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
