SmartDay for Mac OS X – Quick Guide
See the forest and the trees – SmartDay organizes your day for you, while helping you to plan far into the future. Stay connected to SmartDay on all your devices via SmartDay Online (free). Use this Quick Start guide to get going. Then discover the many features on your own – or continue to view our “Things you can do with SmartDay” guide for helpful tips.
Get Connected. Which applies to you?
SmartDay for iPad is my first SmartDay app. All you need to do is set up your free SmartDay Online account. You can then start to create tasks, events, and notes on either SmartDay for iPad, or on SmartDay Online, and synchronize between them with one click.Just go to Settings -> Synchronization, Select “Enable”, then create an account with SmartDay Online by signing up here. (You can also go to http://mySmartDay.com on you computer’s browser, to sign up for an account).You can import your iPad’s Calendars and your tasks from Toodledo by selecting “Others”.
Or…
I already have a SmartDay Online account, or I already have SmartDay for iPhone or for Mac. Great! All you need to do is sign in to your account, and you’re good to go.
Room with a View(s)
Explore the many different views of SmartDay. To get started, click on the icon in your Applications folder. SmartDay drops down from the Menu Bar on the top of your computer. Here are some quick shortcuts for different views.
⌘ + ◀︎ Dock to the left side
⌘ + ► Dock to the right side
⌘ + ▲ Dock below the ‘SmartDay’ icon
⌘ + L Show the “Lists” module (Tasks, Notes, Projects)
⌘ + . Show/Hide the Mini calendar
⌘ + D View the ‘Day’ calendar
⌘ + W View the ‘Week’ calendar
⌘ + M View the ‘Month’ calendar
Use the ‘Guru’ as your Quick Reference Guide
Tap on the “light bulb” icon when you mouse over any of the modules. You’ll see a handy pop-up reference.
Synchronize with SmartDay Online
Once you have set up and verified your SDOL account, there are a number of easy ways to sync.
Manual Sync: just pull down the lists module to refresh. Or select “Sync” from the main menu.
Auto Sync: in Settings -> Synchronization, chose “Sync when open SmartDay” then “Auto Push Update”. This will automatically push any changes that you make up to SmartDay Online.Tip: Remember to perform a manual two-way sync before closing SmartDay.
Search & Create, All In One
Global Seek or Create – It’s easy to create new tasks, events, or notes on the fly. SmartDay automatically searches as you type in your subject, so you can see what items already exist with the same name. After you type the title, you can select what type of item you would like it to be.
Quick Add Multiple Tasks
You can also quickly add multiple tasks (or events or notes) in quick stream of consciousness. When you quick add a task, you can easily create a deadline which will generate a handy reminder for you. If you select “Do Today” (see video below), the task(s) will automatically appear at the top of the task list and will automatically be scheduled into the first available time in your calendar.
Organize your Tasks, Brilliantly
The Task List contains all of tasks from all of your projects. The color of each task is based on the Project color. You can organize your tasks in many ways by applying one of the Smart filters. You can also “jump” a task to the top of the list, and you can perform group actions by first selecting more than one task.
☞ Tip: Notice how the tasks are segmented by day. This shows you which tasks can fit into which days, based upon the free time that you have in each day and on the working hours that you assign to each day.
☞ Tip: In the video, notice what happens in the Day Calendar when you apply different filters in the Task list. That’s the magic of SmartDay.
Easily Add New Calendar Events
Just drag anywhere on the timeline – in the Day or Week calendars.
Do Amazing Things with your Calendar
Events appear on the left side next to the timeline. Tasks appear on the right side, in the exact same order that they appear in the Task list. In the focus pane, you can see All Day Events and also tasks that are due. You can also see All Day events in the Mini Month calendar. The background shading indicates busy days.
Here are some of the basic functions you can perform in Calendar module.
✔ Navigate to any day by selecting a date from the Mini Month.
✔ To save space, collapse it to a Week calendar.
✔ Tap-drag to create a new Event, directly in the calendar.
✔ Drag a Task from the right side, to the time line to ‘Anchor’ it to a specific time (notice how this removes it from the Task list).
✔ Drag the Shade to allow more or less working hours. Notice how tasks automatically flow in, from the Task list.
Connect and Create with Notes and Check-Lists
Like Tasks and Events, all Notes are associated with a Project. Notes can also be associated with any Task or Event, and with any date. This flexible ‘linking’ turn your Notes into an incredibly efficient tool.
✔ Create a new Note directly from the Notes module. You can also create a Note directly from inside a Task or Event, automatically establishing a link between the two. When you do this, the attached Note is visible both inside the original Task or Event, and inside the Notes module.
✔ Link a note to to any other item by clicking on the “Assets” section in side the Notes detail.
✔ View any attached note (or other asset) simply by clicking on the hyperlink in the Task.
Crown of Creation: Convert Notes into Tasks
Notes are good when you are thinking about an idea. Then, when it’s ready to ‘do’, you can convert it into a Task – together with the attached note!
Plan Long Term with Planner Pro
Use the shortcut keys ⌘ + W to view the ‘Week’ calendar, or ⌘ + M to view the ‘Month’ calendar. Or just click the icons at the top of the planner.
Here, you can organize long term using drag and drop actions. The next video illustrates some of the actions, including:
✔ Drag any Task (or Note) from the lists module into the Calendar to create deadlines for Tasks or to associate Notes with specific days.
✔ Drag any Task directly onto the Timeline to Anchor it to that time.
✔ Mark a Task as “done” and it appears in the calendar, on the day that you completed it. Now you will always have a record of what you did, when!
✎ Note: The Timeline does not show tasks that are automatically scheduled for you. It only shows Events, and Anchored Tasks. You can view automatically scheduled tasks in the Day Calendar (portrait view only).
✎ Note: Planner Pro shows up to 4 small ‘mini month’ planner calendars as well, depending upon the size of your monitor. The shading indicates busy days. You can also drag tasks and notes into the ‘mini month’ planners.
Month Planner
You can also drag tasks and notes into the Month Planner to create deadlines (tasks) and associate dates (notes). If you just with to view the calendar without the Lists module, simply select ⌘ + L.
Need Help?
We’ve created a little app called “SmartDay Helper” that can help you fix some issues, or at least help us to help you. Just download the app, unzip it, and drop it into your Applications folder. You may need to adjust your security & privacy settings to allow the app to be used. Just go to settings -> Security & Privacy and click the “Anywhere” button shown below. You can always uncheck that button later.
Before you use SmartDay Helper, please contact our Help Desk.
With SmartDay Helper, you can
- Force-Quit SmartDay if it gets ‘stuck’
- Clean your database. This completely removes the database from your Mac and is handy in case your database becomes corrupted for any reason (such as, data imported from other sources).
- Send a crash report to our technical team. You’ll want to use this immediately after a crash.
- Contact our HelpDesk with an issue.
We hope you won’t have to use SmartDay Helper but, if you do, here it is!