Mind Sync 2.0 User manual
Mind Sync User Manual Table of contents What s new... 4 Installation and registration... 5 Using Mind Sync... 6 Setting up synchronization and engine specific information... 6 Outlook Sync... 6 Toodledo sync... 7 Google Tasks synchronization... 8 Remember the Milk synchronization... 10 Nozbe synchronization... 10 Importing tasks into mindmap... 10 Exporting mind map topic to engine task... 11 Editing topic properties... 11 Advanced uses... 13 Projects... 13 Mass synchronization (Outlook only)... 13 Hiding completed tasks... 13 Getting Things Done (GTD)... 14 Contexts... 14 Inbox... 14 Someday/Maybe... 14 Projects... 14 Mind Sync increases your productivity by integrating mind-mapping approach with task management. It employs open source Mind application and MS Outlook or online task 2012 systems Copyright to deliver by NG Logic best usability and inter-operatibility. 3/14 Store important information about your personal and business life in mind maps and get
Mind Sync User Manual What s new 1. Multiple task engines added (Outlook, Nozbe, Remember the Milk, Toodledo, Google Tasks) 2. Project synchronization from engine to Mind mind map 3. Tasks in the engine windows are grouped also by projects 4. Background synchronization (more responsiveness) 2012 Copyright by NG Logic 4/14
Mind Sync User Manual Installation and registration The product can be installed on top of the existing Mind or Mind Pro installation using MindSyncSetup.exe file, or you may install Mind Sync and Mind at once using MindSyncSetupBundle.exe. To install, please run the setup application and follow the instructions on the screen. On the first use of the product the Registration Window will pop up: You may obtain free, 30 days license by clicking the Request key button or visting http://xmindlook.net/store. The product will be fully functional during this period. After it expires, the on-the-fly topic-task state synchronization and project categories features will be unavailable. After the 30 day trial period you may purchase a license key on our website or by clicking the Request key button. Having obtained a registration key, please paste it into the text box in the bottom of the window and click Apply. The key will be checked and its validity displayed. Mind Sync may also be installed onto a existing Eclipse installation with Mind integrated. In order to perform installation, please create "dropins/xmindsync/eclipse/plugins" folder inside your Eclipse installation root and then install to dropins/xmindsync/eclipse. 2012 Copyright by NG Logic 5/14
Mind Sync User Manual Using Mind Sync Setting up synchronization and engine specific information The sync setup procedure depends on the task engine you wish to use. Outlook Sync If you are using Outlook, there are no additional steps required for basic usage. However, you may want to fine tune the settings to suit your needs. The preferences can be accessed by navigating to Edit->Preferences->Mind Sync -> Outlook: The first option controls if tasks in Outlook get project categories from all projects on the path to the central topic or just the first parent project. We recommend leaving the default setting, all projects. The priority order option controls how Mind task priority (1..5) is mapped to Outlook task priority (High, Normal, Low). The default descending order means that 5 is the lowest priority and 1 is the highest. The default Mind 0 priority is always mapped to Normal priority in Outlook. You can also select if you want to synchronize the Notes, Assignee and link task properties back to Outlook. Enabling this has a side effect of message box popping up each time you synchronize asking permission to access Outlook database. If you find this annoying, you may use free third-party tools to get rid of it, like ClickYes (the free version will work with all versions of Outlook, including Outlook 2007). 2012 Copyright by NG Logic 6/14
Mind Sync User Manual Mind Sync projects are exported to Outlook categories prefixed with predefined char (default is ~). So, if you make the Cleaning topic a project, all of the child topics (e.g. Buy a trash can) will receive a category ~Cleaning. Please note that those categories will be visible only in Outlook (not in the mind map itself). Also topic s projects are mapped to Outlook task role attribute. This allows to display them conveniently in Outlook task list. Choose your prefix carefully so that no other category has a matching name. In case your project categories become corrupted, you may use Recreate project categories option from Mind Sync menu. Please note that this will clear all categories starting with designated prefix on synchronized tasks. Toodledo sync Go to Edit->Preferences->Mind Sync -> Toodledo. Enter email and password for your Toodledo account and hit Apply button. If the credentials were incorrect, appropriate message will be displayed. After you are authenticated, you may want to set up the sync options below the credentials text boxes. First two options control if one of the sources of the task data should always take precedence over the other. We recommend leaving those on Always Ask initially, and fine tuning this after the sync is well tested. The next settings are more important, they control how different topic properties are mapped to Toodledo task attributes. 2012 Copyright by NG Logic 7/14
Mind Sync User Manual Topic property Toodledo attribute Comment Topic project folder, context, goal This will sync the first project topic name with the parent task, none specified task attribute. Please note that only one project can be stored in Toodledo task attribute, even if there are several project topics above the current topic. This is Toodledo limitation, as it only allows to store one value in each of the attributes (in case of parent task, each task can have only one parent task, in case of folder each task can be put into only one folder). Topic category Folder, context, goal, tag, none Topic progress context, goal, tag, none Parent task setting works only with Toodledo Pro subscription. If setting is effective, each task may show up to two times in Toodledo one as a regular task item that can be member of another project (it the topic is exported), and secondly as a project task that holds its child tasks. The project tasks can be marked with specific name prefix, context, goal or tag to be able to easily tell the difference. You can control this using the last two settings on this page. Here only tag setting can accept more than one value, so we recommend using this setting. All other settings will only sync the first topic category. Toodledo attributes do not include task progress. With this setting you can sync topic completion percentage to the Toodledo task. If you already have a task system on your Toodledo account, you should set this to match the current usage of Toodledo task properties. You should take care when changing this settings, as Toodledo tasks will not be automatically converted to the new settings. Also, please restart Mind after changing those options to get fresh view of Toodledo tasks. Toodledo sync works a bit different than other sync backends. Due to Toodledo hourly request limitation, the changes on the mind map are not automatically synced to the online Toodledo account. Instead, one has to push the Refresh button. This will transfer all the changes to the Toodledo and will refresh the mind map with possible changes done in Toodledo. For your convenience, all the topics with pending changes are marked with an icon are changes to be sent to Toodledo., which means there Google Tasks synchronization Go to Edit->Preferences->Mind Sync -> Google Tasks. Click the Authenticate account button at the bottom. A message box will pop up, click Authorize button there. This should open your default web browser asking you to log in to your Google account (if you were not logged in already). Then Google will ask you to authorize Mind Sync for task management. Afterwards you should receive authorization code that should be pasted into the text box on the Mind Sync dialog. Click OK button to confirm and now Mind Sync can download and sync your tasks. 2012 Copyright by NG Logic 8/14
Mind Sync User Manual Google Tasks impose many limitations on the synced topic information. In particular, tasks cannot have any attributes except for due date and description. Therefore we decided to group tasks by their category using parent task (so category is parent task for them). Only the first category from Mind topic is synced. Each task will have special Mind Sync tag in their description field. This tag allows Mind Sync to match tasks with topics and cannot be removed. However, you can add your information above the - --------MINDLOOKDATA-------- text. You can move the tasks between categories by dragging them to new parent task, which will become its new category. Unfortunately, you cannot move synchronized task to another list while retaining the sync. The additional setting on the preferences controls what list the tasks created in Mind go to. It can be either the default, main task list in GT, or the new Categories list. You can use this setting if you already have tasks on your GT account and do not want to clutter your main list with category tasks. Mind Sync will also create another list, called Projects. It will contain copy of your synced tasks grouped by their first project. This task list is only for your reference and any changes you make here via Google Tasks will not be synced back to Mind and may be overwritten without notice. Changes to the topics made in Mind are automatically synced to Google Tasks, but there might be slight delay before they become visible it the web interface. You should also change the active list to refresh the contents if you are working concurrently in Mind and web interface. 2012 Copyright by NG Logic 9/14
Mind Sync User Manual Remember the Milk synchronization Go to Edit->Preferences->Mind Sync -> Remember the Milk. Click the Authenticate account button at the bottom. A message box will pop up, click Authorize button there. This should open your default web browser asking you to log in to your RTM account (if you were not logged in already). Afterwards click OK button to confirm and now Mind Sync can download and sync your tasks. Mind topic categories are synced to RTM tags. However, RTM does not support special characters in tags, so you cannot use hash or exclamation mark in categories (they will be automatically stripped upon sync). Projects are synced to task lists in RTM. Only the first project topic is synced. The sync from Mind to RTM is automatic and instant, but please note that you need to refresh RTM web page to see newly created projects if working concurrently on Mind and web. Nozbe synchronization Go to Edit->Preferences->Mind Sync -> Nozbe. Enter email and password for your Nozbe account and hit Apply button. If the credentials were incorrect, appropriate message will be displayed. After you are authenticated, you may want to set up the sync options below the credentials text boxes. Mind Sync project are synchronized to Nozbe projects. Therefore, you might need to purchase Nozbe subscription if using more than 5 projects. Topics without any projects are stored in Without project project. Mind categories are synced to Nozbe contexts, which are also limited in free Nozbe version. Importing tasks into mindmap All of your tasks are now available in Mind environment via specific window for each engine. You can open those windows in menu (items ending with tasks ). You will see a hierarchical list of tasks, grouped by category and project. Please note that if you have lots of tasks it may take a while to display them. Now you can drag any of the tasks and put them into your currently opened mind map. A new topic will be created with labels reflecting the category the task was in. This topic is now linked to the task any change of its properties will be immediately (except for Toodledo) transferred to appropriate engine. Also, the topic is marked as synchronized with specific engine with its icon ( for Outlook) and has task information associated with it. 2012 Copyright by NG Logic 10/14
Mind Sync User Manual On the Tasks view toolbar there are also buttons to refresh the list and to hide the completed tasks from the list. One task can be placed on many mind maps and it will be properly synchronized. Exporting mind map topic to engine task You can send any topic to any enabled engine as a task by right-clicking it and selecting first the engine and then Synchronization -> (De)Synchronize. You can also use toolbar button on desired tasks view. You can have topics exported to multiple engines on one map, and even one topic can be exported and synced with many tasks in different engines. Editing topic properties Mind Sync provides two additional views to make it easy to manipulate topics with task information: Task Info and Categories. The Task Info view enables to edit the most important task properties from the Mind, like priority, start and end date, completion percentage, assignee. Any topic can have task information associated with it just edit the properties in the view and they will be saved. If the topic is already synchronized with a task, the changes will be propagated there. Also, this view is fully compatible with Mind Pro task information and its Gantt Chart so feel free to use it for editing not synchronized tasks. The Category view enables to quickly edit a set of categories in the label of topic. Select a topic and click a category in the category view to add and remove this category from label. The view assumes that the categories are separated by the comma character. The categories can be grouped into several category groups. The list of categories and groups is stored in your Mind installation and is common to all mind maps. In addition, one node presents a list of categories used on current mind map. You may drag and drop categories between the groups, in particular you can copy category from the used on current mind map node to one of the other groups. 2012 Copyright by NG Logic 11/14
Mind Sync User Manual If topic is synchronized with Outlook, you may also bring up standard Outlook task edit form by right clicking the topic, and choosing Outlook -> More menu option or using button on Task Edit view. From the context menu you are also able to remove the linked task from the engine. 2012 Copyright by NG Logic 12/14
Mind Sync User Manual Advanced uses Projects A topic with task information can be marked as a project working with larger number of synchronized tasks.. This function is designed to simplify The project feature has two main advantages: If you are working directly in task engine, you can look at the project to identify the task or disambiguate the tasks with similar name but completely different places in the topic hierarchy In your task engine you may group or filter by specific project to get a list of all of the tasks in the project So marking your projects will allow you to transfer some of the topic hierarchy to the flat task list. The projects are synchronized two ways this is a new Mind Sync 2 feature. Changing the project in task engine will move the topic in the mind map, and the project topic will be created if required. Mass synchronization (Outlook only) This option allows to synchronize topics on the current mind map with pre-existing tasks with the same name. It may be helpful if you kept the Mind-Outlook synchronization manually, used other mind map Outlook synchronization solution, or had to recreate your mind maps or tasks. You can invoke this function by clicking on the toolbar button on the Outlook Tasks view. All of the topics on currently opened mind map will be processed. If exactly one task with matching name will be found in Outlook, those ones will now become synchronized with each other. If there was more than one task found for the topic, it will be marked with red marker. Hiding tasks Mind Sync adds two option to hide topics from current mind map that are: completed (their progress is 100%) not synchronized topics (new in 2.0 version). To toggle task visibility, use Show unfinished tasks only and Show synchronized tasks only menu option from menu. Please note that this feature does not take into account Completed icon, so topics with completed icon set, but without progress set to 100% will not be hidden. 2012 Copyright by NG Logic 13/14
Mind Sync User Manual Getting Things Done (GTD) We will use topic/task categories for contexts. Please add categories like @Computer, @Home, @Calls to your Outlook. Inbox Mind Sync is very well suited for implementing GTD with mind maps and task engine. Mind maps will be used to visually organize all of your projects, tasks and concepts, while tasks will be used to manage lists of tasks grouped by contexts. Below you will find description how to implement main GTD concepts with Mind Sync and Outlook. This scheme can be similarly applied for other task engines. Contexts All tasks without any category assigned will be considered an Inbox item (in Outlook, also email messages (flagged) are shown here. Refer to our website for Outlook macro for converting flagged emails to tasks). This simplifies the entry of new tasks, as new tasks will be automatically considered in Inbox. To process the Inbox, open Mind, update the task list, filter out the completed tasks and expand the No category node. Now you may place each of new tasks into mind map(s) of choice. If the task is not connected to any of your maps or projects, you may switch over to Outlook and assign it the context category. Alternatively, you may want to process your inbox items in Outlook and define a @ToMindmap category for tasks to be placed somewhere in your mind maps. After you are finished with Inbox you may switch to Mind and process the @ToMindmap node. Someday/Maybe You may define @Someday/Maybe category in Outlook, but keep in mind that a task assigned somewhere in the Mind Sync will already have a category and therefore will be removed from the Inbox, so usually there is no need to add it to @Someday/Maybe list as it soon becomes overcrowded. Projects We suggest using Mind Sync projects as often as possible. This way you will be able to understand the Outlook tasks (locate them in the project) by looking at its categories. 2012 Copyright by NG Logic 14/14