As the Windows Mobile platform continues to develop, it has become increasingly clear that the Mobile Outlook and calendaring portions of the operating system are among its weakest features (behind Mobile Word and File Explorer). This is unfortunate, because Mobile Outlook has the potential to become an incredibly powerful addition to the Windows Mobile Operating System. One need look no further than its desktop counterpart, Outlook 2007, to see how far Microsoft has come in this area. Yet many of these features have been largely ignored by Microsoft when it comes to the Mobile Platform. Thus, Microsoft has created a considerable opportunity for third party developers, such as WebIS, to create replacements for Mobile Outlook, and attempt to offer their own interpretation of how the desktop Outlook functions should be implemented in the mobile arena. Last summer, Judie brought you a review of WebIS’ flagship program, Pocket Informant 2007. At that time, she found the features and customization options to be unwieldy. Earlier this month, WebIS announced the release of Pocket Informant 8, which promises to be more streamlined, more powerful, and all around easier to use than its predecessors. Let’s take a closer look at all of the features offered by Pocket Informant 8, as well as whether the new release answered all of Judie’s concerns.

OVERVIEW

Installation and Registration: To install Pocket Informant on your device, simply download the desktop installation package and load it onto your device via ActiveSync/Windows Mobile Device Center. Advanced users may also download the cab file directly to their devices. Regardless of whether you load Pocket Informant via the desktop launcher or cab file, during the installation process, you will be given the option of installing the program in the main memory on your device or a storage card. Pocket Informant is not supported on a storage card, so you will only want to install it in main memory on your device. Installing it on a storage card, as Judie found when she reviewed the previous version, can result in significant lags when loading the program. In the comments to her review, Judie stated:

I always load programs above an arbitrary size (>150KB) to a memory card. PI7 was no exception, and I suspect that this is the root cause of why my times were slower. While it’s true that many of the newer devices have adequate program storage to put it in main memory, old habits die hard – I will always load a program onto the card (or in the case of the Advantage, on it’s internal 8GB hard drive) to conserve space.

I suspect that most Pocket PC users have been conditioned to do the same, which means that it is very important for larger programs to either be optimized to run directly from a card, or it needs to be said up front that the program should run from main memory – perhaps by having the installer warn that if users put the program on a memory card, then it will take a performance hit.

Through our conversations with WebIS, we did, in fact, confirm that Judie’s problem was related to loading the program on a storage card, and suggested that a warning be added to the installation process. As a result, when you install Pocket Informant 8 on a Pocket PC (Smartphones will not have this issue), a warning will now appear on your device before you are asked where to install the program. I am pleased to see that WebIS took our conversation regarding this issue so seriously, and implemented this minor, but necessary change.

Once installed (into main memory), you will have 15 days to test out all of the features Pocket Informant offers. This was the perfect length for a trial. It allows you to really give the program a thorough test drive, kick the tires, and figure out how it will integrate into your usage patterns, without overstaying its welcome on your device.

Memory: Before I begin my overview of the program, I wanted to make a note about program memory. Pocket Informant is a huge program, which handles dozens of tasks. It has the potential to gobble up program memory like Pac-Man chasing down ghosts (darn that Clyde). I was pleasantly surprised, therefore, when I tested the memory footprint of Pocket Informant 8. When Judie reviewed Pocket Informant 2007, she complained that it required a whopping 3.145 MB of program memory. Pocket Informant 8, without sacrificing usability or features, has been trimmed down to a remarkable 2.27 MB. This is a reduction of nearly 30%, and a welcome boost for many memory hungry devices.

User Interface: In the beginning (well, maybe not the absolute beginning, but previously) users could access a menubar at the bottom of the screen to switch between views and access their calendars, tasks, contacts, and other features of Pocket Informant. This worked great in the stylus-centric world of Windows Mobile 2003SE and earlier. With Windows Mobile 5, and even more so, Windows Mobile 6, however, users are expecting to doff the stylus and access their devices in a more "finger friendly" manner. The menubar at the bottom of the screen was anything but finger friendly, and so Pocket Informant 8 would require a significant overhaul of the primary user interface. The result of this overhaul was eleven views (five relating to the calendar and six relating to other features of the program), which each operate separately, but integrate together with similar interfaces. These views are:

• Events View
• Agenda View (Calendar)
• Single Day View (Calendar)
• Seven Day (Week) View (Calendar
• Month View (Calendar)
• Timeline View (Calendar)
• Journal View
• Notes View
• Tasks View
• Contacts View
• Search View

To switch between views just tap the "Views " soft button from any screen. This will take you back to the "View Picker" where you can select where to go next. The View Picker is also fully customizable from the Roles and Features Menu (under "My Informant"), meaning that you can choose which buttons will appear here and get rid of the ones you don’t need. Of course, this View Picker has not been without its fair share of controversy. There are many "traditionalists" who wish WebIS would just leave well enough alone. For them, Pocket Informant can also be setup to use the classic menubars. One final note of interest here, for the first time, WebIS has introduced "Smartphone parity" with Pocket Informant 8. This means that users of a touch screen device, and users of a non touch screen device will have access to virtually the same features, and the screen will look and behave almost identically on both devices.

THE VIEWS

Calendar: For many of you, the Calendar View is going to be your primary interaction with Pocket Informant. There are five distinct views associated with the calendar.

You can view a single day, broken down into half hour increments.

You can view one week at a time. Here, the current day will reside on top and use the full width of the screen. The next six days will reside below it, in two columns of three days each.

The full month view will show the current month, with the present day highlighted in yellow. Tap any date on the calendar to see a preview of the events for that day,

Regardless of which view you use, each day is assigned a timeline which graphically shows how your time has been allocated. Blue means busy, green is a holiday, red is a conflict, and so on. In the single day view, this timeline will also have a light green line which moves as you scroll through the day. This line indicates which portion of the day is currently being displayed.

Additionally, you can use the menu options to select what information is displayed in each calendar view. You can choose whether to limit the display onto to certain categories, display tasks as well as appointments, and even whether to use additional toolbars for navigation.

Timeline View is, perhaps, my favorite method for planning my schedule. Here, you can select as many categories as you want to display on the calendar. Each will then be displayed on a separate line, stretching across the screen (five categories can fit on the screen in portrait mode). In this mode, the calendar is laid out horizontally with each box representing one day. If the category in question has an appointment then it will be displayed in the appropriate box. This is a fantastic way to track the interactions of appointments, for project management, particularly if you have multiple projects ongoing at the same time; or various stages of a project which rely on one another to be completed. Additionally, it can also be useful for tracking billable hours associated with a variety of clients. At a glance, you can determine which clients require the most time and attention.

In Agenda Mode, all of your appointments (and tasks if you so choose) will be laid out before you in a list, sorted by date. This allows you to quickly and easily plan your days by telling you, at a glance, how your schedule looks on each day. Up to two weeks will be displayed at a time.

Contacts: You have friends. lots of ‘em. You have business associates. Even more of those. Heck, you even have those random people who call you once and then you never hear from again. Where do you store all of this information? In Pocket Informant, you will want to go straight to the Contacts View.

The main screen of the Contacts View consists of an alphabetical list of your contacts. You can sort the list by almost any criteria, including:

• first name/last name
• last name/first name
• picture view (shown above)
• Company
• Department
• City
• State
• Country
• Category

You can even display your most recently accessed contacts or a call log.

Along the right hand side is a ribbon containing the alphabet, which should be familiar to most users of Fun Contacts, and any of the other "new generation" of finger friendly contacts programs. Just slide your finger along the ribbon to scroll through the alphabet. Unfortunately, although the ribbon expands slightly when you access it, I found that it was still too skinny to access easily without the stylus. Additionally, I found considerable lag between the highlighted letter and the one I was pointing to. Nonetheless, I thought this ribbon was a fantastic idea, and really helps Pocket Informant stay close to the cutting edge with its Contacts View. I do hope, however, that they continue to improve it and make it even more accessible in future versions.

To view a contact’s full details, simply tap the contact in the list (I am using my good friend Judie, whom many of you should recognize as an example). This will bring up a full screen contact card, displaying all of their information. From here, you can begin a phone call, send a text message, even send a fax (which I found a bit odd), by simply tapping the appropriate phone number. Strangely enough, however, I as not able to send an email by simply tapping the email address. Most other contacts programs which I have used, including Inesoft Address Book, which I reviewed several weeks ago, do allow you to access email from here. As such, I expected to be able to do so with Pocket Informant, particularly since WebIs’ second largest program (behind Pocket Informant) is FlexMail. I really cannot understand why Pocket Informant allowed you to send a text message but not an email. Equally bizarre was the fact that when I selected text message, Pocket Informant defaulted to sending a message via Pocket Outlook, rather than FlexMail. I truly expected better integration from two programs by the same developer.

Events: One of the new views created for Pocket Informant 8 is the Events View. The first time I saw it, I had no clue what it was or how to use it, and to be honest, I still don’t really understand whether this view serves any practical purpose. According to the whopping 80 page manual, the purpose of this view is to track appointments and tasks as they come forward, telling you how many days remain until the event occurs. To enter an appointment or task into this view, simply change the "tracked" option in the particular appointment or task to "Yes". This will automatically track it in the Events View.

Although the Events tab offers a quick and easy way to countdown to your wife’s birthday (not that you would ever forget such a thing), I found this view to be mostly extraneous. Even after testing it extensively, it really offered little actual value for me,and I found most of the information it presented was readily available in the other views as well.

Journal: The Journal View is another view which I did not expect to use much when I started testing Pocket Informant 8. Unlike the Events, however, I quickly learned that this view has secret powers. Let’s start with a basic overview, and then we can talk about the secret powers it offers.

The journal feature allows you to view your entire personal information database: appointments, contacts, tasks and notes in a single screen. You can organize the journal by date, which will closely resemble the Calendar Agenda View, or by parent (shown above), which will group connected items together. When I tested Pocket Informant, I had a strange bug which caused birthdays to mysteriously appear on every day in the journal view. WebIS is aware of this bug and it should be fixed in the next release.

Now for the secret power. For months, I have been hounding WebIS, and any other PIM developer who would listen for one feature. Namely, I have been seeking the ability to add events or reminders on my calendar. These are things which are not special events like holidays or birthdays, they are not tasks or appointments, they are just things I need to remember at a particular time. For example, I might need to remember that an associate was going to be out of the office tomorrow, or that someone was preparing a document for my by next Thursday. These are obviously not appointments that I need to set aside on my calendar. They are not tasks, which are thing I must accomplish. They are a whole separate category of events. And that is where the journal provides an invaluable tool. With the journal, you can create an item which is not associated with any appointment or task, and then display it on the calendar. Above, you can see my seven day calendar view, which has a journal entry displayed and highlighted in gray (in this case, a document which was being prepared by another individual). This is exactly the feature I have been requesting.

Notes: The Notes View is another feature offered by Pocket Informant which left me scratching my head. Yes, it will display al of your Outlook Notes, and will even integrate with PhatNotes and PhatPad (the notes editor is actually a scaled down version of PhatNotes), but I really did not see the point of doing so. Frankly, I have absolutely no idea why this feature is here. It has been included in Pocket Informant for as long as I can remember (and I started using it with Pocket Informant 2005). If I was using PhatNotes to create notes, however, then I really cannot think of any reason I would need to access them from Pocket Informant rather than simply using the same program I used to create them. Likewise, if I had another notes program on my device, I cannot really see using Pocket Informant to create notes. While I can understand displaying notes in one of the other views, such as the journal view, or linking notes to other items, such as tasks and appointments; I simply do not see any advantage to having an independent view solely for your notes.

Search: I was extremely impressed by Pocket Informant’s search module, which allows you to search all of your PIM data from one convenient location. Searching is extremely easy to do. Simply type your search word (use an asterisk for wildcards) into the space and then tap the green search button. Bam…before you know it, entries are appearing before your eyes.

Beneath the search window there are five icons, representing each of the other views: calendar, tasks, contacts, notes, and journal. Simply tap any combination of these to search those databases. Activate them all and you will search all of the PIM data on your device. In the example above, you can see that I activated all five databases and typed the search word, "Sarah". This resulted in several contacts, appointments, and even a birthday (here, you can also see the birthday bug which I mentioned in Journal View above).

Tasks: For me, the Task View is the most important part of Pocket Informant. To be honest, if I have to, I can jot down appointments anywhere. Contacts, really, there are only a few I need to have with me at all times, and they are all stored in my Plaxo account online, anyway. But tasks. Tasks are essential to me. If I do not have an organized manner of maintaining my task list, I will certainly lose track of all of the things I need to do and when I need to do them. So, I end up spending more time in the tasks list than just about any other part of the program (though I have to admit the Timeline View is coming in at a close second.)

The basic task view shows a list of tasks (in the screenshot above, you can see a snapshot of some coming attractions for the next month or so). On the left hand side is a check box. Just tap the box to mark a task as completed. I did find these small spaces and checkboxes to be a bit skinny for my fat fingers, and found myself constantly reaching for the stylus. It would be nice if WebIS would make this a more finger friendly display, like they did with the Contacts View.

One of the new features, which I really appreciated was the ability to easily group, filter, and even sort this list.

Simply tap any task to bring up the full detailed view. From here you can also edit the task, add notes, and take numerous other actions.

There are three types of task lists: Daily tasks, Master Tasks, and Project Tasks. To be honest, I thought this was a bit much…but that may be because I mostly stuck to Daily Tasks and did not venture into the other areas much.

• Daily Tasks are tasks with a firm deadline. These will be tasks like, "Finish Pocket Informant 8 Review".
• Master Tasks are items which you would like to accomplish, but have no set date in mind. These are more like life goals than tasks. They may include tasks like, "Fly around the world in a balloon"
• Projects are groups of related tasks which are all geared toward a common goal. Typically, the parent task will be more akin to a Master Task while the child tasks will look more like Daily Tasks. For example, a project night be to backpack through Europe. Your child tasks could include: buy a backpack, get a job to earn airfare, learn French, and so on.

One of the more advanced features of Pocket Informant is the ability to create regenerating tasks. These are tasks which occur on a recurring basis, typically weekly or monthly. To do this, all you have to do is enter a tie period under the regeneration option. Now, each time you complete the task, it will be automatically regenerated in the next time frame. This has ben perfect for me to remember to write The Arcade each month. No need to add it to my schedule month after month, as soon as I finish one edition, it is already there waiting for me on the next month.

This brings us to another feature which I have never understood, the task priority management. This allows you to assign any letter and/or any number (1-99) to your tasks in order to provide additional annotations. You can use this to create informal subcategories, such as using the first letter of your client’s names to identify which work projects they are, without cluttering up all of your categories. You can also use them to create a hierarchical structure within your tasks. Obviously, the lower the number or letter, the more important the task.

CREATING ENTRIES

Creating an entry in Pocket Informant is extremely simple. From just about any screen, tap "New" from the main menu. This will bring up the Create New screen, from which you can select Appointments, Tasks, or Journal. To create a new Contact, you will have to tap New from the Contacts View.

Once you have made your selection (I chose Appointment), you will be taken to the blank form for that function. All you have to do is fill in the fields. If you have tracking turned on, then you can select track from here and your entry will be tracked on the Entries View. The icons on the bottom will switch between pages for the entry. These buttons are a carryover from previous editions of Pocket Informant and are very difficult to access without a stylus.

One thing that has been significantly changed is entering the time of the appointment. To begin, you will see a panel with large buttons numbered one through twelve. This is the hour view. Select the time and you will be switched to the minute view where you can similarly set each digit and then select am or pm. I never really had a problem entering the time in Pocket Informant 2007, however, I was still extremely happy with this change. I am sure it will generate controversy, as any radical change in a popular program does. However, I found it was quick and easy to set the time for my appointments and, in the end, that is all I really need.

Once you have entered all of the necessary data, you can jot down any additional notes, connect the entry to contacts or categories, and even link it to another appointment or task. Linking is one of the more interesting features of Pocket Informant. It is based on the idea that most tasks and appointments do not just occur in a vacuum, but might have follow-up or additional matters associated with them. You can link almost anything: contacts, appointments, tasks, even documents, together in order to keep track of things. For example, if you have to prepare a presentation for a meeting, you could link multiple task and the appointment together. As you complete each task, you can even link the finished documents to the appointment, so that when you arrive for the meeting, everything will be in one place.

CUSTOMIZATION

Settings: One of the great features of Pocket Informant, but also the most formidable, is the level of customization available. Using the Settings Menu, you can completely control the look and feel of Pocket Informant, including the information which is displayed, how it is displayed, and even the color scheme.

While this kind of control may be helpful, Judie correctly noted in her review that even the most proficient power user can get lost within the myriad of menus, options, and tweaks available. With Pocket Informant 8, WebIS has significantly rebuilt these menus. It is still a bit overwhelming to look at all of the customization options available, however, the options are now much better organized and presented. Specifically, I really liked the new format of the main settings menu, which is just plain easier to look at and use than the previous tabbed iteration.

Of course,. if this level of customization overwhelms you too much, just head over to the Roles, Views, and Features. This new option will automatically take over some of the customization options for you. Just tell it what level of control you want. A power user will have every option available, while Pocket Outlook with benefits will hide most of the advanced functions, leaving you with only the basic foundations of the program, built into a much simpler interface. In between these two, there are three additional levels: appointment focused (turns on only the advanced functions for the calendar views), task focused (turns on only the advanced functions for the calendar and tasks views), and standard user (activates the most common features). From this screen, you can also enable or disable various advanced features and views.

Once you have everything set up the way you like it, just save it under My Views. That way, no matter what changes (or mistakes) you might make, you can always return to your preferred setup with the touch of just one button. Judie found this to be a bit too organized when it was called Custom Views in Pocket Informant 2007. After testing it for a few days, however, I must admit that I liked it. With dozens of customization options, nothing is worse than finding your perfect settings and then tweaking something and messing the whole thing up. My Views allows Pocket Informant to remember exactly the way you like this. It is the memory seat controls in your car. Your wife drives the car, she messes up the mirrors, moves the seat, and turns off the heated seats. Rather than tinkering with everything until you figure out what she changed, you just push one button and everything reverts back to the way you like it.

Categories and Filters: Once you start loading all of your data, contacts,events, appointments, tasks, and other information you will find that it can become pretty daunting to try to scroll or search through it all. For this reason, Pocket Informant includes categories, which have become a fairly standard feature on every PIM. You can create as many categories as you require, and even assign each a color and an icon to make it easier to tell which categories will be occupying your time today. In fact, Pocket Informant offers two color options. You can color the text or highlight the background under the text. One disappointment here, however, was that I spent a lot of time customizing categories and colors on the desktop version of Outlook. Although my categories transferred to my device, none of the formatting came with it. As such, I would have to recustomize the categories look and feel. Nonetheless, I believe this issue was more than likely related to Outlook, not Pocket Informant.

Additionally, Pocket Informant includes an excellent filter, which allows you to view only the filtered categories. This is helpful when you need to track a specific project or assignment without all of the clutter of personal events or tasks. These options make it easy to quickly locate and identify any information you might need from Pocket Informant 8, in a matter of seconds.

THE BEST OF THE REST

Today Screen Plug-In: Today Screen Plug-Ins are always a tricky topic for me. Real estate on the Today Screen is a valuable commodity, and it seems as though everyone wants a piece of it. In order for me to consider using any Today Screen Plug-In, it has to look good on my screen, and convey useful information. While the Today Screen Plug-In obviously conveys critical information, I felt as though WebIS put it in there just to appease its critics. It is essentially the same single-list Today Screen which Judie criticized previously. The only significant difference in Pocket Informant 8 is that the tasks are no longer indented, so they will not run off the right edge of the screen. Instead, your appointments and lists form one long list which you must use the scroll bar to access. I felt the default appointments and tasks plug-ins looked better and were more functional than the Pocket Informant Today Screen Plug-In. I suggest you forego the plug-in, and take the advice which WebIS provides in the Pocket Informant 8 User Manual, and install a more robust program, like Spb Diary or SBSH Pocket Breeze. In fact, I would prefer WebIs drop the Today Screen Plug-In from Pocket Informant 8, and instead bundle this program with Spb Diary or SBSH Pocket Breeze for a discount.

Touch Mode: This may be my favorite new feature in Pocket Informant 8. I think we are all familiar with Touch Mode and things like "Smart Scrolling" and "Finger Friendly" by now. Essentially, when Touch Mode is activated, Pocket Informant will respond to swipes and drags of your finger across the screen. If there is a scrollable list (such as your contacts), just swipe your finger to send the list spinning up or down. In calendar mode, Touch Mode will help scroll from one screen to the next. I found that Touch Mode worked much better when scrolling through lists, such as contacts, than navigating through the calendars. That being said, WebIS freely admits that Touch Mode is still not fully developed, and will be much better implemented in future releases. I will certainly be looking forward to that.

Weekly Planning: Weekly Planning is part of the integration between Pocket Informant and the Franklin Covey system. It allows you to access your daily notes, missions, compass/roles, and goals. All of these will integrate directly into your Franklin Covey planning system. Of course, if you do not use the Franklin Covey system, then this feature can easily be disabled in the settings.

CONCLUSION

When Judie reviewed Pocket Informant 2007, she alluded to the fact that this program may have grown too big for itself. In other words, it was filled with features that did not serve its main purpose, and many users did not use and could not find. This is a common trap into which many developers can easily fall, particularly with an older, and more popular program. The urge is to keep piling on newer and better features, however, the older and less necessary features are not removed, leading to a bloated program. Just as Pocket Informant was starting to get ensnared in this trap, however, WebIS took a step away from the brink by giving the program a top to bottom overhaul for Pocket Informant 8. The result is a much better organized program, with a considerably smaller memory footprint. While some of the views and features still felt extraneous and unnecessary to me, the overall package is much easier to setup, navigate, and use, than any previous iteration of Pocket Informant. And they did it all with a 30% smaller memory footprint!

Vital Stats:

Name: Pocket Informant 8.1

Developer: WebIS

Version: 8.0

Available From: WebIS

JAMM Store

Price: $29.95

Note: The download links in this review lead to version 8.0. Version 8.01, which is a free upgrade, is available in the WebIS forums.

Pocket Informant is a 2008 JAMM Essential Application.

Be Sociable, Share!

•