Hi everyone,

As development is driven by requests from users, and new versions get planned well ahead, I thought it might be worth starting a new thread for a list of "Killer Features" which would turn a good PIM into a market leading PIM.

I would like to see the following appear in a future version:-

History / Communications - a log of interactions with a contact (visit, appointment, call, letter, email, conference call etc.)
Recurring Tasks
Email Alerts - allow an automated reminder of an event or task to be sent to an email address
More colourful themes - the default one is grey and bland (sorry Chris, but it is. It needs some colour). Colourful 3D icons for the modules, a little colour on the header etc.
A more configurable home page - column selectors, option to select events beyond the next 21 days
A new module to capture Medical information - this would allow you to log any medical info against members of your family (blood pressure, medical procedures, vaccination records, Doctor/Dentist visits etc.)
Integration to Google Mail and Google Calendars

...there may be more

John

Dear John,

I just noticed this post and I thought I would let you know that some of these things already exist.

History & Communications
Visit: I make a visit task before I go & record the agenda first then the minutes in that task and then link it to the related Contact record.
Appointment: Do same as visit. Its great because you can add an alarm and show it in the calendar.
Letter. I type it in the documents and link it to the Contact record
Email: if the email address is in the Contact record, Doogie records them there automatically
Conference call: I don't really do these but if I make a business phone call, I write down the important points either straight into the Contact record or I prefer to make a task and link it to Contact so that I have the date & time associated.

You can also set up a standard report so you can print out a Contact and all the related records for a given period. I have not done this for a Contact but I have done a basic financial report on same lines.

Recurring Tasks
I just right click and copy a task if it happens more than once in a year. Generally I use the calendar for recurring events though. You can set it to every day, month or year and add an alarm if you want to. There is a space to write down what the task is for each event and you can link it to a Contact or Resource.

Resources are good if the central idea is not a person. For a example I have a resource called 'apples'. I am planting an orchard. This allows me to link the cost of apples in the supermarket with choices of apple tree & their costs and eventually amount of apples off each tree each year so that we will eventually know if the trees were worth growing.

Email alerts
Will leave someone else to answer that one. I just use the alerts options in settings & preferences as I have enough emails.

Colours
The colour wheel gives you about 16 million options - not sure there are more colours to get! I had to play about a bit to get the colours I liked and were easy on the eye.

Home page configuration & Medicals
Can't really talk about home page configuration. I just have all my latest emails, financials & tasks on it and thats fine for me. The medical information sounds very specific. I am not the healthiest person and I can tell you what I do. I put blood pressure readings in a spreadsheet which you can find the financial section. I put a vaccination record or doctor's visit in a calendar event and link it to the doctor contact but could have made a resource called vaccinations and linked to that if I had thought of it. I do have a health folder in tasks which has the task to get my eyes tested in it. So everything could have gone in there too. Depends what you find easiest. I do find you need to set up how you are going to use things and stick to it or it gets confusing but that is the same with any filing system.

As I see it, Doogie is for everyone to use how they want in infinite different ways. It would be a pity to make it more specific so it only suits a few.

This is just what I do and my opinion - hope it helps.

Sarah

Thank you Sarah for your comments.

It would be a pity to make it more specific so it only suits a few

This is not my intention at all.
I thought the purpose of a Community Forum was a place to share ideas and to help develop the product.
I always try to keep any suggestions and ideas generic and things which would suit everyone.

Whilst I do not deny these features would benefit me, I also feel sure they would benefit everyone.

John

My reason for posting was to show how you might use what is already there to suit your needs not to stop you from offering suggestions. I'm just a user myself and wanted to be helpful.

Ummm. In private correspondence with the developer I have been requesting that certain features are added which I sense, but cannot prove, would be of general use since my workaday life is unlikely to be much different from others in the same line of work.

What must be kept firmly in mind is that the price of doogie is ridiculously cheap, and it must equate to a tiny fraction of a penny per line of code so we have to be completely realistic about the cost/benefit for the developer to add new code. My preference, since I am more than willing to pay and I think that doogie is priced at a tenth of its value to me, especially in my dream-version, is for there to be various grades of doogie, from a basic entry level for the casual user up to a Pro-Plus version, costing rather more. That is, after all, a very standard business model for software. It's not for me to drive Bitespire's business model, but we consumers have to be fair to the developer. At these prices for these features, he's not likely to appear on the Times Rich List is he.

What might be very useful is the ability to add people resource from the contacts. I am new to Doigie PIM, so, if there is already a thing like that, scratch it out. I myself did not find it.

Thank you very much. i was not aware of that.