General Note: This document is contained in a single page which is not the way an end-user product would typically be developed. The reason is to make it easier to cut and paste. It is intended to be a building block that can be mixed and matched with other building blocks that I am developing, or your own Docs. For example, I am also working on a building block to manage real estate rentals. The real estate rental building block will have a very simple to do list, but if needed, that can be deleted, and the Steroid Shopping list copied in. (Some assembly required.) Feel free, once you have copied the document for your own use, to organise and beautify the document in any way you see fit. For example, if you copy the different views each to their own page, the links will be clearer to use.
. Add the person to the colPerson column. (The name will be added to a checklist, and will not need to be captured again). Once you have sent your congratulations, click on the “Move to Next Year” button to schedule a reminder for next year.
. Obviously for this a time is needed as well. Add the topic or purpose under colTask, e.g. the doctor’s name if it is a doctor’s appointment. In colPerson, add the person for whom the appointment is, if not for you.
Having three separate lists, does not seem very simple, does it? However the simplicity comes in that all of these lists, are stored in the same table. So far all that we have done, is to use views of that table, tailored to the specific list that we want to maintain. To see everything that needs to take place on a specific day, use the
view to see everything that needs to happen for the next few days. You can select at the top of the view the number of days into the future that you would like to see. Note that now the view is grouped by the date, so that all of one day’s activities is in one block. This enables increasingly complex topics to be added, while keeping everything still in one table, with the option to see everything in a single view.
Topics. To be able to group the tasks into different views, each view was assigned a default Topic, SimpleList, Birthday and Appointment so far. Other entries that are available to use in the standard implementation is Shopping List, Reading List and Other Topics.
If you want to create your own Topics, you can do so by simply typing it into the colTopic column. This is handy if you want to group together a number of tasks. (Much more on this later on.) These Topics will show up in the General Todo Lists. You can also create your own View that filters only that topic, so that you can see them all grouped together.
. By default the Topic Shopping list is EXCLUDED from the General views, as a 20 item shopping list will just clutter the list. If you would like to have a reminder in your General views, create an entry with the Topic “Other Topics” with the task do Grocery shopping or something similar. The Shopping view (as all other views) can be called up on your mobile, and the items mark as completed as you purchase them.
The Shopping List View adds four new columns. The first is the column colExplanation. This is a generic column for any comments on any of the lists. For the Shopping list you could use it to split the list between different stores. The column colItemDescription is where you record the items to be purchased. Again, this has a check table behind it, and once you have added an item to the list, it will always be available for reuse. The last two columns are self explanatory - a quantity and a unit of measure column.
As mentioned before, sometimes several tasks are related to each other, and you would like to keep track of them. As an example, there is a colTopic Project1, with an accompanying
. I have created a simple project to purchase a new property. New on this view are two sub task columns that will give you three levels of details in the project. The next new column is called Details Page. This is a free text column, anything can be recorded here. In this example, it links to an area lower on this page where information about the Property Search can be recorded. Any URL, e.g. the agent’s website, could also be recorded here. The time column is back, in case one of the tasks is an appointment.
Record the tasks that needs to be performed as required. The report is groups by Topic, Task, Sub task and sub task 2.
However, it is always good to have a Gant view as well, especially if some of the lower level tasks overlap with ones in other groups. This is shown in
. And in this view, it immediately stands out that the last task “Make Decision and Make Offer” needs attention, because on the 16th the meetings with the experts have not taken place yet. So either the meetings needs to be scheduled earlier, or the decision postponed.
Using the filter control at the top of the Projectlite View, it is possible to switch topics. Bear in mind that for the Gant chart to work, both a start date and the duration must be maintained.
The below view allows you to prioritise unscheduled Topics. My definition of unscheduled topics is as follows
When I do not have a specific date yet when a topic needs to be done, I enter it with an entry in the “colYear” column, rather than the “Activity date” column. Optionally you could also add a quarter or month.
On a regular basis I go through this view, to see what is to be done next, and refine the colYear and Period if necessary. If a Topic needs to be addressed soon, I fill in the “Activity date”. Once the Activity date is added, the entry will appear in the General Todo Simple view for day to day follow up. Longer term topics are grouped into year = 10000, and 40000 for even longer term projects, ideas.
A topic can be divided into tasks, tasks into subtasks, and subtasks into subtask2s, which allows for a simple project view with 3 levels of additional detail.
Topic also have a lookup table called lkupTopic, which will provide a simple list of topics. If a list of topics with some detail is required, create a task entry for each topic with a unique identifier, say ZZZZ, fill the fields needed, and then create a view that filter on Task =ZZZZ.