SmartDay2 Simple Guide

SmartDay is designed to integrate seamlessly with SmartPad (for iPad) and the SmartDay for iPhone, via mySmartDay.com, our free Cloud hub and web-based organizer.  

What’s New in SmartDay2

Integrated Notes

Click/tap any Task or Event to see it’s attached note(s). Now, everything is just one click away.  Or if  you don’t have an attached note, just start typing or dictating. It’s that easy. Notes can contain check-lists as well. Imbedded. And re-usable. Great for shopping lists, packing lists, or checking off pre-flight instructions for flying your 747.

Integrated Everything: Links

Everything is connected.  Notes are automatically connected to the Task or Event that they are created from. But that’s just the beginning. With simple copy/paste, you can link anything to anything else.  The possibilities are limitless.  Later, one click on any item (task, event, or note) shows a summary of all linked items.  Click again to jump to any linked item.

Organizing Made Smart: Do Today, Next Week or Next Month

SmartDay 1 has a cool feature called “Do Today”.  It’s an easy way to pick any item, far down your list, and “jump” it to the top. Now there are two new quick ways to defer tasks into the future: “Do Next Week” or “Do Next Month”. Choose “Do Next Week” from the drop down menu of any Task  in your list. It’s Start Date will be revised to next Monday, and it’s Deadline will be revised to next Friday. What does this mean? Three things:

• Tasks that start in the future, are hidden from your list. No confusion. No distraction.
• Your deadline will show up in the Focus pane on the date that it is due.
• Any Alerts that you have (say, “two days before due”) will be updated automatically.

Choose “Do Next Month” and your Start will be revised to the 1st of next month, and the Due will be revised to the end of next month. *Note:  Although tasks that “Start” in the future are hidden from your Task list, you can still see them in the Projects view. Just in case you forget what you’ve got going on.

Quick Start? Details?

This guide is divided into two parts: QuickStart, and Details.  Click or scroll to get started.

Quick Start

Quick Start has 5 sections. Feel free to jump around, but we suggest you start from the top.

1. Viewing SmartDay on your Mac
2. Import (and sync) Your Data
3. View Your Day
4. Organize Your Tasks
5. Seek & Create New Events, Tasks and Notes

Viewing Smart Day on your Mac

• Double-click the SmartDay icon in your Applications folder.  You should see the circle-check logo appear in the status bar at the top of your screen.
• To run and view SmartDay automatically every time you start your computer, go to Preferences and select “Start up at Login”.
• The default view of SmartDay is the integrated calendar.  Tap the arrow at the bottom or hit command + L to  add the Lists module to your view.  Read more about Lists below.
• Additionally, you can choose to pin or unpin SmartDay by selecting the little pin at the bottom of the calendar (see above). “Pinned” keeps SmartDay on top of all other applications; “unpinned” allows other active windows to overlap it.

Docking SmartDay

There are three different locations on your screen where you can dock SmartDay: Left side, Right side, and as a drop-down from the SmartDay icon in your status bar. The shortcut keys for docking SmartDay are command-left arrow, command right-arrow, and command-top arrow.

Import (and Sync) your Data

The first step to viewing your dat is to import your data.  SmartDay automatically imports your Events from “Calendar” and your Tasks from the “Reminders” app.  If you have one of our other SmartDay apps (SmartDay for iPHone or SmartPad for iPad), you can connect to your free mySmartDay.com account and import your data right away. We suggest you do a one-way sync the first time. If you have multiple devices, or sync from different accounts, we strongly suggest you read our Sync Guide first and make sure to walk through the Sync Wizard. This will save you a lot of hassle.

View Your Day

The main view has three easy to use components that tell you everything you need to know about your day, at a glance:

• Mini-month calendar  with easy drag/drop organizing and click to navigate
• Focus Pane with your All Day Events and all Due Tasks
• Integrated Day calendar with your Tasks automatically scheduled for you

Organize Your Tasks

In the Task List (Cmd + L to open), you can organize your tasks in many different ways:

• Drag them up and down the list to change priorities
• Apply one of the available Smart filters
• Sort  by “Start” or “Due”

Details

Everything you need to know about SmartDay. Jump to as section, or browse on through.

1. Calendar View
2. Lists View
3. Global Features

Calendar View:  Mini-Month, Focus Pane, Day Calendar

Day Calendar

The Day Calendar is the what sets SmartDay apart from all other organizers and calendars. When viewing the current day (click on “Today”), your tasks are automatically integrated into the free time between appointments.   Here’s how it works:

• Events & Appointments are shown on the left side, next to the time-line
• Tasks from your task list are shown on the right side, in the free space between your Events. They are placed in the same order (and with the same filters) as your Task List (see below).
• If a task is too long to fit into a free space, it will be split to fit.
• Drag Events up or down to change their time.
• Drag Tasks up or down to change their order.
• Drag an Event over to the “Task” side of the calendar to convert it into a Task. This will allow the Smart logic to find a time for you.
• Drag a Task over to the “Event” side of the calendar to convert it into an Event. This will assign it a specific time.
• Drag any Event or Task up into the Mini-month calendar to change the date of an Event or the deadline of a Task.
• Drag the edge of any Event or Task to change its duration.
• Double-click any time in the calendar to create a new Event.
• Smart: Drag the edge of the shaded “working hours” overlay to change your working hours. Note how this automatically adjusts how many tasks are fit into your day.

Mini-month calendar

• Use the mini-month to navigate to different days and months
• Smart: Drag tasks or events into the mini-month to change their dates (events) or deadlines (tasks)
• Smart: Background shading shows at a glance how busy each day is.

Lists View: Tasks, Notes, Projects

Global Features: Search/Create, Show/Hide, Context Tags, Help Guru

Synchronization

– with iCal

SmartDay automatically syncs Events your from your OS X Calendar (formerly called ‘iCal’), and Tasks with the Reminders app. A few things to know about syncing with iCal:

• Existing calendars from iCal will appear in SmartDay’s Projects list in the section “iCal Events.”
• Tasks from the Reminders app will appear in SmartDay’s Projects list in the section “iCal Reminders.”
• Project categories which you create in SmartDay will appear in the SmartDay’s Projects list in the section “SmartDay.”
• SmartDay will not sync with “Descriptions”/”DELEGATES”style iCal calendar because those are read-only.

– with mySmartDay.com

You can synchronize all of your data with our free Cloud hub, mySmartDay.com. This is a great way to keep your information synchronize across SmartDay on all of your Macs in your office, home office, den, living room, wherever. mySmartDay.com even has a full-featured organizer with the same Smart logic and integrated calendars as SmartDay, so you can view it on any PC. Best of all, mySmartDay.com also sync with our flagship iPad organizer, SmartPad – and will soon be connect to SmartDay for iPhone.

Connect: To get connected to mySmartDay.com, just go to Preferences -> Sync, then select mySmartDay to create your free account with mySmartDay.  If you already have an account (which you can create from SmartPad or SmartNotes), then there is no need to create a new one, just enter that account information here.

– with mySmartDay.com if you already have SmartPad:

To avoid duplicated events: If you want to sync SmartDay with mySmartDay which already contains pre-existing data from SmartPad (SmartPad has synced with the iPad Calendar, and Google/iCloud was a calendar setting on both iPad calendar and iCal),

• Disconnect Google/iCloud on your iPad calendar
• In SmartPad, change source sync to Other (Settings -> Synchronization -> Other) and choose “Keep data”
• Sync SmartPad with iCal
• Change source sync to mySmartDay and choose “Keep data”
• Sync SmartPad with mySmartDay
• Setup mySmartDay account in SmartDay and sync

Before you Sync: Best Practices

If you have SmartPad and are connecting it to your iPad Calendar, then syncing SmartDay with iCal may create duplicated calendars.  In this case, we suggest you disable SmartPad from syncing with your iPad Calendar.

One-Way Sync

This is a handy way to “move” data to and from mySmartDay, and is helpful for data recovery if you have an issue with one of your apps (SmartPad, SmartDay, or mySmartDay.com).  To replace your data on any device, just choose one-way sync from the Sync menu. Once you have done this, we recommend using normal background sync.

Known Sync Bugs

When “Auto Sync” is set to ‘On’ on SmartDay, some data cannot be updated after syncing to Calendar on your Mac. Here are the steps for this issue:

• Set Auto Sync to ‘On’
• Create an Event on your Mac’s Calendar (iCal) called ‘Test’
• This will sync automatically to SmartDay for Mac and then, automatically, to mySmartDay.com
• Now, in your Mac’s Calendar, change the name to ‘Test-Edit’.
• After automatic syncing, the name will revert to ‘Test’.

Protect your data

We suggest that you frequently backup your data from each of your devices, individually.  SmartPad, SmartDay, and mySmartDay.com all offer this capability. From SmartDay, just choose “Backup” from the action menu or use the keyboard shortcut command + B.

Questions? At your service!

We have a free live chat service on our web site. Just go to http://www.leftcoastlogic.com and look for the “Chat Now” button at the bottom of any page. If we are not around, you can leave a message and this will go directly to our Help Desk.  Normally we will respond to you within 24 hours e except for holidays and weekends. Usually we will respond much faster, because we have agents in multiple time zones.