Meeting minutes/action item software recommendations?

[superboyac]

What do you mean by "linked content" ?

-Armando (April 27, 2010, 04:42 PM)

The linked content is all the stuff that I put under the agendas, action items, etc.  meaning, if I enter something in one grid, it will show up in the other grids.  So if I put an action item in the main project grid, it will also appear in the action item grid.  That's what I am calling the linked content.

That's the whole point of this thing, right?  In one grid, I can see all of the main project information.  In the action item grid, I can see all the action items regardless of which meeting they belong to.

[Armando]

The linked content is all the stuff that I put under the agendas, action items, etc.  meaning, if I enter something in one grid, it will show up in the other grids.  So if I put an action item in the main project grid, it will also appear in the action item grid.  That's what I am calling the linked content.

-superboyac (April 27, 2010, 04:47 PM)

Ok, I see what you mean. Actually there's no link, it's just that the different grids' filters that are different (+ the grids themselves auto-assign specific fields so that if you create an TLI in the action items grid it should automatically be an action item  -- providing you create it under the right meeting, which shouldn't be a problem if the context parents appear, and they should unless you turn the option off in the toolbars.).

But it doesn't really matter how you think about it -- just be clear that a link is a link, and an item seen in different places is... An item seen in different places.

That's the whole point of this thing, right?  In one grid, I can see all of the main project information.  In the action item grid, I can see all the action items regardless of which meeting they belong to.

-superboyac (April 27, 2010, 04:47 PM)

Of course that's the main point.
All these grids can also be filtered in different ways. So you could, for example, only see action items from meetings inside a certain date range.
You could filter keypoints by content... Keywords...
Possibilities are multiple.

So when (if?) the reporting happens, it should be as powerful if not more powerful than other solutions.

[superboyac]

But it doesn't really matter how you think about it -- just be clear that a link is a link, and an item seen in different places is... An item seen in different places.

-Armando (April 27, 2010, 05:51 PM)

Indeed!  I remember my first talk on the phone with Pierre.  He had to explain this to me for like 30 minutes.  Poor guy!

Yes, Armando, I think you are coming up with a great meeting management solution here.  I've been working in my current industry for almost 5 years, and everyone does it with Excel and/or Word.  Which is a lot of repetitive work and annoying for me.  I was initially thinking of doing something in Access, but I always turn yellow when it comes to Access.  IQ is a good balance of accessibility and hardcore functionality.  But even IQ would be intimidating for most users.

[Armando]

Yes, Armando, I think you are coming up with a great meeting management solution here.  I've been working in my current industry for almost 5 years, and everyone does it with Excel and/or Word.  Which is a lot of repetitive work and annoying for me.  I was initially thinking of doing something in Access, but I always turn yellow when it comes to Access.  IQ is a good balance of accessibility and hardcore functionality.  But even IQ would be intimidating for most users.

-superboyac (April 27, 2010, 05:57 PM)

IQ is too hard for most user [Edit : to be fair, it really depends on what you want to do....]. Pierre is working to change some things in the interface and the filtering system so that everything becomes easier to grasp (a few things will disappear -- like the source/filter bar -- and it will become even more Ecco like... And at the same time, it will remain IQ. No loss in functionality, quite the contrary! More power to the user). So this meeting solution will actually get transformed a bit by the next IQ changes. But nothing that'll confuse you totally.

My goal is that my girlfriend who's not a geek at all can use this meeting solution easily.

As it is now, it's not too bad. But it should be better when changes to IQ's UI and filtering system will take place.

The color problem : If you organize your working space so that you need to horizontally scroll a bit to the right (so that the outline numbering column is hidden, sometimes even the other one... But I usually organize my grids so that the 2 first columns don't contain vital info), all these problems will disappear. Try it...That's what I do while waiting for a fix.

[superboyac]

Armando, I'm trying to play with my own conditional formatting.  I don't know the programming language for the criteria and formats column.  Can you help me?

I'm trying to have a field with a drop down, and depending on what is chosen from the drop down, the background color will change accordingly.  And unlike the example shown below, the criteria will be a text string:
So, if the field is set to "code" then I want the background to be blue (e.g.)  I tried putting:
="code"
in the criteria, and:
BackColor=&hED90A3
but nothing happened.

[Armando]

Conditional formatting is one of those things that will get simpler more reliable. But in IQ's beta stage, it's not a priority at the moment (what is ? Calendar, filtering and grid UI, search and replace, important bugs...).

Rules at this point are (explained there : http://www.sqlnotes....index.php?q=node/219) :

1- conditional format doesn't admit other criteria than numbers. If it's a Y/N (Boolean) Field, then -1 = Y (<>0 in the cond. Format. win.) and 0 = N (=0 in the cond. Format. win.) (as it is, traditionally).

2- You MUST "save" in the field management dialog after changing a conditional formatting option -- even if autosave is on. This is a bug I discovered last week. 

3- If a columns format is conditioned by another column, both need to be present in the grid for the formatting to happen

4- The grid must be closed an reopen for the modifications to appear.

If your criteria is some text, then you'd need to use a VB function in the visual basic editor. Not for the "normal" users right now.
And then there are several approaches : insert the criteria in the CalcColor() function which will fully color the item, or create a separate function which will affect a Y/N field that you'll then be able to use as a criteria in the conditional format section of the manage fields window.


If you really want to do that, I can help you... Or you can wait for the conditional formatting to support strings.

(P.S. : The =4 in the screenshot was a reminder for myself. I used a number that had no effect since I wanted to keep the BackColor info for future reference.)

[Armando]

(edited and added some important info in last post : rule #2, and the link)

[superboyac]

Oy...ok, I'll avoid that for now!  You are a mountain of info, I love it!

I can color manually for what I'm doing now.  This is somewhat unrelated to the meeting minutes thing, but the same project.

[Armando]

Just a a warning. It's okay to manually color items manually in your normal DB. But for the meeting one, it's trickier because of the script I set up where colors are automatically controlled based on text in the item field, and other checked fields. I'll try to see what I can do to change that -- it's a weakness in my code.

[superboyac]

Just a a warning. It's okay to manually color items manually in your normal DB. But for the meeting one, it's trickier because of the script I set up where colors are automatically controlled based on text in the item field, and other checked fields. I'll try to see what I can do to change that -- it's a weakness in my code.

-Armando (April 28, 2010, 01:39 PM)

No worries.  This is for another database.

[Armando]

I changed the "versioning" system. I added a  "0." in front of the numbers. It's alpha...

In any case, here's version 0.51 :
- Changes to the tutorial, mainly
- Added hyperlinks to grids and templates.
- Maybe a few other little things here and there... Not much.

Haven't looked at my color script limitations yet... That's next, with the HTML export reports.

[Armando]

BTW, I see that more than 1 person downloaded the Database sample -- don't forget to download and install the latest InfoQube first -- I suggest the portable version !


[Oh... And all other non-superboyacs...  if you have requests and comments, criticisms etc. Please tell.]

[ha14]

Can c-organizer pro be any of help to you
https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=22447.0

[Armando]

No more new versions of the IQBase (IQ Database) IQMinutes will be uploaded here. I've posted the the file (V0.6) in the IQ forum.

I've added a new grid (for reports), a new field, some more indications... And everything seems to work well. Of course, using this sample makes more sense if one is already using IQ. Or -- I guess -- could serve as an intro to IQ.

Some more features that could be added :
1- action items recurrence (as I've already added it to my own DB).
2- Sending e-mail alerts or reports to meeting participants (automatically or not -- this could be done as IQ can send emails to lists of addresses etc.)

[superboyac]

No more new versions of the IQBase (IQ Database) IQMinutes will be uploaded here. I've posted the the file (V0.6) in the IQ forum.

I've added a new grid (for reports), a new field, some more indications... And everything seems to work well. Of course, using this sample makes more sense if one is already using IQ. Or -- I guess -- could serve as an intro to IQ.

Some more features that could be added :
1- action items recurrence (as I've already added it to my own DB).
2- Sending e-mail alerts or reports to meeting participants (automatically or not -- this could be done as IQ can send emails to lists of addresses etc.)

-Armando (May 17, 2010, 04:49 PM)

I was just about to ask for the status.  Thanks Armando!

[Armando]

Another version with a truly minor change which was easy to implement (a few lines of code to change).

V0.61 changes  --  2010 05 17 -- 19:51

    * Item color can now be manually modified and it will remain unless some other automatic/conditional coloring is active (for some specific items like action items when affected by urgency, or contacts, agenda items, etc.

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http://www.sqlnotes.net/drupal5/index.php?q=node/1616