Working with Other Applications

Life Balance interacts with two other Palm applications: the built-in To Do List and Date Book. Life Balance also works with many alternative third party To Do List and Date Book applications.

Date Book

Life Balance is designed to complement, rather than replace, your favorite Date Book application. Tasks in Life Balance can be linked to events in your Date Book, and the priority of the item in Life Balance will reflect the approach of the next scheduled time of the linked event in the Date Book. (These links appear as "LB" numbers in the notes of your Date Book entries.)

When a task in Life Balance is scheduled By Date Book, it will begin to appear on your Life Balance To Do List two "lead times" before the linked event is scheduled to occur, and it will rise to full priority one "lead time" before the scheduled time.

There are two ways to link Life Balance tasks to Date Book events:

1. If you have created a task in Life Balance that you have not yet entered in the Date Book, then tap on the Time tab in the Task Details and make sure that the task happens By Date Book. Tapping on the Add button will create a new Date Book event at the date and time that you assign. If the event occurs more than once, you can add it to the Date Book several times, or open the Date Book application and change the event into a repeating event.
2. If you have existing Date Book event that you'd like to link to Life Balance, then choose the Link with Date Book… item from the Outline's Task menu. This will scan your Date Book for unlinked events and present you with a list so that you can select which events in your Dates application you would like to link into Life Balance.

The initial linking is accomplished by matching event descriptions to task descriptions in Life Balance, so the two descriptions must match exactly when the link is made in order for the link to be successful. Once the link is made, then Life Balance will track changes made to the schedule of the event in the Date Book by matching the LB number, even if the name of the event is changed in the Date Book application.

All events that have the same name as a task in Life Balance will be checked off for linking into Life Balance by default. If you decide to check off additional events, then new tasks will be created in Life Balance to link with the selected events.

Once you have placed check marks next to the Date Book events that you wish to link to Life Balance, tap the Link button and the links will be created, along with any necessary Life Balance tasks.

DateBk4 and DateBk5

Life Balance fully supports the features that DateBk4 and DateBk5 share with the built-in Date Book. In addition, Life Balance knows about two special features of DateBk4/5: templates and advances.

Life Balance recognizes DateBk4/5 templates, and does not count the template itself as an occurrence of the event. Life Balance will not purge a task that is linked to a DateBk4/5 template, under the assumption that you will be scheduling a new occurrence of the event later.

Tip: If you link (see item 2 under Date Book) a task in Life Balance to a DateBk4/5 event, and then turn that event into a template, any events you create using that template will automatically be linked to the same task in Life Balance.

Life Balance recognizes that “advance” events in DateBk4/5 are not real events, and ignores them when it computes the next scheduled time for a task.

Address Book

Life Balance supports the standard Palm OS “Phone Lookup” command for locating phone numbers and email addresses from the Palm’s built-in Address Book application.

To find an email address or a phone number, select a name in Life Balance and choose Phone Lookup from the Options menu. A Lookup form will appear containing a list of people in your address book, scrolled to the nearest match to the text you had selected. If you tap on a name and choose Add, the information listed in the Lookup form will replace the selected text in Life Balance.

Note: If you add a looked up number and change your mind, you can use the Undo command in the Edit menu to restore the original text, but you must do it right away.

Natara DayNotez™

Life Balance allows you to record a history of your completed tasks in DayNotez, a journal application from Natara Software.

To turn on journaling, choose Preferences from the Options menu, and select Natara DayNotez from the “Set:” popup menu. Check the box that says “Record completed tasks in Natara DayNotez” and tap OK.

Each time you check off a task in Life Balance, the task will be recorded in DayNotez with the date and time that you checked it off and any notes that you have assigned to the task. If you synchronize your handheld with the desktop edition of Life Balance, tasks that you checked off on the desktop will also be recorded.

You can find more information about DayNotez from Natara’s web site: http://www.natara.com/