Case Management

Importing with Daylite-Part One

July 5, 2008 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

A quick recap of where we are.

Some months ago, I settled on Daylite as the practice management program we’d use once we switched to Macs. While it lacked a number of features right out of the box that I needed, Marketcircle (MC) is really working hard to provide the performance and features a widely divergent group of users have asked for, including us lawyers. Happily, I discovered that it was possible to emulate some key parts of Timematters (TM), my current practice manager, by using HUD widgets. I modified two widgets–the brainchildren of Andy Warwick–to display custom form information (emulating TM’s powerview feature) and show a running list of notes (emulating another part of the TM powerview). I tweaked the Opportunities record in order to manage certain kinds of documents like medical records requests and discovery. I discovered how to emulate the TM messenger (a way of sending intraoffice messages with docs attached between staff) using the Daylite Note record based on Ben Stevens’s use of the Task record. Encouraged by these early “successes,” I turned my attention to the built-in editor (BIE) and learned that you can do a lot with the BIE.

I was preparing to do a screencast on merging with the BIE, but the press of work put all my Mac fun on the back burner until a few weeks ago. About the same time I was coming out of hibernation, Marketcircle released its 3.7.4 beta which included integration with iWork. I was thrilled. This had been the Achilles heel of the program, at least for those of us who frequently use merge templates in our practices. While I may still use the built-in editor for some routine merges, Pages opens up a whole new world worth exploring. I downloaded the beta and tried it out. My test merges worked.

Spurred on by a renewed enthusiasm for Daylite, I looked at the calendar and decided that July was the month to make the Switch. In late June, I placed my order for three new Macs.

Well, the MacPro and two 20” iMacs are now sitting in my office in their big Mac boxes, and Monday is our official Independence Day, the day we begin leaving Windows for Macs. Earlier this week I began the process of creating categories, keywords and custom forms in preparation for importing data from Timematters. Things were moving along nicely.

Then, as I began testing imports, we ran into heavy weather. I discovered some fairly significant barriers to importing that I’ll talk about in the next post. I’ve written Marketcircle about them all, and they’ve been very responsive. I’m crossing my fingers, hoping that the more serious problems will be addressed quickly because without a fix from MC, I can’t import the data I need to actually make the switch. The best we can do is load Fusion and run Windows. Blech.

But before getting into my import problems, and while I’m thinking about it, let me suggest that you not use the law template when setting up Daylite. I don’t mean you shouldn’t look at it. Rather, take a look at what’s in there and make notes about what you like, then start with a fresh database and add your own categories, keywords or other customized choices. The reason is that if you use the law template, you’ll likely have a lot of cats and keywords and extra fields to delete and you’ll have to do this one field at a time, a very tedious process. (If there’s a way to do a bulk delete, I haven’t found it.) There’s nothing wrong with the law template or the stuff that’s in it; it just saves a lot of time to map out your own unique cats/keywords and add them to a clean database rather than modifying or deleting the ones included in the template.

Okay, with that said, let’s talk about importing.

Here are the action steps I took or the things I had in mind when preparing for import. If you are just starting out and don’t have an existing database to export, stop reading. Go play with your kids or something. Most of what I’m about to say won’t apply to your situation. This may not be the most efficient approach but it made sense to me:

• Survey the existing fields in each practice area in your existing case management program and decide what to keep and what to chuck. Consider adding additional fields based on your experience with your existing program. Another way of saying this is: Begin at the end. Figure out what you information you need to manage your practice well, then add the fields that give you what you need.
• Keep in mind the distinction between practice management and case preparation. In TM, I made the mistake of trying to collect too much information. Much of that info really belonged in case prep software like Casemap or Acrobat (or, anticipating my future, Notebook on the Mac). Collect only the information you need to manage your practice. Keep it as simple as you can make it without sacrificing the things that are essential to practice management. Leave the case prep stuff for other software.
• If you have multiple practice areas, don’t use the extra fields in the project record. That may seem counterintuitive but data entry should be as simple as possible. When I create a new case/project, I want to fill out the first page of the project record and one custom form and that’s it. Another reason to ignore extra fields is that custom form information will be displayed using a widget in the HUD, and I’d have to modify the widget to get data from the extra fields. I’d rather put the extra fields in the custom form. So, to sum up: Use custom forms to capture all data unique to a practice area. Use the project record to enter generic data that applies to any case. Eschew extra fields.
• Once you settle on your fields, create categories for Contacts, Projects, Appointments, Opportunities, Tasks and Notes. Think about using categories for broad areas. Refine the categories using keywords. (Be aware that a significant limitation in DL is that keywords do not currently apply to notes and tasks, a feature that has been requested by many folks.) You’ll be setting up smartlists in Daylite to show subsets of data using these categories and keywords so a little prep is worth the effort.
• Add your cats/keywords to Daylite.
• Export data from your existing case management program. This is a multi-step process to be described in more detail in the next post. Very multi-step.
• Import contacts and cases to Daylite. This is also by definition a multi-step process which currently requires lots of intermediate steps, depending on the kind of record you’re importing. More in the next post.
• For the fun of it, create some smartlists for contacts and cases.
• Import notes into Daylite. (A big problem here if you’re using date fields and custom forms.)
• Create links between contacts and cases. (Notes are linked to a contact or project during import.)
• Manually add your appointments going forward. (I don’t intend to import old calendar entries into Daylite.)
• Drink your favorite libation. Have a refill.

As I suggested earlier, things had been progressing reasonably well . . . until I arrived at step 7 (importing contacts and cases). That’s where things got really interesting. I’ve had an eventful couple of days learning more about importing with Daylite. I’ll leave the telling of that tale to the next post. Hopefully, these notes will chronicle a short stage in the life of Daylite, quickly forgotten as the code was changed to make imports easier.