MyLifeOrganized v4.1 - Tab Icons and More

Recently we published a new update for MyLifeOrganized Windows. More than 120 small and big "internal" changes have been added to MLO v.4.1 to improve the stability and user experience. And as always the beta team has done an excellent job proposing and testing the new features and fixes. I really like our beta team!! :)  Thank you!

What was added to this new release: icons in tabs, hotkeys for tabs, delayed dependency ("show task in 3 days after other tasks completed"), lock tabs and more. The full change log can be found here:
http://mylifeorganized.net/products/my-life-organized/change-log.htm

Below I will describe the main changes in this new update.

1. Icons for tabs

 This was one of the most asked feature. With the icons on the tabs MLO looks even better now:

The icons for tabs are most useful when used on pinned tabs.

To assign an icon for the tab:
1. Right click on a Workspace tab
2. From the menu select "Assign icon":
  Current view icon - the tab icon will be always the same as the icon of the selected view
  Custom icon - the selected custom icon will be always visible
  No icon - there will be no icon for this tab

 

 2. Assign tab hotkey and hotkeys conflict detection

Assign hotkeys to quickly select the tab.

To select a hotkey for the tab

1. Right click on a Workspace tab
2. Select "Assign hotkey" from the menu
3. Press a hotkey for this tab and click "Assign hotkey"

If this hotkey is already assigned to other operation you will see a warning.

3. Hints for pinned tabs and tabs with long titles

If a tab is pinned or its title is too long, you will see a hint with the full title when the mouse hovers over it.

4. Delayed dependency

As you already know you can set dependencies for the tasks in MLO. There can be tasks in the outline which cannot be started until some tasks from other branches are completed. To prevent a task from being shown in the To-Do list in the Active Actions view until other tasks are completed, you can add these tasks to the Dependencies section for the task you want to block.

In MLO v4.1 we have added delayed dependency to this feature. If delay is set together with dependency then after the dependency tasks are completed, the task will continue to be inactive for the delay period you have specified. After the delay is over, the task will be shown in the To-Do list. For example, you can see the task "Hang wallpaper" activated in 1 day after you completed the dependency task "Paint the door" to have time for the paint to dry before you start hanging the wallpaper.


To set Delayed Dependency
1. Set dependency for a task
2. In the field Delay set the time to delay the activation of the task after the dependency tasks are completed

Note: if all tasks need to be completed to open the dependency (option ALL set) then the delay will count from the time of the last task completed. If ANY option is set for the dependency then the delay will count from the time of the first task completed in the dependency list.

5. Action status in inspector to explain why task is inactive

Android users already know this feature in our MLO-Android app and many people asked us to add this feature to the Windows client also. Now it is easy to know why a task is inactive (not visible in the Active Actions view) - just look at its action status in Task Statistics section.

 6. New sync configuration dialog

I like this new dialog to connect to the MLO Cloud :)

 

7. Lock default settings for tab

With the tab command "Lock default in this tab" you can lock the default settings so they cannot be changed for the tab. A new tab is created if you try to change the settings of the locked tab (view, zoom etc).
 
There was a long discussion on the beta forum on whether we need this feature in MLO. I personally was not sure, since we already had the "Restore default" command for the tab. But the beta team provided very good arguments to include this feature in MLO and it has been eventually added to MLO v4.1

Here is the post from Dwight with explanations why we need it:
http://mlo.uservoice.com/forums/9235-general/suggestions/3678179-lock-a-tabbed-workspace-to-a-specific-view

This is one of the examples when MLO Beta team really influences the development of MyLifeOrganized.

 

8. Changes in auto-archiving

Starting from MLO v.4.1 auto-archiving old completed tasks will not archive the subtasks from open Projects and open Recurrence tasks anymore. You need to complete a project or recurrent task before archiving their subtasks.
Below are the reasons which Dwight summarized in his post on the beta forum after Dmitry raised this problem one more time on the beta forum.
 

The answer is to enable the user to prevent the archiving of tasks that are in a hierarchy below an incomplete project or a repeating task. We have discussed this several times before, and you can now add Dmitry to the list of people who are troubled by this.
...To recap, the problems users encounter when they don’t get this right are:

1.       Misleading project status as noted by Dmitry

2.       Lost subtasks of repeating tasks if they were completed early in the cycle and were archived before the cycle completed
3.       New project made by cloning a successful in-flight project is missing the tasks that were already archived
4.       Lost opportunity for continuous improvement by analyzing project delays or to learning better estimating by comparing estimated to actual task completions

Dwight

For now we decided to make it a default behavior.  We may want to make it a separate archiving option if we receive complaints from our users.

This is another example of a great job by the beta team to advertise a new feature to the developers.

Thanks!

Andrey Tkachuk
MyLifeOrganized