NowWhat Time Management Program

Table of Contents

Overview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Key substitutions (2)

Editing keys (2)

Use within a DOS shell (2)

Trademarks (2)

Changing the Active Date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Appointments List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

To-do List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

SmartCopy Feature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Utilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Why both a To-do list and an appointment schedule? (13)

Some Hints (13)

Backing up your files (13)

Corrupted index files (13)

Appendix A. Technical Information . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Appendix B. Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

NowWhat Time Management Program Overview 1.

Overview. NowWhat version 4.3 is a fast, convenient and intuitive time manager. It is comprised of the following main modules: Appointments List, To-do List, monthly Calendar and Activity Log. Unlike some other time management programs, the number of items you can enter is limited only by disk size.

The initial screen shows the Appointments list, To-do List and Calendar. The bottom "first-tier" command line offers the choice of Appointments, To-do list, Calendar, Log, Date, Utilities, or Quit. You execute an option on this command line by tapping the first letter of your choice.

The Appointments list will appear in the upper left of the screen and shows any appointments for the current day, with morning appointments in blue and afternoon appointments in red. To work with the Appointments list, enter A and you have a further choice of suboptions, namely: Add, Edit, Copy, Move, Xfer, Next, Delete, Review, Help and Quit. These suboptions are fully described in the "Appointments List" chapter.

The upper right portion of the screen will show, in Due date order, any unfinished To-do List items designated as being effective on or before the active date. Enter T from the main command line to work with the To-Do List. Its suboptions of Add, Edit, Copy, Finish, Unfinish, Delete, Review, Help and Quit are described in the "To-Do List" chapter.

The calendar for the current month appears at the bottom left of the screen, with the system date highlighted. Any days with appointments are automatically flagged with a bullet (*). Also, any days that have been designated as a Holiday, Special or Leave date will have an H, S or L respectively to the left of the day with their description, if any, in green immediately above the calendar. Enter C while at this first-tier command level to work with the calendar. The suboptions of Holiday, Special, Leave, Copy, Print, Review, Help and Quit are described in the "Calendar" chapter. The "Changing the Active Date" chapter explains how to work with other than the system date by using either the Date command or the cursor keys.

Enter L to work with the Activity Log, which has its own screen. This option is intended to track unplanned activities, and is also ideal for time billing purposes as elapsed time is computed and a standard text file output is available for use with database managers. Read the "Activity Log" chapter for more information.

At the main command line, as well as at the command line of most of the modules, you can enter ? (or use the F1 or F3 function key) to bring up a context-sensitive help screen explaining available choices.

NowWhat Time Management Program Overview 2.

A Utilities option is also included, which provides functions that are global to all of the main modules. Global_review produces a screen or printout report on ALL modules for your choice of date range, optionally restricted to a particular word or phrase within the description. The Purge suboption allows you to conveniently delete all entries on or before a cutoff date of your choosing. Another suboption is Reindex, which will speed up program execution if used periodically. Reindex MUST be used if the program starts to act abnormally in any way, or if the program terminated without use of the Quit command (such as in the case of a power failure). See the "Utilities" chapter for further information.

Key substitutions. You may use the <esc> key to substitute for the "Q" key anywhere to execute the Quit command. Also, you may use the <F1> or <F3> function key to substitute for the "?" key to obtain a help screen for the current module.

Editing Keys. When in the edit mode you will be able to use the editing keys in much the same manner as in popular DBMS products. Specifically: <enter> retains the current or default information in the field, <esc> usually aborts, <insert> toggles between insert/typeover modes, <delete> deletes the character under the cursor, right/left cursor keys move a character at a time, <home> moves to the beginning of the field, and <end> moves to the end of the field (pressing <end> a second time will put you one position beyond the last character). Additionally, <F5> deletes from the cursor to the end of the field.

Use within a DOS shell. NowWhat should be able to run in as little as 256K available RAM, so it can run within the DOS shell of most programs. Therefore, you can usually run NowWhat without having to close and reopen the files of your word processor, spreadsheet, database manager or whatever. This gives you the advantages of a TSR (Terminate-and-Stay-Resident) program, but without any of the problems of interrupt conflicts, RAM-cram, etc. NowWhat can also run as a Dos application under Windows (see Appendix A for details).

NowWhat Time Management Program Changing the Active Date 3.

Changing the Active Date. When NowWhat first comes up, the active date will be the same as the system date. At the command line, you can use the right and left cursor keys to move forward or backward by one day. Similarly, the up/down cursor keys move by a week, the <PgDwn>/<PgUp> keys move by 4 weeks, the ctrl-right/left keys move by a year, and the <home> key returns the active date to the system date. Basically, whenever you see the time in the upper right hand corner of the screen, these keys may be used to change the active date for NowWhat; while you are within an option where the time disappears, these keys will not be active for this purpose.

Also, the Date command can change the active date to any date you wish.

You will notice that when the active date is other than the system date, it will appear in blue while the system date will continue to be highlighted (if it is in the same month as the active date).

NowWhat Time Management Program Appointments List 4.

Appointments List. The Appointments list appears in the upper left of the screen and will show any appointments for the current day, with morning appointments in blue and afternoon appointments in red. While in the Appointments module you can continue to use the cursor keys to change the active date (see the chapter "Changing the Active Date"). You can work with the Appointments List by selecting one of the suboptions described below:

ADD. You can add an appointment for any date, not just the active date. You will be asked to enter the desired date (the active date will be the default), time (in 12 hour format), am/pm designation, and an up to 33 character description of the appointment. The "a" or "p" that you enter for am/pm designation will appear in lower case, regardless of how it is entered. You may add more than one appointment for the same date and time.

EDIT. When you select this suboption, you will see the first appointment for the active date highlighted. If you wish to edit other than the first appointment, use the up/down cursor keys to go to the desired appointment (the list wraps; if you are at the first item the up-arrow cursor key will take you to the last item, and it you are at the last item the down-arrow key will take you to the first). When your desired appointment is highlighted, use the <enter> key to select it (or <esc> to abort). You will then enter the revised information (using just the <enter> key will retain the current information in that field). After verifying that the information is correct, the process will repeat allowing you to select another appointment to edit until you escape this suboption with the <esc> key.

COPY. Copies the selected appointment time and description to another date. Use the same selection process as described above for EDIT. Has "SmartCopy" feature for entering periodic appointments; see the "SmartCopy" chapter for details.

MOVE. An easy way to reschedule an appointment. Just select the appointment to be moved (in the same manner as described above for EDIT), and then enter the new date and time (the current description will be retained). The old appointment will be deleted and the new one established. Notice that MOVE deletes the original appointment, while COPY retains it.

XFER. This suboption transfers an Appointment by deleting that appointment from the appointments database and adding it to the log database. Therefore, it is removed from the appointments screen but you still have a record of the activity in the log database, and it will show on the Log screen. You will be prompted for ending time (which will default to the system time) and whether the activity was completed successfully. The date and starting time will be the date and time of the appointment, and the activity description will be the appointment description; you can go to the Log screen and Edit this information if necessary.

NowWhat Time Management Program Appointments List 5.

DELETE. Removes a selected appointment from the screen and from the database. Select the appointment to be deleted in the same manner as described above for EDIT.

NEXT. Shows next screenful of appointments (if all cannot fit on current screen).

REVIEW. With your choice of Screen, Printer or File output, shows all appointments for your choice of the current Week, Month, Year, any Other range of dates, or All dates. You will be offered the option of restricting the search to those appointments which contain a particular word or phrase in the description; this search is not case or position sensitive, so your search "string" will be found regardless of where it is in the description, and regardless of whether it is in the same case (upper or lower). Any descriptions entered through the Calendar module for Holidays, Special or Leave dates will also be included in the review.

?. The Appointments module has it own help screen, which briefly describes the above suboptions.

QUIT. Returns you to the main command line. To exit the program entirely, execute Quit again from the main command line.

Note: In order to select the appointment you wish to work with in the suboptions of Edit, Copy, Move and Delete the active date must be the date of the desired appointment. See the "Changing the Active Date" chapter for information on how to change the active date with the Date option, or with the cursor control keys.

If the Holiday, Special or Leave date suboption was previously chosen under the Calendar command for the active date, a description may appear above the calendar (in green on a color monitor). These descriptions are managed by the Calendar command described later, NOT by this Appointments command.

NowWhat Time Management Program To-Do List 6.

To-do List. The right portion of the screen will show, in order of Due date, any unfinished To-do List items designated as being effective on or before the active date. The To-do list option allows you to work with the to-do list with your choice of sub-options described below.

ADD. Use this option to add an item to the to-do list. You are asked for the Effective starting date of the task (the date you want the task to start showing on the screen), the due date and an up to 33 character description of the task. The active date will be the default Effective date, and the Effective date will be the default Due date. Any number of tasks may share the same date.

EDIT. When you select this suboption, you will see the first task for the active date highlighted. If you wish to edit other than the first task, use the up/down cursor keys to go to the desired task (the list wraps; if you are at the first item the up-arrow cursor key will take you to the last item, and it you are at the last item the down-arrow key will take you to the first). When your desired task is highlighted, use the <enter> key to select it (or <esc> to abort). You will then enter the revised information (using the <enter> key will retain the current information in that field). After verifying that the information is correct, the process will repeat allowing you to select another task to edit until you escape this suboption with the <esc> key.

COPY. Copies the selected task to another Effective date and Due date. Uses the same selection process as described above for EDIT. Has "SmartCopy" feature for entering periodic appointments; see the "SmartCopy" chapter for details.

FINISH. Allows you to enter the date a task was finished. It will no longer show on the regular To-do list screen, but will still be in the database and can be retrieved with the Review suboption described below. Uses the same selection process as described above for EDIT.

UNFINISH. To allow for deletion or further editing, brings back a finished item to the To-do screen. First use the Review suboption to obtain the dates needed to use this suboption. The tasks found for the desired effective, due and finished dates you enter will be presented to you, one after another, for verification until you select one to be "unfinished" or there is no more entries for those dates.

DELETE. Removes a selected task from the screen and from the database. Select the task to be deleted in the same manner as described above for EDIT.

NEXT. Shows next screenful of To-do list items (if all cannot fit on current screen).

NowWhat Time Management Program To-Do List 7.

REVIEW. With your choice of Screen, Printer or File output, shows all tasks for your choice of the current Week, Month, Year, any Other range of dates, or simply All dates. You will be offered the option of restricting the search to those tasks which contain a particular word or phrase in the description; this is not case or position sensitive, so your search string will be found regardless of where it is in the description, and regardless of whether it is in the same case (upper or lower). You will also choose whether to include finished To-Do tasks.

?. The To-do list module has it own help screen, which briefly

describes the above suboptions.

QUIT. Returns you to the main command line. To exit the program entirely, execute Quit again from the main command line.

Note: In order to select the task you wish to work with in the suboptions of Edit, Copy, Finish and Delete the active date must be the date of the desired task. See the "Changing the Active Date" chapter for information on how to change the active date with the Date option, or with the cursor control keys.

NowWhat Time Management Program Activity Log 8.

Log. The Activity Log option has a screen of its own. When you first choose this option you will see all of your logged activities for the active date, in order of starting time. For those items which have been finished, the elapsed time will show (minimum of 1 minute). If there is enough room on the screen, the calendar will also appear (the calendar will disappear if you enter enough activities).

The Start and Finish time for any activity must occur within the same day; activities which span more than one day must have a separate entry for each day. Also, unlike the Appointments List and To-do List, which can have multiple entries for the same time, you may have only one Activity Log entry for any particular Starting date and time. The activity Log suboptions are explained below:

START. Enter the starting time (12 hour format), am/pm designation and description (up to 52 characters) of the activity. The default starting time will be the time when you chose this suboption.

FINISH. Use the up/down cursor keys to select activity (entered originally with the Start command described above) for which you now wish to enter the completion time and success status. The default finish time will be the system time when you chose this suboption. Use <esc> when done.

BOTH. Essentially, this allows you to enter both Start and Finish information with the same suboption. This is very useful for time billing purposes; select this option when you first receive a call and complete it when your call is done, as the default Starting time will be when you first selected this suboption and the default Finish time will be when you enter the data.

EDIT. When you select this suboption, you will see the first activity for the active date highlighted. If you wish to edit other than the first activity, use the up/down cursor keys to go to the desired activity (the list wraps; if you are at the first item the up-arrow cursor key will take you to the last item, and it you are at the last item the down-arrow key will take you to the first). When your desired activity is highlighted, use the <enter> key to select it (or <esc> to abort). You will then enter the revised information (using the <enter> key will retain the current information in that field). After verifying that the information is correct, the process will repeat allowing you to select another activity to edit until you escape this suboption with the <esc> key.

DELETE. Removes a selected activity from the screen and from the database. Select the activity to be deleted in the same manner as described above for EDIT.

NowWhat Time Management Program Activity Log 9.

NEXT. Shows next screenful of logged activities (if all cannot fit on current screen).

REVIEW. With your choice of Screen, Printer or File output, shows all activities for your choice of the current Week, Month, Year, any Other range of dates, or simply All dates. You will be offered the option of restricting the search to those activities which contain a particular word or phrase in the description; this is not case or position sensitive, so your search string will be found regardless of where it is in the description, and regardless of whether it is in the same case (upper or lower).

TOGGLE. Toggles screen mode between showing elapsed time. When elapsed time is not displayed, start time and end time also show seconds. There is not enough room on the screen to both show seconds and show elapsed time; however, the seconds are always used in computing elapsed time regardless of whether seconds are displayed on the screen.

OUTPUT. Makes a copy of the activities log for your choice of the current Week, Month, Year, Other range of dates, or All dates in standard "SDF" text format for use with other programs. To use this information in an "xBase" program, you must first have created an "xBase" file (e.g. log.dbf) with the specifications described below. For example, after you have executed NowWhat's Log/Output option you could Quit the program, go into your xBase-compatible database manager and type the following lines (the lower case words are comments and would not be typed):

USE LOG uses log.dbf

ZAP erases any previous data in the file

APPEND FROM LOG SDF this will copy the data created by the Output suboption

You could now use this data for a time-billing program, or whatever.

Log.txt has the following specifications:

DESCRIPTION SIZE COMMENT

Log Date 8 yyyymmdd format

Start Time 8 hh:mm:ss format

Start Am/Pm 1 "a" for AM, "p" for PM

End Time 8 hh:mm:ss format

End Am/Pm 1 "a" for AM, "p" for PM

Elapsed Time 5 hh:mm format

Successful 1 "Y" for yes, "N" for no

Activity 52 description of activity

?. The Log option has it own help screen, which briefly describes the above suboptions.

QUIT. Returns you to the main command line. To exit the program entirely, execute Quit again from the main command line.

NowWhat Time Management Program Calendar 10.

Calendar. The sub-options under "calendar" are as follows:

HOLIDAY. Allows you to mark a day as a holiday (need not be in the active month). An "H" will now appear on the calendar for that date. You may optionally enter a description for the holiday, which will appear just above the calendar when the active date is the date of the holiday. Also used to "unmark" a day as a holiday by simply entering the date again (if an optional description was entered, it will be automatically deleted).

SPECIAL. Similar to Holiday above, marks "Red Letter" days such as anniversaries, birthdays, etc. Like Holiday, Special offers an optional description to appear above the calendar on the selected date. Note: the same date may NOT be marked as both a Holiday and a Special date.

LEAVE. Similarly, marks or unmarks a day as being scheduled for leave or vacation. Holiday, Special and Leave are mutually exclusive; the same day cannot be marked as more than one. You can choose a range of dates if you wish, and will then be offered the additional option of skipping the change of leave designation for weekends within the range. If a Holiday or Special date falls within the range of dates specified, it remains unchanged.

COPY. If the active date has been designated as a Holiday, Special or Leave date it can be copied to another date. Has "SmartCopy" feature described in the next chapter.

PRINT. Will print out a monthly calendar for as many months as you wish, starting with the active month. If you are fortunate enough to have a LaserJet compatible printer, the output will be especially well formatted.

REVIEW. Shows 6 months on the screen, starting with the active month. As usual, the Shift-PrtScrn key combination will printout this screen. If you wish a different 6 month period, first change the active date to be within the desired starting month (the "Changing the Active Date" chapter above describes how you can change the active date either by the Date command on the main command line or by using the cursor keys).

The descriptions of the Holiday, Special and Leave dates are included in the Review suboption of the Appointments list module described previously. Therefore, use the Appointments list module if you need to review these descriptions.

?. The Calendar option has it own help screen, which briefly describes the above suboptions.

QUIT. Returns you to the main command line. To exit the program entirely, execute Quit again from the main command line.

NowWhat Time Management Program SmartCopy Feature 11.

SmartCopy feature. The Copy suboptions of the Appointments, To-do list and Calendar commands have a unique "SmartCopy" feature, which is a rapid and intuitive way to enter periodically recurring items. It could also have been called "Copy by Example". The first time you choose an item to copy, the program keeps track of the item, as well as the difference between the original date and the new date. If the copied Appointment or To-Do list item is exactly 1 year, 1 month, 2 weeks, 1 week, or 1 day later than the original date, AND you immediately choose this same item again for copy, it will offer a default date that is the same interval from the previous date. In the Appointment module only, such periods as "first Friday

of each month" are also accommodated.

For example, let's say you have already entered a luncheon appointment for 09/21/1989 (using, of course, the Add suboption of the Appointment command). This is a regular luncheon meeting of your club that occurs every week. So, you choose the Copy suboption of the Appointment command and use the up/down cursor keys to go to this appointment. You hit the <enter> key to select it and then enter the date of 09/28/1989, exactly one week later. Now, when you choose the Copy suboption again and use the up/down cursor keys to select this SAME appointment, you will find that the default date is 10/05/1989, so you just have to hit the <enter> key to accept this default rather than typing in the date. The next Copy will offer 10/12/1989 and so on. This feature works in a similar manner with the To-do list, offering this feature for both the Effective and Due dates (the Effective and Due dates do not have to be the same as each other, they just need to be the same interval from their respective original dates).

NowWhat Time Management Program Utilities 12.

Utilities. This module contains routines that are "Global"; they involve information from all other modules. The main suboptions are Global review, Purge and Reindex.

GLOBAL REVIEW. Will review ALL modules (Appointments, Todo List and Log) for your choice of date range. Descriptions entered through the Calendar module for Holidays, Special days and Leave days are included in the Appointments list part of the review. Finished, as well as unfinished, items are included in the To-do list part of the review. You may optionally restrict your review to those entries containing a particular word or phrase ("string" in computer lingo) in the description; such a search is NOT case or position sensitive.

Essentially, this one suboption combines the individual Review suboptions of the Appointments list, To-do list and activity Log modules.

PURGE. Deletes all Appointments and Log entries, as well as any Holiday, Special or Leave designations for any date ON or BEFORE a date of your choice. Also deletes all FINISHED To-do list tasks effective on or before that same date. Files are then reformatted and reindexed - be sure disk space for work files is available at least equal to the size of the largest of the following files: APPT.DAT, TODO.DAT, FLAG.DAT, LOG.DAT.

REINDEX. Reformats the data file (physically removes deleted records) and re-creates the index files. It is highly recommended that this be performed periodically to preserve file integrity, conserve disk space, and to speed up program performance. You MUST perform this option if any items are appearing out of order, or if the program is not acting normally in any way. Be sure disk space for work files is available in the amount equal to the size of the largest of the following files: APPT.DAT, TODO.DAT, FLAG.DAT, LOG.DAT.

Note: If your index files should become so corrupted that you cannot even enter the program to run this suboption, you can delete them (they all have extension .NPX so you would type DEL *.NPX from the DOS prompt) and NowWhat will then automatically re-create them the next time the program is run.

?. The Calendar module has it own help screen, which briefly describes the above suboptions.

QUIT. Returns you to the main command line. To exit the program entirely, execute Quit again from the main command line.

NowWhat Time Management Program Comments 13.

Comments.

Why both a To-do list and an appointment schedule? An appointment is tied to a particular time and date and will only show on the screen when that date is the active date for the program (although the date will show a bullet on the calendar). The to-do list is for projects that are not tied to a particular date or time; the project will continue to show on the program screen from its effective date until it is marked as being finished (or is deleted). The activity Log is for unplanned activities that you nevertheless wish to keep track of, or for time billing purposes.

Some Hints. If you are using one copy of this program to track the appointments and projects of more than one person (e.g. everyone in the department) you may want to precede their project and appointment descriptions with the two letters of their initials. For example, an appointment entered for your boss may be entered as: JR-meeting on reorg. You could then use these initials as a search string in the Review option to list all of his/her appointments or projects. Of course, you can use the same approach with the To-do list and Activity Log.

Backing up your files. You don`t want to lose all those entries you've made, so periodically place a formatted floppy into your disk drive and type (from the DOS prompt):

COPY *.DAT A:

and all of your data will be retrievable in the event your hard disk "crashes". NowWhat will automatically regenerate the index files (*.npx) if they are missing from the current directory, so there is no need to save them.

Corrupted index files. The above paragraph suggests a simple way to cure corrupted index files; if you encounter a problem that may be related to a corrupted index file (such as the dreaded "Disk Read Error" message), simply delete the index files (DEL *.NPX) and re-enter NowWhat. The index files will then be re-created automatically the next time NowWhat is run.

Appendix A - Technical Stuff 14.

NowWhat can run in as little as 256K RAM, so it can run within the DOS Shell of most programs. Also, NowWhat can be run as a Dos application in Windows (use a PIF file to specify 440K for required RAM, 0 for EMS and XMS).

Your config.sys file must contain the following line:

FILES=21

FILES may be set to a higher number, but not less than 19. Also, for optimal performance a BUFFERS=30 line in the config.sys file is recommended (10 if you are using Smartdrv).

The program will automatically adjust for color or monochrome monitor. However, you can force NowWhat to run in Monochrome mode (useful for mono LCD screens that try unsuccessfully to emulate color) by passing the MONO parameter in upper case (e.g. NowWhat MONO).

To run the program, you need only the following files:

NowWhat.exe

NowWhat.hlp (this one is optional - it's the Help file)

The data files (extension .dat) are created by the program if they do not already exist, as are the index files (extension .npx).

Documentation is provided in two forms:

NowWhat.WP5 WordPerfect 5.1

NowWhat.DOC ASCII text

NowWhat.doc is the "print image" file of this documentation. Additional copies may be printed by using the DOS print command as follows: PRINT NowWhat.DOC.

You should create a separate subdirectory, not in the search path, for NowWhat (e.g. c:\NowWhat). The program should be run from a batch file in a subdirectory in the path. For example, you could create a NowWhat.bat file in your Dos directory containing these lines:

C:

CD\NowWhat

NowWhat

CD\

It is also a good idea to include the above lines in your autoexec.bat file, so you'll be sure not to miss any appointments or deadlines!

NowWhat.hlp must be in the same directory as NowWhat.exe in order for the program to find it and provide help screens.

Appendix B - Registration 15.

If you find this program useful, please send your name and address along with $15 in check or money order to:

AlleyCat Development

Attn: NowWhat Registration

P O Box 36

Fall City, WA 98024

The unemployed or those otherwise on limited income may register for $5.

In addition to being placed on our mailing list, you will receive simple instructions on how to suppress the "advertising" display upon program exit.

Please write to AlleyCat Development for network pricing and site licensing.

A special version of NowWhat is also available for the situation where the data files are to be shared on a network. Please write to AlleyCat Development for ordering info.