ThinkingRock Forum

Has anyone done any video tutorials for ThinkingRock, to give a visual discussion of how the TR interface works and why certain features are where they are ?? An excellent host would be vimeo.com where FreeMind has just placed many excellent how-to videos. Thanks

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Bradco

From help file attached to the Review Projects screen:
In the tree explorer, there are 4 tabs:
- Projects: contains all your current projects;
- Single Actions: contains all your single actions, i.e. actions not part of a project;
- Future: contains projects that got delayed, put on the side for a while or for which you decided to start the planning process in advance. It should not be confused with Someday/Maybe Items which are just thoughts you might do one day. When the project becomes current, you can cut and paste it to the Projects tab. You can also use the Start date to get the project moved automatically to the Projects tab (see below under Projects Operations, Edit);
- Templates: contains project structures you want to re-use like 'Start Marketing Campaign for product X', 'Reply Offer To Tender Client Y', etc. To use a template for a new project, just copy and paste it into the Projects Tab and update descriptions accordingly.

To move things between the Tabs, use Copy/Cut and Paste.

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Claire
ThinkingRock Analyst and Tester

I'm looking forward to use this functionality (as it will solve a BIG problem for me), but I can't seem to make it work. I can not find where I can set this. I have set projects to use a start-date and I have entered a start-date for a project yesterday and set it on today's date, but nothing happens.

Any pointers ?

OK, I think I have found the problem: It only works for top-level projects. I use top-level projects as containers to organise my hefty project list so I have a top-level project called 'Clients', subdivided in a project for each client with the client's name as project-name and under that the relevant projects for each client. I want to move a specific project for a client to the active projects so I set a date on that project but it won't move. For the automatic move to work it has to be a top-level project so that means I have to put all my future projects in one big list. With close to 200 projects in the 'future projects' tab tha is not a usable option.

Any way around this, or maybe a quick fix that Jeremy can put into the next release, please, pretty please

I have added it in Mantis. Jeremy will look at it tomorrow.

When we need to move a sub-project, we will first check if the top-project(s) exist already or not.

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Claire
ThinkingRock Analyst and Tester

For now, I think that moving a sub-project (as if it's a top-project) is the solution. So I won't bother with that if I was Jeremy

I have another idea but I need to think it over for a few days or so.

I think that internally we should keep future projects within the normal projects tree data structure (and not have a separate tree as we do now). There will be an internal field to indicate if the project is future or not.

The projects views would still look the same. The future projects view would show the future projects within the projects hierarchy. Moving from one to the other would be done by using the start date functionality and/or using a transaction on the node (and maybe a button) to 'move' the project: 'Change to a Future Project' and 'Project is now current'. The current way of moving between the Tabs (Cut/Paste) will be disabled.

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ThinkingRock Developer

That sounds good to me.

It is important to keep the future projects separated visualy. The projects tree and future projects tree are both crowded already and putting them together will make things worse.

What I would like to see is a simple checkbox 'project is future/posponed' so we don't need to cut/paste to move projects between the tabs. Simply checking the option would move the project to 'future', unchecking it would move it back to actual projects.

Whatever you do, PLEASE keep them in separate tabs.

I'll start a new discussion this weekend in 'suggestions' to get some ideas for the project screen together

softechmatrix, you might want to re-read what Jeremy said. I think you are both in agreement, just a communication issue.

Purplefux, I think you are right and I thought that before posting, but this part of Jeremy's reply triggered my response:



I just wanted to make sure that Jeremy does not mean what I think he may be meaning. I'm quite sure that he, being a programmer, means the data-tree and not the 'visual' tree, but you never know

I originally disagree with Jeremy until he explains to me that to the use, it will all look the same.

That is why we added .

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Claire
ThinkingRock Analyst and Tester

Claire, good to hear. Now please think about my suggestion for a simple checkbox to mark a project as 'future/posponed'. It works that way in GTD-PHP and it works like a charm. Review your current projects and mark those that you want to postpone, review your future tab and mark those you want to make current. If it is not possible to add a checkbox to the treeview then adding the option in the right-click menu in the tree would suffice (besides a checkbox in the project information screen).

This way of moving things back and forth between the lists would be a great addition! Jeremy, I really like the way you described it. softechmatrix - I like your ideas for making it really easy - anything to make my weekly review go quicker would be a huge help. Being able to just look down the list and make changes simple by hitting checkboxes would be really useful.