Collaborating by Exchanging Outline Sections

Life Balance supports sending projects and tasks from the Outline, To Do List, and Balance sections of the program. When you send from the Outline section, the selected task and all of its subtasks are sent simultaneously. When you send from the To Do List or Balance sections, only the selected task is sent.

To send a section of your outline to another Life Balance user, select the first item in the section and then select Send Section from the Task menu. Depending on the exact capabilities of your device, you may be asked to choose how to send the data. Nearly all Palm handhelds support “Beaming” via infrared. Other possibilities are described in Collaboration Features Using the Exchange Manager. When you send, all of the associated Places and DateBook entries are also sent to the other user.

Note: If the recipient already has these tasks in his outline, the sent data will replace the recipient's data for these tasks, regardless of which is most recent. When this occurs, Life Balance will display a warning and allow the recipient to cancel the operation rather than replacing the existing data.

There are some circumstances where sending may create duplicate places in Life Balance. For instance, if John sends you a section of his work outline, you may end up with a place named "Work 2". This represents John's "Work" place, with the number "2" added so that you can distinguish it from your own workplace.

When this happens, you'll probably want to take one of two actions, depending on the situation. If you and John actually work at different places, then the two of you will probably want to rename the places to have clearer names like "Acme, Inc." and "Widgets, Inc.".

However, if you and John actually work at the same location and want to share this place, then you'll want to merge the two places into a single place. To do this, select your "Work" place (not "Work 2") in the Places section and delete it. In the confirmation dialog that appears, you have the opportunity to substitute another place for the one you are deleting. Select "Work 2" for the substitute place, and tap Delete. Now all of the items in your copy of Life Balance will be using the same "Work" place that John is using. You can now change the name "Work 2" back to just "Work", or choose some other name that you both will recognize.

When merging two places, be sure to delete your place and not the place that was sent to you. Deleting the place that was sent to you will just cause the duplicate place to reappear the next time you receive another send.

Life Balance also supports "Ronomatic" sending, which is a Palm feature that allows you to set an action for dragging the pen from the graffiti area to the top of the screen.

By default this pen movement is defined to bring up the graffiti help, but it can also be set in the Palm preferences to send instead. You may use Ronomatic sending from the Outline, the To Do List and the Balance sections.