It's 07:00 in the morning. I got in from work at 23:00 last night and managed around 3 hours sleep before giving in trying to get back to sleep at around 03:30. At least I've managed to catch up on the MVP VB newsgroups for the first time since before xMAS.
Spent a couple of hours catching up entering the latest bug and feature requests for our Raw Materials System at work. I still find I take written notes in meetings, re-write them in a format I can understand, usually in the car on the way into work the following morning, then type them out in word as an email and then enter the bug and feature requests as entries into OnTime, and finally write other tasks into my paper calendar. It all seems rather long winded in this day and age :(
Using OnTime I am happy with. I have found this a massive help in keeping track of software modifications. However it has no facility to handle a more sophisticated requirement of storing meeting notes and a ToDo list. If anyone has any recommendations on how to do this I would be interested in hearing from you :) Of course, I could write thesoftware myself but with my current workload I can't see it getting finished any time soon.
Thinking about it logically I could do with some sort of electronic personal organiser that can handle Word style documents (for meeting notes), allowing a template to be used to enter standard information like meeting location, date/time, attendees, points raised and actons required. I'd want to export this Outlook as an email that could be sent to attendees and people on the action list etc. I could handle entering the software bug/feature requests manually into OnTime and entries into some sort of ToDo list application, preferably that supports exporting time based tasks as Outlook calendar entries. Hmm just typing this out has made me think of actually looking at Outlook and seeing if it has a task list. How embarrassing :-o (See Smilie Code Table for where I figured what an embarrassed smile code was) it has a task list. Well if nothing else writing in my blog has made me think things through logically ;-)
My mobile phone, has a very useful Outlook calendar synchronisation feature so I can upload my Outlook calendar and utilise its reminder facility on my phone. Maybe what I am after is a mobile phone/organiser. I think some investigation is required ...