used item index
• Fixed: Inbox Archive tagged tasks removes tasks from list too
• Added: * character is now in restricted list for tag naming
• Fixed: Home Customize columns popup hides outlook view widgets to be visible in OL2007
• Fixed: Problem of action form to not be able to remove a tag containing space with [x] button
• Fixed: Removed annoying thin border lines inside some widgets
• Added: New function at Settings/utilities to restore orphan tags back on the hierarchy
• Added: New setting to keep the outlook reading pane open through Jello screens
• Fixed: Moved or deleted previously defined folder bug in settings page
• Fixed: Masterlist is sorted by due date by default
• Added: Setting action priority 13 saves it in outlook item as high priority
• Added: Move an item from the inbox to a nonemail folder and a new item in that folder, of its default type is created.  Original item left intact.  Example: move an inbox item to a Tasks folder and a new task is created.  Copies, subject, body, categories and the newly created item is opened.  Mail items are just moved
• Changed: previously, in advanced entry mode for collect, to specify tags, you havd to have:
• tags= tag tag2 tag3 Many users were entering:    tags=tag so this form now work and works for all of the variants for telling collect to add tags ( and notes) that are specified in the documentation.
• Added: Setting on/off for Inbox view autoupdate every minute, getting only new messages and adding them to the view.
• Fixed: Disappearing bottom toolbar in Outlook 2007
• Fixed: Meeting requests icon in inbox shows with a calendar icon
• Added: Reply to all button in inbox
• Added: Star icon in inbox for quickly marking next actions

I hope this release will enable you to get the best out of Jello Dashboard with less bugs.

Thanks everyone for your bug reports.

- Added: Widget error catching to display the widget even with no content if error in content
- Fixed: Outlook view widget item selection problems

If you had any of these problems, please download this update release.

After 7 months of development, drawbacks, bugs, fixes and more bugs the new version of Jello Dashboard (codename:starbot) is ready and available for download.

The product has just left the alpha status and became a beta. That means that there should still be bugs and some errors may occur from time to time. All bugs should be posted to the forum.

There are plenty of changes and new features added, but most importantly the whole project is following a different work flow, more close to GTD in its simple form. Of course not everyone will like those fundamental changes but its all for the good.

Some of the big changes are:

• Hierarchy of folders and tags
• Use of Outlook tasks only (actions) for action lists
• Linking actions to related items (any Outlook item)
• Processing Inbox mail to empty. Archiving items after processing
• Delegate items to contacts
• Insert attachments and custom free text notes to actions
• Bulk collect information from free text, structured text and outlook folders
• One screen review
• Ticklers screen handling appointments and actions with due dates
• Less settings and more stable settings engine
• A beautiful GUI provided by the super extjs engine

A big thank you goes to all Jello Dashboard supporters for the encouragement and to my 38 alpha testers, who tested every release finding bugs and problems I would never find!

Please consult the documentation included with the packages carefully.

Proceed to downloads page to get a copy.

…and as words are cheap, here’s a draft diagram of the new Workflow.