August 18, 2008 in Tips by Nick Sivridis

Jello tips: Optimize speed

Many users are facing problems with the start up speed of the Jello Dashboard which can be really slow in many cases.
Microsoft Outlook is a memory consuming application, and the Dashboard does nothing more than using its public object model which in many cases can be slow to query large blocks of data.

If you are facing serious speed problems with Jello, you can at least tweak your settings to make sure you don’t use functions of no use to your workflow.

First of all: Counters!
Counters are nice and informative, but they must be definately be updated on startup, running more queries than a user actually needs.

If you can live with no counters, go to your settings and uncheck those entries:
1.Sidebar Main Counter
2.Context Counters
3.Project Counters
4.Outlook folders item counter

Tasks only
If you can work only with the default task type folder (meaning that every action will be a simple task and not e-mails, contacts or journal entries) you can actually gain lots of speed in Jello.

Go to your settings and uncheck those entries:
1.Use Only Tasks in Contexts
2.Use Only Tasks in Projects

Go to your Accessible Outlook Folders from sidebar’s Tools section and remove every non-default folder in there (you can click on the red Reset Jello Accessible Folders to do the same)

Now Jello, will only look for tasks in one folder (as the next version will do by default) making the whole application easy to work with.

These settings entries should also be unset for better performance:
1.Show Completed Tasks for Contexts
2.Show Completed Tasks for Projects

Widgets
Widgets are very useful, but you will wait forever for the Dashboard to load if you clutter your startup screen with too many of them.
Try to keep the bare-minimums:
1.Today or Week – 2.Next Actions – 3.Shortcuts (if you really need them) .
*For super-fast startups, you can always use the Home light screen, by selecting it from the [Startup with] entry of the Settings screen.

And last but not least, if you are getting Outlook security prompts from time to time (especially in Outlook versions older than 2007) and you cannot see why, here’s the setting entry you should uncheck:
-Show Item Notes indicator/Mail body on hover (may cause a security alert)

I hope these tips will help you work better and faster with Jello Dashboard.