Synchronizing with the Palm To Do List

We've gone the whole nine yards and added full two-way synchronization with the built-in To Do List to Life Balance. Some important uses of this feature are:

• To allow Life Balance users to take advantage of the Palm OS 3.5, Action Names Datebook and DateBk4 views that display the To Do List and Date Book simultaneously. These views will automatically be updated to match Life Balance, and tasks that are checked off in these views will automatically be checked off in Life Balance.
• To allow input of Life Balance tasks from the Palm Desktop.
• To allow synchronization (indirectly) with Outlook and other desktop applications that HotSync with the built-in To Do List.
• To provide a desktop archive of completed Life Balance tasks, while still allowing old tasks to be purged from Life Balance.

The disadvantages are:

• Starting up and updating Life Balance will be slower. Life Balance operates more quickly if these features are not enabled.
• Interactions during HotSync may become more complex, because other applications may synchronize with the built-in To Do List.
• Slightly more storage is needed on your Palm, since some of your Life Balance tasks will be duplicated in the built-in To Do List.

The mappings between categories, places, and outline sections are completely customizable, and you can control which categories and places should be synchronized. You can choose to import only, export only, or perform full two-way synchronization. Although there are a lot of customization settings, once your preferences are entered the process is completely automatic. The old command to import the To Do List has been removed.

Basically, the import/export feature works like this:

• On startup, Life Balance imports new tasks from the To Do List and updates existing tasks that have changed. If the "Allow deletion of tasks" option is checked, then Life Balance will also delete any Life Balance tasks that have been deleted from the built-in To Do List. Tasks with subtasks are never deleted, even though the "Allow deletion of tasks" option is checked.

  Warning: If you have both "Allow deletion of tasks" and export enabled, you should be careful that all of your places are set to export. Otherwise, if you were to change a task from a place that had been exported to one that isn't, then on the next export, the task would be removed from the built-in To Do List and on a subsequent import, it would be deleted from Life Balance.

• As tasks are changed in Life Balance, the corresponding tasks in the To Do List are updated to match.
• When you perform an update in Life Balance, tasks are added to the built-in To Do List so that it matches the list in Life Balance.

Here's how the various fields of information are managed:

Description & Notes

The task description and notes are kept fully synchronized between the two programs. The only difference is that the DateBk3/4 attributes and LB number from the notes are stripped before they're stored in Life Balance, since they serve no purpose within Life Balance.

Due Dates

Tasks without due dates in the built-in To Do List happen "once" in Life Balance, and tasks in the built-in To Do List with due dates happen "by Due Date" in Life Balance. These settings are synchronized in both directions.

Life Balance tasks that happen "routinely" or "by Date Book" are handled a little differently. These tasks will be exported to the built-in To Do List with the current due date, but changes in the due date are not imported to Life Balance for these tasks, since either Life Balance or the Date Book is in charge of the scheduling.

Priorities

Priorities 1-5 are converted to importance in Life Balance when a task is first imported, but are not updated from the built-in To Do List thereafter since the Life Balance priorities are calculated dynamically and are not on an integer scale. When the Update button is pressed in Life Balance, revised integer value priorities are exported to the built-in To Do List at priorities 1-4.

During exporting, priority 5 is reserved for tasks that have been hidden on the Life Balance to do list. (Tasks may be hidden in Life Balance because they are scheduled far in the future, or because the importance of the task or one of its parents has been set to None.) By exporting these records as priority 5, we maintain compatibility with various third party applications that also store information in the built in To Do List database.

Categories

Categories in the built-in To Do List are converted to both places and outline sections when a task is first imported. Once a task is imported, changes to its category in the built-in To Do List have no effect on Life Balance. On export, Life Balance places (but not outline sections) are converted to categories.

The import/export settings are located in three parts of Life Balance. The master "import" switch and other import settings are in the "To Do List import" section of the Life Balance Preferences. The master "export" switch and the export settings are in the "To Do List export" section of the Life Balance Preferences. The export settings for each Life Balance place are also under the "Export" tab in the Place Details for that place. You may set export settings for a place wherever it is more convenient for you.

Life Balance will archive tasks in the To Do List when the corresponding task in Life Balance is deleted or purged, if exporting is turned on.

When you change the category for export of a place, Life Balance will update the categories of the tasks that are in the built-in To Do List. This is helpful if you make a mistake in the export mappings.

If you change a place so that it is no longer exported, all the tasks that were in the built-in To Do List that were assigned to that place will be archived.

By default, Life Balance does not import completed tasks from the Built in To Do List. However, you may want to import tasks that are completed in order to get credit for done tasks within the Actual Pie Chart in the Balance section. There is a preference in the "To Do List import" section to import completed tasks from the built-in To Do List if you choose.

You're free to change any of these settings at any time, but here's a set of guidelines to get you started

1. Create the categories, places, and outline sections that you'll need for synchronization. You'll probably want to have a Life Balance place for each category, and you may want to have a section in your outline for each category as well.
2. To turn on To Do List importing:
   1. Check off the "Import from To Do List" option.
   2. Turn on the checkmark next to any categories that you want imported. By default, no categories are imported.
   3. Use the popup menu next to each category to select the Life Balance place that should be used when importing tasks for that category. By default, all categories are imported as "Anywhere".
   4. Next, change the "into Place" popup menu to say "into Section".
   5. Use the selection boxes to control the section of your Life Balance outline into which imported tasks for that category will be put. By default, all categories are imported to the top level of your outline, also known as "Your life as a whole". See the section "Using the Task Picker" for detailed instructions on how to use the task selection screen.
   6. When you tap the OK button in the Preferences form, all of your settings will be saved and your current To Do List will be imported. If you need to save your preferences without importing your To Do List (perhaps because you need to add more places or outline sections before importing), uncheck the "Import from To Do List" option and tap the OK button in the Preferences form. All of your settings will still be saved, but the To Do List will not be imported.
3. To turn on To Do List exporting:
   1. Open the Life Balance Preferences, and select "To Do List export" from the "Set" popup.
   2. Check off the "Export to To Do List" option.
   3. Once you have turned on the master check box, by default, all of your places will be exported to the category "Unfiled."
   4. To change the category to which a place will be exported, use the popup to change the category.
   5. To prevent a place from being exported, simply uncheck the place.
   6. Tap the OK button in the Preferences form to save your settings. No exporting is done at this time.
   7. Alternatively, you can make export setting changes in the Places section in Life Balance.
   8. By default, each place in Life Balance is exported to the built-in To Do List as an Unfiled task. To change this, tap on a Place to open the Place Details, and then tap on the Export tab. Here you can turn off exporting for tasks with this place, or select a different category.

      Warning: If you turn off exporting tasks with a particular Place, we recommend that you do not enable "Allow deletion of tasks" in import. Otherwise, if you were to change a task from a Place that had been exported to one that isn't, then on the next export, the task would be removed from the built-in To Do List and on a subsequent import, it would be deleted from Life Balance.

   9. When you are happy with your export settings, go to the Life Balance To Do List and tap the Update button. This will reprioritize your Life Balance To Do List and export the results to your built-in To Do List.

A word about Conduits and Completed Tasks

Some third-party conduits allow you the option of removing completed tasks from your Palm automatically. This option prevents Life Balance from tracking your accomplishments, and we don't recommend it.

Instead, use the Purge command in the Balance section of Life Balance to delete your completed tasks. This will ensure that you receive credit for your accomplishments. If To Do List exporting is turned on, Life Balance will delete the corresponding task from your To Do List when the task is purged from Life Balance.

A word about Conduits and Duplicates

Life Balance is carefully designed so that it will not produce duplicates in your built-in To Do List. Whenever Life Balance exports a task, it flags the task so that it won't be exported again. (You can use the "Allow re-export…" command in the Outline section to clear this flag if you really need to export a task twice, perhaps because it was mistakenly deleted from the built-in To Do List but is still present in Life Balance.)

It is fairly common, however, for HotSync conduits to create duplicates in your built-in To Do List. All HotSync conduits, whether made by Palm or by third parties, face the dilemma of what to do if the task has been changed both on the desktop and on the handheld. Most conduits solve this dilemma by duplicating the task. Third-party conduits may offer other options.

Most of the time the conduit throws up a message to tell you about the duplicates, but there are times that you may never see this message. For instance, if you are performing a network HotSync to a remote server, the information message will appear on the server's monitor, but not on your Palm. To make matters worse, the message seems to time out after 60 seconds. So the appearance of duplicates can look terribly mysterious if you don't see that HotSync message.

When you turn on To Do List exporting in Life Balance, you may notice an increase in these conduit-created duplicates. This is because Life Balance modifies your To Do List much more frequently and extensively than you would ever be able to do by hand. (That is sort of the point of Life Balance, after all.)

How to prevent the problem

The simplest way to prevent the problem is to HotSync more often. If you've been using Life Balance on the handheld, HotSync before you start using the desktop. If you have been using the desktop, HotSync before you go back to using the handheld.

If you are only interested in using the desktop for data entry, then a second option is to turn off exporting in Life Balance.

If you are using a third party conduit like PocketMirror, you can set its conflict resolution preferences to always favor the desktop or the handheld.

How do you fix the problem if it has already happened?

If the duplicate tasks in the built in to do list have the same LB number, Life Balance doesn't care which one you keep. It will be happy with either one, so feel free to blast it either on the desktop or in the built in to do list.

If the duplicates have different LB numbers, then the duplicates are likely to be present in Life Balance as well. You will be better off if you delete the duplicate from Life Balance, because it will then archive the corresponding task in the built in to do list, which will keep it from coming back.

We also recommend the Stevens Creek UnDupe utility.

A word about Conduits and Categories

In order for Life Balance to synchronize with the Palm's built-in To Do List, it has to keep track of the categories used there. Unfortunately, some third-party conduits modify these categories without properly updating the unique id numbers that are supposed to allow programs like Life Balance to keep track of the changes.

When you turn on the To Do List import feature, Life Balance will ask you if you are using one of these third-party conduits. If you are, Life Balance will warn you when the To Do List categories change in a way that might have invalidated your import/export mappings. When you receive this warning, Life Balance disables the To Do List import feature. This gives you the opportunity to review your import/export settings before importing new data. Once you are satisfied that your import/export settings are correct, you can turn importing back on.

If you are using Palm's standard To Do List conduit, then you can safely disable these warnings. If you need to turn the warnings on or off, turn To Do List importing off and back on again, and Life Balance will ask you again if you want the warnings.