Help File for Acute Softwares LifePIM

1. LifePIMInstallation

1.1 Install LifePIM
1.2 Configure LifePIM
1.3 Starting the LifePIM Software

2.1 Viewing Appointments
2.2 Entering Appointments
2.3 Finding Information

3.1 InfoLink - Toolbar program for the Diary
3.2 LifePIM - the main diary program

4.1 Monitoring Hard drive space with InfoLink
4.2 InfoLink Scrap Paper
4.3 Managing your list of quick launch Programs
4.4 Automatic Event Logging
4.5 Recording Events from the Quick Event Recorder
4.6 Using Batch Files to add events from other programs
4.7 Other components - Pim-Util, CollectFilesUsed

5. Support and Troubleshooting

5.1 LifePIM will not Start
5.2 General Windows Troubleshooting Procedures

1. LifePIM Installation

System requirements for LifePIM are a Pentium PC with 32M RAM, running Win95 / 98 / ME / 2000 / XP with at least 10Mbytes of free disk space

1.1 Install LifePIM

Download the client installation program and click 'open this file' to run the SETUP.EXE file from the ZIP file.

When installing the diary, it is a good idea to use the default directory of
C:\Program Files\acute\LifePIM\

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1.2 Configure LifePIM

run 'Diary Options' to setup the screen how you like.

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1.3 Starting the LifePIM Software

Start the InfoLink program by going to the Start Menu -> Program Files -> Acute Software -> InfoLink

2. Using LifePIM

2.1 Viewing Appointments

The following screen shot shows the main screen for LifePIM. The events are displayed on the right hand side of the screen, and you can change the day being viewed by clicking on the calendar on the Left hand side, or by using the arrow buttons on the top of the screen.

Timed Grid [F6] (all appointments are displayed in an hourly fashion)

This mode is the easiest way to quickly browse and enter appointments. However if you have multiple appointments in the same timeslot you will find it easier to manage in list mode.

View as Webpage [Ctrl]-[F4] (browse old diary events)

This is a browse mode and simply displays all the months events in a webpage for easy reading - this is a read only mode.

List Mode [F7] (all appointments are displayed in a list)

This is the fastest way to view your appointments - all your days/weeks or months events appear in a list (you choose which fields are shown) for quick viewing and editing.

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2.2 Entering Appointments

Simply double-click in the timeslot (either on the left-hand column, or in the space in the main grid) and start typing your appointment.

You can also click "Add" from the appointment menu, which brings up the following dialog box:
Screen shot

The 'Details' button displays extra fields, which can be used for the event.
For each event you can record the following extra information:
- Contact name
- File or URL
- Length of event in minutes
- Reference - any text or keywords you like
- Job to do ID (reserved)

Each of the extra fields can be any text you like except multiple lines (i.e. you can't insert a text file into a field)

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2.3 Finding Appointments

Press Ctrl F , or choose Quick find from the search menu and type in any text you want to find. This will retrieve all records for that month containing the text you entered.

You can use multiple search terms ( e.g. meeting john 2004 ) The results are displayed in a separate form - you can save this form for importing to any word processor.

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3. Components of the Diary

This section describes each of the programs which make up Acute Softwares LifePIM:

InfoLink - the toolbar program which communicates with the server
LifePIM - the main diary program for your own appointments and tasks

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3.1 InfoLink

Infolink is the toolbar program for the client which runs all the time. This provides quick access to your data, and reminds you of appointments.

What does InfoLink do?

Infolink starts up when the PC is turned on, and performs the following functions:
1. Reminds you of any appointments during the day, by sounding an alarm and or popping up a message
2. Keeps an eye on free disk space and warns you when you get to your specified limit. (smiley face turns to a sad face)
3. Records what applications you use so that you know exactly what you spent your day doing.
4. Provides a quick and easy way to add and find appointments without having to start the diary

Parts of the Infolink Screen

Caption - shows the status of the program (Local, Network, server down)

Display - green area showing current date/time but also scrolls reminders when they appear and can show disk space at various intervals.

Toolbar - buttons to access the most commonly used items in infolink

'Mode' combobox - in 'compact mode' the infolink screen shows drop down combo boxes and a list to display current information.

The Mode combo box can switch the InfoLink to display the following between Screens:

Users - shows list of users and whether they are online or not

Events - shows list of todays events, or for any date (by day, week or month)

Programs - a list of commonly used files and folders is shown here. Double Click one to launch it

The Toolbar Buttons (from Left to Right)

Menu (Smiley Face / Sad Face) - this calls the main Infolink menu
Quickly Add Note (clock) - allows you to jot down notes as you work without having to open the main diary program
Quick Find (clock) - search the diary data files for any text. Note - this menu command does NOT search 'file accesses'
Calendar (Calendar icon) - shows a full screen calendar for any year
Scrap Paper (Pin) - this calls the main scrap paper function which allows quick jotting / saving of notes without having to save them to directories
Text Editor (double Page icon) - this calls the text editor [notepad by default, but can be customised]
Server Menu (talk icon) - shows the server menu which allows you to ping the server, chat to other users or plan a meeting
Lock Screen (key icon) launches the screen saver menu which allows you to lock the screen or suspend PC Usage logging.

The Popup Menu

When you click the 'smiley face' icon, the following menu is displayed.
About: shows version information and copyright message
View as Toolbar: restores the default view
View in System Tray: hides toolbar and runs itself as a small toolbar icon
Show Disk Space: displays current free disk space in the scrolling message area
Options: brings up the options window
Launch the Diary: starts the main program 'diary'
Acute Software's Catalog: shows other software available from Acute Software
Quickly Add Note: allows you to jot down notes as you work without having to open the main diary program
Quick Find: search the diary data files for any text. Note - this menu command does NOT search 'file accesses'
Display Calendar: shows an annual calendar, which can display any year from 1900 to 2999
Text Editor: launch your favorite text editor here
Activate Screen Saver: launches the 'blank screen saver'.

The above menu also appears when you click the system tray icon. If you right click the button or system tray icon a small menu appears which can exit the server, or view as a toolbar

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3.2 Diary

This is the main program for the client. It manages all diary events and tasks and can display the appointments in either Grid Mode or List Mode

Parts of the LifePIM Screen

You will see a screen similar to the one below appear. There are 3 main areas on the screen: Diary Screen shot

Calendar: (Top Left)
Click on any date to show the appointments and PC usage for that day

File Accesses (Mid Left - not shown)
This shows you what you have been using your PC for, if you have File Logging enabled (on by default)

Tasks (Bottom Left)
Current list of tasks. You can choose which fields to display, and tasks can be dragged and dropped between appointments.

The Appointments (Right Hand Side)
This is where your appointments, notes and general events are displayed. You can choose to show a single day, or week, or month

Shortcut Keys for LifePIM

Key	Description	Key	Description
F1	Help	Ctrl N	Add new appointment
F2	Daily View	Ctrl E	Edit Selected Appointment
F3	Weekly View	Ctrl D	Delete Selected Appointment
F4	Monthly View	Ctrl P	Print Current View
F5	View File Access in Appointments Grid	Ctrl F	Quick Find in current month
F6	Timed View (Display as a Grid)	Ctrl S	Power Search
F7	List View (Display Events as list)
F8	View Calendar and File List
F9	View the List of Tasks to do

4. Advanced Topics

4.1 Monitoring Hard Drive Space with Infolink

By default, every hour infolink checks the available hard drive space on your computer and reports it to you by scrolling the numbers across the green display area.

When the available hard drive space is lower than the threshold, the menu button (smiley face), turns into a sad face.

If you have more than 2 drives or partitions, you need to edit the INI file to allow infolink to check them.

Example netDiary.ini File showing 'general' section

[general]
; The general section includes disk space warings, EXE files to launch, etc
;

NumberOfDisks=3
Disk_1=C:
Disk_2=D:
Disk_3=E:
LowSpaceWarningInMb_1=750
LowSpaceWarningInMb_2=400
LowSpaceWarningInMb_3=400

NumberOfDisks - this should show how many disks/partitions you are checking. You need to make sure that this number has the correct LowSpaceWarnings and Disk_ entries.

Disk_n - this is the label of the disk to check. This must be the partition label including the colon (ie C:, D:, N:)

LowSpaceWarningInMb_n - this is the threshold limit in megabytes which changes the smiley face to a sad face. If any one of the partitions are less than their assigned threshold the face will change to sad.

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4.2 InfoLink Scrap Paper

From the Infolink menu you can choose 'scrap paper' which gives you a convenient tabbed set of notepads to store information as you work (e.g. copy and paste URL's)

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4.3 Managing your list of quick launch Programs

1. Make sure you can see the lists on the InfoLink display by resizing the form or, by going to the menu (smiley face), and choosing 'compact display mode'

2. Display the Programs list, by clicking on the drop down listbox on the left hand side, under the menu toolbar
This is your 'quick launch' list of programs , it will initially be empty., but all you need to do is drag and drop a file or folder to this area to have it added to the list.
You can edit this list with any text editor by changing the file PROGRAMS.LIS Double Click one to launch a file or folder.

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4.4 Automatic Event Logging

This feature is very useful in order to :

see how long you spend on various computing tasks

create accurate invoices for people who bill hourly

create employee timesheets down to 1 minute intervals

Assists Network administrators to identify which files where modified and when

Diary entries can be automatically created from a number of sources:

Recording PC Usage from InfoLink
Every minute, InfoLink records which application you are using to a logfile ( diary.raw ). At the specified interval ( 1 - 60 minutes ) the pim-util.exe program runs which summarizes the logfile into events for the diary.

Recording Files Modified from 'Autobackup'
Autobackup is a free utility from Acute Software. At the start of each day it makes a copy of all the files you have modified into a separate directory. It can also create diary entries for each file modified, showing the file size and full pathname. It cannot show how long you spent editing the file unless dserver is running and has recorded the events.

Recording "Tasks" from Acute Software's Timer
If you have purchased the Timer program from Acute Software, you can also use it to generate events when you time certain tasks - either in stop watch mode or alarm clock mode.

Recording Events from the Quick Event Recorder
You can create batch files or scripts to add events to the diary using the the EventRecorder (see section 4.5 below for more information)

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4.5 Recording Events from the Quick Event Recorder

The EventRecorder.exe program is a small program which can be setup to quickly add commonly occurring events such as : taking phone calls, booking routine meetings.
You setup an event, such as the length of the event, references, etc and with a single click it can be added when ever you want - It can also run from the command line

Command Line Usage is :

"C:\Program Files\acute\netdiary\EventRecorder.exe" hi there

The above line run from the Start --> Run menu , or from a batch file will add a diary event with the details "hi there" and the date/time that it was entered

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4.6 Using Batch Files to add events from other programs

Say you want to keep track of when a program is run.
There are several options, many programs keep their own logfiles but most don't. Using the event recorder you can have a batch file call the program you need logged and use it to also make an automatic entry in the diary.

Example Batch File to run an intensive data processing job and record it:

@echo off
echo Recording Diary Event ...
cd "c:\Program Files\acute\netdiary"
EventRecorder Running Data processing job
cd "d:\apps\dataProc\"
d:\apps\dataProc\run.exe

4.7 Other Add-on Programs

This section describes the other 'silent' programs and misc. utilities that come with the diary.

PIM-UTIL

Silently running utility which runs every hour in the background to process the logged PC usage events to diary records.

You can run this program to view the data file contents and basic statistics on the types of diary events you have in each months file.

Collect Files Used

This utility scans your entire hard disk and gets a list of all recently modified files. It then creates diary entries for each of these files into your current diary datapath.
This allows you to not only view your appointments and PC usage, but also ALL the files modified, and when they were modified.
The list can be displayed in the middle left window of the Diary (View Menu --> File List ), so you can simply double click a file entry to load it.

Note - If you use Autobackup, or Autobackup-Pro you should not have to use this program, as your file usage is done by these utilities

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5. Support and Troubleshooting

If you have any problems at all with this product, please email us for FREE support
or visit the support website at http://www.acutesoftware.com.au/cont_support.html

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5.1 LifePIM will not Start

1. try rebooting your PC (it may have locked up)
2. shutdown other programs and restart the Diary Client
3. try other programs - does Explorer, Word, Internet Explorer, etc work. If they don't then you have a problem with your PC not related to the diary. If they DO work, read below.
4. Try deleting your netDiary.ini file and running the ClientSetup program again. There may be a corrupted setting.
5. Write down any error message you get and email it to support@acutesoftware.com.au
6. You can also try re-installing the diary (some of your DLLs may have been overwritten by another programs installation.

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5.2 General Windows Troubleshooting Procedures

This section gives a very basic method of troubleshooting windows

1. Have you changed any hardware
2. Have you installed any software recently
3. Do other applications still work
4. Run the Windows 'Help Troubleshooter' to assist in finding any problems on your PC (Start Menu --> Help ---> 'Troubleshooting' )
5. Did you change any settings in control panel.
6. Make sure you have the latest version of the program you are having problems with. This may involve downloading the latest patch from the authors website.

� Copyright 2001-2005 Acute Software
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