Chandler is an info manager developed by Mitch Kapor

http://blog.chandlerproject.org/

Mailing list archives

Demo videos

Installing Chandler on Ubuntu

One example of how to use Chandler

Using to plan meetings

> Use case:

> I work at a small 3D animation shop as "Finance and IT analyst".

> What that ends up meaning is I'm in charge of making everything -

> people and systems - work better. That might mean fixing a printer

> that won't print, or designing a backup system, or doing project

> management to make sure we're going to meet our deadlines, or

> analyzing our workflow to find bottlenecks, writing up a proposal

> for a new asset management system, and then rolling it out and

> training our artists to use it, or anything in between - and

> usually I'm trying to do all this at once. The end result is I'm

> constantly juggling hundreds of little tasks and details, and I

> have to work with quite a few artists who are mostly really,

> *really* non-technical. Chandler appears like a godsend, since

> I've mostly been managing everything using a GMail account and just

> using the "star" system to keep a todo list.

>

> However, to really replace GMail, I really need the ability to just

> email an item to one of our artists, have them be able to fire a

> reply back, and have it "just work". As things stand I have to tab

> out of Chandler, go to GMail, find their reply, label it as

> Chandler Mail, tab back into Chandler, hit sync to for it to check

> mail, find their reply again, find the original item, edit them as

> appropriate, and delete the "extra" item.

I see, Brian, is there a way for Chandler Desktop to know that a

message is 'In-Reply-To' a Chandler message?

Would giving the artists you work with a link to the item in the Hub

UI address your problem? Do you think they are likely to respond to

your request by editing the item in a web browser? Sort of like Evite?

> Hm, now that I've written it down, I guess I could skip the label

> step, and just copy and paste from GMail straight into the item in

> Chandler; that would help a little. But it still would be a lot

> easier if I didn't have to tab out ot GMail at all, since one of

> the big advantages to me of Chandler was the goal of being able to

> manage all this information in ONE place, and as it stands I've got

> information in two places, and I'm manually copying and pasting

> between them. Isn't that exactly what Chandler should solve? :-)

Yup, that's the ideal we're working towards. Today, "integration"

with email mostly means being able to ping non-Chandler users with

email sent from Chandler.

>

> Is anyone else in a similar situation? How did you deal with it?

> GMail has some powerful filtering capabilities; it seems like that

> should be one way to solve the issue. Perhaps if I put a special

> token in all my subject lines of anything item I mail from Chandler

> I could make GMail route replies into Chandler Mail automatically.

> Kind of an ugly hack, but it seems like it'd work, mostly. Or am I

> missing something?

Yup you could do that. Set up Chandler IMAP folders in Gmail. "Label"

your Chandler messages when you send them from Chandler. Hopefully,

when the artists you work with reply to your emails, they won't

delete the label. Then create GMail rules to automatically add emails

with Chandler labels to the Chandler IMAP folders.

The replies will show up in the Dashboard and In collections in

Chandler Desktop when you sync your mail. Phew.