How to Use nActionr to Get Things Done

If you are reading this, you are either investigating nActionr or thinking about doing so. If you are thinking about it, I recommend downloading it (CAB) (ZIP) it and trying it out as you follow this; it'll be more fun.

Getting Started

Getting started with nActionr is as easy as transferring the cab file you downloaded onto your Pocket PC (Windows Mobile 2003 or later, touchscreen devices only) and then running it with a single click. You may see a warning stating that "This program is from an unknown publisher. You should install it only if you trust its publisher. Do you want to continue?" If you get this warning while installing the cab file you downloaded from this site, it is safe to click Yes.

Once you have installed nActionr you will see a message indicating that nActionr.v1.1.trial.cab was successfully installed on your device. Click OK in the top right corner of the dialog screen.

Click on the Start button and then pick Programs from the menu. It should be near the bottom. You will then see the Programs screen, and you should see two icons that resemble an n with an r growing out of it. One will have a slightly darker background than the other. Run the one with the white background, nActionr v1.1, by clicking on it.

You will now see the first screen of the New User Experience where nActionr offers to take you through creating and saving your first file. Coupled with this tutorial, this is the easiest way for a new user to hit the ground running. And when trying to get organized, hitting the ground running is very useful indeed! For the purposes of this tutorial, click Yes on the dialog.

Click OK in the top right corner on this page.

Here you can set the location and filename of your nActionr data file. The file is XML, and is perfectly readable without using nActionr so you do not have to worry about being locked into nActionr should you decide it's not for you after trying it out. And if you should decide it's not for you, please let me know why so I can improve nActionr.

And if everything has gone right, you will see that a nActionr data file has been created and, after two more text screens, you're ready to go. Once you start creating contexts, projects and tasks then nActionr will automatically save your data as long as you have associated it with a data file. If you have followed this process up until now, you have associated nActionr with a data file. Other ways of doing that are using the File -> Save or Save as option and indicating where you want to save your data. Upon restarting nActionr it will attempt to open the most recently opened datafile automatically.

The Main Screen

This is the main screen of nActionr. It is where you will spend the majority of your time, creating and completing tasks, quickly switching from context to context and project to project reviewing all that you have decided that you need to do and making decisions about what to do next. The six icons across the bottom of the screen are: Move Task Up, Move Task Down, Create New Task, Update Existing Task, Clear Textbox and Delete Task. They are context sensitive and when they are grayed out, as they are now, they are unavailable to select.

As the second last page of the New User Experience text said, the new nActionr data file contains a default context called <INBOX> and this screen shows it. The (All contexts) context is not an actual context, but a way of quickly removing any context filters.

A default project was also created, and you can see it in this screen. It is <Single Actions> and can be used to hold all single action tasks you have that do not require a full blown project to manage them. As with (All contexts), the (All projects) project is a way to negate any project filters.

In order to create new tasks, you must select both a context and a project. As we only have one of each right now, go ahead and select them both. Click the contexts drop down box and pick <INBOX> and then click the projects drop down box and pick <Single Actions>. Once you have selected both a context and a project, click in the textbox above the icons. Type in a task: "Our first task is to create some contexts". You will note that as you typed in text, the Create New Task and Clear Textbox icons were enabled and are now colored. When you have typed in the first task, click on the Create New Task icon.

You will now see your first task appear in the task list. The textbox still contains the text of your first task but it has automatically selected it all. In order to create a new task you could just type some text. As long as the contents of the textbox are different to the task you just created, the Update Existing Task icon will also be enabled. As long as there is any text in the textbox, the Clear Textbox icon will enable. And if a task has been selected and the contents of the textbox unchanged, the Delete Task icon will be enabled.

We can test the updating by typing in our second task, but by making an error in the task name: "And our sceond task is to create projects". Click on the Create New Task icon.

Our second task has now been added to the task list but second has been spelled incorrectly.

Because it automatically stays on the newly added task, we just need to correct the text in the textbox and then click on the Update Existing Task button.

We now have our first two tasks in the task list.

Creating Contexts

Let's carry out our first task, creating some new contexts. Click on the menu item called Menu and pick Edit Contexts.

Here we can see the Edit Contexts page. There is a drop down of contexts at the top of the screen followed by a textbox in which the context's name will appear for editing or creating new contexts. Under that is a colored square and a button that says "Choose Color". There are three icons: Create New Context, Save Existing Context and Delete Context.'

nActionr supports color coding of projects or contexts. Let's give the Inbox context a new color so that we can more easily distinguish when we have an inbox that requires processing. Pick <INBOX> from the context drop down, and you will see that the Name textbox will be disabled. The <INBOX> context cannot be renamed or deleted, you can only change the color.

The color picker palette has an arrow that points down in the lower right corner. If you click on this, you can choose your exact shade of preferred color and then click on the arrow pointing to the left. This will set the color as one of your custom colors. You can then pick this color by clicking in whichever of the 5 lowest most color squares it went into.

Pick a color you like by either clicking "Choose Color" or by clicking the colored square directly; I've chosen a kind-of dark blue in the end, then click the Save Context icon.

The contexts page has refreshed but if you click on the Contexts drop down you can see that the <INBOX> now appears in the color you chose.

Creating new contexts is a case of typing in a context name, picking a color and then clicking the Create New Context icon. Contexts other than the inbox traditionally begin with @ to signify 'at'. In the screenshot, I am creating the 'at home' context which I will use for tasks I need to carry out while at home.

The text of the @Home context has now been highlighted and you can simply type another context name in and click the Create New Context icon. Create some more contexts that are of use, for example @Work and @Errands.

When you have created some contexts, click on the Exit menu option to return to the main screen.

Creating Projects

Pick Edit Projects from the main menu, and you will see the Edit Projects screen. This screen is the same as the Edit Contexts screen except that you can assign a start and due date to projects and give it a bit of descriptive text. By default, they are set to a date a long time in the past, and a date a long time in the future. You do not need to touch these unless you have a project you no longer wish to appear on the Main page projects drop down before or after a certain date. Create a few projects, for example "Arrange a visit to Auntie Ethel" or "Get fit" or even "Gardening" and then click on the Exit menu option.

Day-to-day Task Kung-Fu

We are back on the main screen and if you changed the color of the <INBOX> and have (All contexts) or <INBOX> and (All projects) or <Single Actions> selected then you will see the first two tasks we created earlier colored in the <INBOX> color. Click the checkbox next to our first task, as we have indeed completed it.

The task will have disappeared. It hasn't been deleted, only completed.

Click Menu and then pick Options.

This is the options screen and as you can see, you can opt to color code the task list by either Contexts or Projects at any one time. You can also choose to automatically launch the soft input panel automatically when a textfield is selected, choose to only display valid tasks and choose to hide completed tasks. The soft input panel option is unchecked by default while the remaining two options are checked by default, in order to see the completed tasks in the main task list, uncheck "Hide completed tasks?" and click OK to confirm this choice.

As you can see now, the completed task has returned, but it has been moved to the bottom of the list. As you have already completed the second task as well, click the checkbox for that one too.

Now both tasks are complete, and we can hide them in the options but they'll still be around, steadily filling up the nActionr data file as time goes on. If only there was a way of taking them out of the main day-to-day file...

We can Archive Completed tasks into a separate file entirely. This archive file will be called data file name_archive.csv and it will be a comma-separated file (for easy import into reporting applications). It is created in the same directory location as your main nActionr file.

As you can see, Archiving Completed removes the tasks from the nActionr data file without destroying all record of what you have completed. Now, it's time to plan the trip to Auntie Ethel's. We've not seen her for several years now and she's getting on a bit. It'd be good to see her again. But, ugh, there's so much to do, write a letter, post it, wait for the reply etc. I need a quick way of collecting tasks into nActionr, so it's time to use the collection application we saw earlier. Click the Start button and pick Programs again.

Collecting Your Thoughts

This time click on the icon with the darker background: nActionr v1.1 Collection. The dedicated collection application will start. This application simply contains a text area into which you can type. Each line will be processed into a task, so only press enter when you wish to start describing a new task.

As you can see I've thought up six tasks that I need to do for the trip to Auntie Ethel. I've typed them in here and clicking Process will cause the collection application to process the text I've entered. You may also note that there are two drop downs at the top of the screen. These allow you to directly import the entered tasks into the selected context and project. For the purpose of this tutorial, I have left these as <INBOX> and <Single Actions>.

And it duly tells me that 6 tasks were added to the nActionr data file. nActionr remembers which data file you last had open, and the collection app uses that same file. Therefore when creating a new file, you must first open and save the file in nActionr before nActionr Collection will work. Click OK and then click Exit and reactivate nActionr.

Processing Your Inbox

As we can see, all the tasks are present and marked as being <INBOX> <Single Action> tasks which isn't quite right for our purposes of planning a trip to Auntie Ethel's.

Click on the Menu and then pick Process Inbox to switch into inbox processing mode.

The inbox processing mode is a modified version of the View Detail screen. Selecting each task, then clicking on View Detail, then changing the context and project, then clicking Save and then repeating would be annoying. Too annoying. As the collection app excels in dumping numerous tasks into the Inbox very quickly, we also need an easier way to process these tasks. As you can see the "Task Completed?" checkbox has been removed, replaced with a countdown of the Tasks you have left to process (all tasks marked as being in the Inbox, they do not have to come from the collection application).

Change the context of the task away from the inbox by deselecting the <INBOX> context and selecting another like @Home for instance as that is a likely location to write a letter to Auntie Ethel. If you created a project to handle the visit to Auntie Ethel earlier when creating your projects, you can select that project in the Projects drop down now and then click on Process. If you correctly deselected the <INBOX> context, the Tasks Left value will decrement by one and you will be presented by the next task to process.

On this page are two dates which, like the Edit Projects screen, allow you to set start and due dates for tasks. Unlike the Edit Projects screen, they default to no date chosen. This is the default and a lot of the time tasks can happily be left on your task list until you have found the time to do them. If you don't want a task to appear until a certain day, then you can check the Use Start Date checkbox and pick the date you wish to see the task from. If you need to complete a task by a certain date, check the Use End Date checkbox and pick the date your task is due. From that due date onwards, your task will have a colored background signifying that it is overdue.

Let's suppose at this point we have processed the task "Wait for response from Auntie Ethel" then we see "Book time off work" as the next task to process. Our stylus hovers over Process but we suddenly have a rush of doubts about booking the time off work before getting a response or do anything further than just waiting for the letter from Auntie Ethel, so we decide to discard all remaining tasks by clicking Discard and then confirming that we do want to discard the task.

When all remaining tasks are discarded and the Inbox has been processed, we are returned to the main screen and we can see that the color coding of the tasks has changed from the Inbox to whatever context we gave them.

We happily go about our life for a few days while the letter to Auntie Ethel gets written. As I write it, I suddenly remember that Auntie Ethel emigrated to Australia a few years ago. No wonder I hadn't seen her for a while! That makes the tasks now redundant, and indeed the project, so I select the tasks, and click the Delete icon then confirm the deletion. After I have done this for each task, I can then do the same for the actual project by going to the Edit Projects screen, selecting the Project in the drop down box and then clicking the Delete icon.

That concludes this tutorial to nActionr, and if you wish to reset your nActionr file you can do so by going to the Options screen and clicking the big Reset New User Experience button then confirming that you do want to reset the New User Experience.

-- Jonathan Ballinger, Developer of nActionr