Well, it’s finally here, our first screencast. (Right click on the link to download the file.) It’s high definition, 1280 x 720, about 27 minutes long, and weighs in at 158 MB (now 56.5 MB!).

I apologize in advance for the poor audio quality. It’s pretty bad! It takes about 4 hours to compress the file, and one of the audio settings was not set properly. Since it takes so long to compress, I’m just going to publish the screencast now and give compression a second try tonight with a different setting. If the result sounds better (and it should!), I’ll upload the new movie to replace the existing screencast.

You’ll also hear (through the distortion) my raspy, under-the-weather voice and a few blips and pops. You’ll see a bit of pixelation here and there. But you may miss the irritating omissions–things I failed to say that I wish I had said but don’t have to time to patchup.

So, it could be much better, but I’ve learned a lot in the process, and the process was fun. I’m hoping the next effort will show that I’ve benefited from my mistakes.

In this screencast, I do the following:

• Survey the Daylite interface
• Review categories and keywords
• Create a case record
• Create a custom form
• Display custom form data using a modified widget

Let me say a little bit about each area here since, as I mentioned, I failed to say some things that needed to be said.

Daylite Interface
The interface is pretty straightforward. There are four sections: the left-side navigation panel, the toolbar at the top, the results pane in the center and the detail pane at the bottom of the screen. The results pane has three views: a business-card view (the one I look at in the screencast), a linked view (just drops the third pane with the business card info and only shows a list of contacts and the objects linked to a selected contact) and a list view (which is probably more accurately called a column view). The column view is nice because you can add and rearrange data fields from the contact record, then sort those by clicking on a particular column. We’ll look at this view in more detail when we discuss medical record tracking in a future screencast.

I didn’t mention the shortcut bar beneath the toolbar during the show. Duh! You can drag smartlists to this bar and rearrange the shortcuts. Works like Safari’s bookmarks. Very easy to use. You can create smartlists for Clients, Prospective Clients (I’d abbreviate that to PC), Cases (to show a list of all cases), casetypes to display only cases in a given practice area (e.g. PI-slip/fall; PL for products liability; SS for Social Security; WC for Worker’s Comp).

Using keywords, you can further filter your data to show only those cases involving a certain body part, or only those SS cases that have SSI claims. You could create a smartlist to show all medical records requests (e.g. MRR) and then, using keywords, create a smartlist to display only those MRRs for a particular client. You could do the same for discovery documents. I really like smartlists. If Marketcircle adds the ability to create folders on this shortcut bar to mimic Safari, you could dump smartlists into these folders to tidy up the shortcut bar a bit.

Categories and Keywords
One category per object. Multiple keywords per object. Use these to filter data in smartlists. There may be a bug in Daylite. I tried to create a smartlist that would display only worker’s compensation cases where the claim had not been accepted by the carrier, specifying a particular value for a data field in a custom form. In creating the smartlist, the data field appeared, but when executing the smartlist, nothing happened. I’m waiting to hear from Marketcircle to see if this is a program problem.

Very powerful feature and I like the way all categories and keywords can be assigned to objects in a single window. Very elegant.

Case Record
The case record has three limitations. First, you can’t modify the labels on the main page. Second, you can’t modify the data fields to change them, for example, from a date field or text field to a combo box or checkbox. What you see is what you get. If you use the “start” date field as a “date file opened” field, you just have to remember that “start” means “date file opened.”

The third limitation is that the twelve extra text fields and four extra date fields in the case record aren’t sufficient to capture all the data for a particular casetype. I use lots of date fields in my cases; four isn’t enough. And the extra fields have to apply to any practice area. Once you modify the extra field, it’s modified no matter what kind of case you’re creating. So the best use for the extra fields seems to be to capture data that you need in any kind of case: things like the aforementioned “date file opened” and “date file closed,” court file numbers, information about the client’s family, employer, a SSN. But as a repository for specific case data, it’s just not the place.

Custom Form
Daylite’s custom form is a very powerful program feature. It provides many different kinds of data fields (e.g., text, date, numerical, combo box, checkbox, etc.), allowing you to create a form to capture all the data related to a particular area of practice. So, if I end up moving to Daylite, I’ll create a custom form for Social Security, one for Worker’s Comp and one for LTD.

While Daylite excels with its custom form, it falls flat when displaying the information in that form, as you’ll see in the screencast. The display of custom form info in Daylite cannot be modified in any way. In Timematters, a feature called a Powerview displays data in a webpage. Using basic HTML, you can rearrange your data any way you like. You can include photos of your clients and include hyperlinks to google maps and to documents on your harddrive (this actually doesn’t work so well in Windows–works perfectly on the Mac!) So I wanted to emulate this great Timematters feature in Daylite.

Custom Widget
And that’s why the best part of the screencast is the custom form widget. It looks very similar to what I have in Timematters. It’s major drawback is that it cannot import information from a contact record. I wanted to get data from a linked contact record with the role “client” and have it show up in the widget but I don’t know how to code that. So I had to retype the client’s name, address, phone number, e-mail and date of birth in the custom form. Not optimal at all. It means that changes in any of this information needs to be made in two places–the linked contact record and the custom form. I’m hoping someone can help figure out a way to get that info into the widget.

Still, it does what I want it to do. It gathers all the basic case data in a single window, making it much easier to quickly get a handle on the status of the case. No need to click and scroll through multiple screens. When someone calls about a case, I can be up to speed in a matter of seconds.

In future screencasts, we’ll take a closer look at smartlists, demonstrate a custom widget that displays a running list of notes (and the content of the notes) linked to a case in a single window, modify the opportunities object to keep track of medical records requests and discovery requests and maybe examine the whole problem of getting data out of Daylite into merge templates in Word or Pages.

By the way, there appears to be some movement within Marketcircle to begin addressing the merge issue. They’re certainly developing a law template, but I’m hoping for more. Perhaps these encouraging signs are real harbingers for change.

I’ve created a screencasts link on the main toolbar above. This will take you to a screencasts page. As newer screencasts are produced, they’ll be listed on this page. Right click on the screencast’s title to download the file. You can also read the original show notes by clicking the “Go There” link.

Cheers.

The first stage involves Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Plato’s ideal form and a lot of coffee. It’s really about identifying what would make an “ideal” law office–how things ought to be if you had software developers at your beck and call and an unlimited supply of cash. I won’t get real detailed here, just identify some big themes. I’ll call these First Principles.

The second stage takes these First Principles and applies them to my current setup to determine how well we measure up. It examines the pros and cons of the current configuration in light of these principles.

Then, in the the third stage, I’ll focus on the strengths and weaknesses of the Mac in a law office. There’s a lot more guesswork involved in this since I’m just now learning the Mac way of thinking after 20+ years with Windows and DOS. My current assessment will likely change as I get a better handle on Macs and how they operate.

Finally, I’ll evaluate Mac software. This will take a lot of time. This is where I intend to do video podcasts as I begin integrating the Mac into my practice. But I’m already clear that my transition to Macs will be incremental at best. After a month of reading and evaluating, I’m pretty sure that I’d be reverting to a much less efficient kind of practice if I go All Mac right out of the gate. But more about that later.

So that’s the plan of campaign. Next time we’ll look at First Principles.

Navigation, navigation, navigation. My MacBook Pro continues to inspire me just looking at that incredible screen, its sleek silhouette, yada yada yada. But if you can’t get around in your computer, you’ll get incredibly frustrated really fast. I’ve previously linked to a very useful compendium of keyboard shortcuts for the Mac. Now, here’s a list (from July 2006 so a little dated) of small-footprint software you’ll need to replicate your Windows environment. There are other programs, in addition to the one’s on that list, you may want to consider: For an FTP client, I use CyberDuck, a free app, in place of Transmit. I also use LaunchBar ($) in place of Quicksilver (free) as a substitute for the excellent Activewords which, sadly, has no exact Mac equivalent. And I haven’t settled on Parallels or VMWare Fusion to run Windows on the Mac.

Follow this link to usingmac.com to get your navigation groove back. Over 200 shortcuts for common Mac programs that will make your Mac experience much more enjoyable. And bookmark the site while you’re at it.

If you’ve been using Windows most of your adult life and in your law practice and have just now opened an impeccably packaged Mac that promises to turn your world upside down, stop right now and Figure Out Navigation. Don’t let all the excitement, anticipation and general good feeling be drained out of you by your frustration with Windows commands that don’t work on a Mac. You’ll curse the day you placed the order, and that’s a very unnecessary thing to do.

Learn how to navigate now! Get familiar with your machine. Apple has several good tutorials on their website. Take the time to read them before you begin doing any serious work on your new machine. You’ll avoid the second guessing and wasted hours trying to fit square pegs into round holes.

Read Apple’s Mac 101 tutorial. It’ll get you up to speed on the features and basic commands you’ll use with your Mac. There’s also a tutorial for switchers to help you migrate your files from your PC to your Mac.

These tutorials will help you, and you’ll thank me later.