Node Glue

Modifying the Daily Actions Dashboard to add the Explicitly Committed Branch

Modifying ResultsManager Dashboards is kinda fun, I think. ResultsManager uses Dashboard Templates to generate Dashboards. The templates outline the contents of dashboards without defining that content. They describe the content using Dashboard Filters. You can read all about that in ResultsManager’s online help module.

One easy way to modify the appropriate dashboard template, is to find it in your My Dashboards directory under My Maps, which lives under My Documents. (These are default locations. Yours may be different.)

I opened the file called “ResultsManager Daily Actions Dashboard (Power User).mmap” and made some changes like this.

Again, this is a mere excerpt. But you can see the important distinctions here.

In the original dashboard template, the stuff below “My committed Next Actions…” begain with “#ActivityOwner”. I simply inserted another level and made two branches called “Explicitly Committed” and “All Active Actions.”

The only difference between these two branches is the asterisk (star) that follows the word “Committed” in the top branch (circled in red). If you read the help docs on Dashboard Filters, you’ll see that this star tells the Committed filter to only select those committed activites that are explicitly committed, and not those which inherit the the committed property.

That’s why the “Circulate” activity doesn’t appear in the dashboard excerpt above. It isn’t explicitly committed.

Modifying the Review Dashboard to include Explicitly Committed Activities

I won’t include the details here–you get the idea from the Daily Actions Dashboard modifications. But suffice it to say that I’ve made similar modifications to my Review dashboard template. This way, as I tick down through the various review processes, I see a list of activities that are explicitly committed, and another list that are not explicitly committed, and I can then commit or uncommit activities as necessary in my review process.

Of course, this property shouldn’t change once it’s set. That’s part of my argument about the objectivity of it. But when I initially enter an activity into the system, it may be that I haven’t got around to marking it committed yet. This moment in the review process is my opportunity to do so before the activity hits the Daily Actions Dashboard.

Wrapping Up

Now, if you want to go and do likewise with your dashboard templates, you have everything you need. Next, I’ll discuss: Using ResultsManager and MindManager to Separate Someday/Maybe from “Maybe Never”.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 14th, 2006 at 8:44 am and is filed under GTD, productivity, MindManager, ResultsManager. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.