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.

I’m currently using Things. Jeff reviewed that program here. It’s very intuitive to me, meaning that it handles commands the way I think they should be handled. When it does not, it’s usually a feature the developers are working on. Marketcircle has also provided instructions on how to use Daylite for GTD. I’m looking forward to reading that with some milk and cookies before bedtime. So there’s lots of options out there, and I’m thankful that Jeff is looking at several of them carefully. Give his review a read.

While Daylite allows you to create notes linked to a contact or project and gives you a list of note titles in an Activity tab, you still have to click on each note to see its content. With Andy’s widget, every note with “HUD” in the title is displayed, along with its content, in a running list. (The widget strips out the “HUD” string so the titles don’t include “HUD” in them.) It’s easy to scroll through your notes (or search for them using Daylite’ global search feature–Sh + Cmd + F.)

In my practice, we have a chronological list of ALL notes related to a particular contact or client using Timematters. I wanted to emulate this feature in Daylite and tweaked Andy’s widget to display every note. I also changed the formatting a little bit. Of course, if you want to show only a subset of your notes, Andy’s widget is just the ticket.

Here’s a screenshot to show you what the display looks like:

You can edit any note by clicking the Edit button of that particular note. I’d like to be able to add the initials of the note’s author to the title line, but haven’t had time to work on it.

So why did Andy email me? Well, I’d sent him the new code to show all widgets, but not being a programmer, there were some things that I thought would make the code better but didn’t know how to do. Andy kindly replied with a better section of code which I’ve incorporated into the final widget. The widget is available for download here. (Right click the link to download. Then unzip and double click the file to install in Daylite.)

Two caveats: First, the widget will choke if you use quotation marks in the content of your note. Nothing gets displayed if there’s a quotation mark in any of the notes. Second, there’s a bug in Daylite that causes the scroll bar to freeze when a list in the HUD is longer than the HUD area itself. Just drag the corner of the window a little to resize and the scroll bar unfreezes.

Ben Stevens at The Mac Lawyer is switching his office to Pages after another bad experience with Word. As I’ve been preparing for the move to Macs, I’ve worked with Pages, Word 2008, OpenOffice and NeoOffice. (BTW, Erik Schmidt at MacLawStudent did a review of Pages and some other word processors earlier this year. Jeff Kabbe at Apple Briefs discusses the word processors he uses here. ) I also dabbled with Sheepshaver and an early version of WordPerfect for Mac, but it was far too complicated to set up, much less rely upon, as a dependable office word processor. I own and love Scrivener. I’m using it catalog all the stuff that needs to get done as I prepare for the transition, but it’s strengths are not suited for general law office work. I even looked at TextEdit . . . briefly.

Well, a couple of days ago, the folks at Marketcircle made up my mind for me. They released version 3.7.4 of Daylite, a beta version that includes merging support for the iWork suite of programs–Pages, Numbers and Keynote. As you know, I’ve settled on Daylite as my practice management program. This latest release seals the deal.

Pages has always been a stable, elegant program. I’ve been using it for non-business purposes since I bought my MBPro last November. But the only game in town so far as merging with Daylite is concerned had been Word 2004 (and now 2008). I bought a copy of Word 2008 earlier this year and created some simple merges with it, but I really didn’t (and still don’t) like the interface. And, of course, it’s Word.

Fortunately, my practice does not require a lot of collaborative word processing so I am not married to Word. As the federal courts move to PDF, the format of a word processing document has become less important. What IS important in my practice is the ability to get data out of my practice management software into a word processor. With this latest version of Daylite, that requirement is now satisfied, and I couldn’t be more pleased.

Pages does have a funky format, saving a document in a package which contains other files, and this means that the minimum file size is at least 80k. By comparison, a comparable Word document is 24k, and a TextEdit doc is only 4k. Considering the storage capacity of today’s computers, this isn’t a deal breaker. Besides, we are scanning most of the paper in our office; we can delete the Pages doc once the scanned version is in the client’s folder.

Now that I can merge Daylite info with Pages, I’m pretty excited about the possibilities this opens up for my practice. I’ll talk more about that in future posts.

Here’s part of the the announcement from Marketcircle:

We’re releasing a Public Beta for our users to test and provide feedback on Daylite 3.7.4. We’ve made several fixes and added new features, and would appreciate feedback on these; the complete list of fixes and new features is listed below.

PLEASE NOTE: this release is a beta release, and may be further updated based on feedback from users; as such, it should not be considered as a ‘final’ release. We are confident that the fixes and features it brings are stable, but be warned that you use this release at your own risk. Please be sure to make appropriate backups of your database(s) - both online and offline.

The purpose of this public beta is to allow our users to test and provide feedback on this release; to that end, we’ve created this thread in the Marketcircle forums for such feedback. Please note that:

support on this release will be provided only through this forum thread, or you may also provide feedback through the Daylite Beta mailing list (if you are already registered on the mailing list)

Marketcircle Support & Sales will not provide direct support on this public beta release

This thread is to concentrate on the fixes and features of this release only (as listed below); if you wish to discuss other issues or features not part of this release (or that of other releases), please do so under the Using Daylite or Troubleshooting forums as a separate thread, as appropriate.

The release notes for Daylite 3.7.4 are:

Features:

• Added merge support for Pages, Numbers and Keynote.
• Additional information for contacts—such as category, additional phone numbers, owner and more—is now displayed in the linked view and the Quick Find results pane.
• Added Birthday and Anniversary to contact summary view and as column options.
• Added Task Duration as a column option.
• Improved importing of calendar files that do not have a time zone defined to use the current time zone.
• Improved the resizing behavior of several edit windows.
• The local time in the Appointment window is now displayed using the user’s preferred display format.
• Task window date and time fields are now two separate input fields.
• Enforced the user’s delete permissions in the Trash inspector.
• Removed the minimum margin size in the letter template editor.
• Added task calls to Today’s Call List report.
• Added auto refresh of all views following an online/offline sync.
• Added discount field and discount total to estimate templates.
• Includes Dialectic dialer plugin.
• Added the Daylite Concepts Guide.
• Backup reminder will be suppressed when automatic backup is configured for the database.
• Added the ability to select multiple items when adding products or services to an estimate.
• Added warning of any detected problems with automatic backups.
• Added the ability to save logs to a file.
• Updated OpenBase to version 10.0.11 build 124:

- Better permissions management.
- Addresses dynamic IP address network connection issues.
- Automatic fallback to a default backup directory when a user-defined backup directory is not writable.
- Improved offline synchronization reliability.”

Marketcircle also fixed a number of bugs. I was intending to do a screencast on merging with the Built-in Editor. I’ll add the Pages merge to the mix. I hope it’s good!

]]> http://mac-lawyer.com/case-management/daylite-374-beta-released-merges-with-pages/feed/ http://mac-lawyer.com/asides/journler-review/ http://mac-lawyer.com/asides/journler-review/#comments Wed, 09 Apr 2008 23:32:19 +0000 Kevin http://mac-lawyer.com/asides/journler-review/ Journler Review. Pete Summerill writes the MacLitigator blog and has just posted a very interesting piece on Journler, a mysterious Mac app that Pete is using to do a lot of what Casemap does on Windows. I confess that Casemap was just too labor intensive for me; Journler seems easier to use. Here’s hoping Pete will do a screencast to complement his post, demonstrating how he organizes a file using Journler. Well worth a careful read.
]]> http://mac-lawyer.com/asides/journler-review/feed/ http://mac-lawyer.com/asides/things-gtd-review/ http://mac-lawyer.com/asides/things-gtd-review/#comments Wed, 09 Apr 2008 23:21:52 +0000 Kevin http://mac-lawyer.com/asides/things-gtd-review/ Things GTD Review. Jeff Kabbe at Apple Briefs has written an extensive review of a program called Things. I’ve been using a beta version for the past three weeks; it’s a very intuitive application of David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) approach to organizing life. Check it out.
]]> http://mac-lawyer.com/asides/things-gtd-review/feed/ http://mac-lawyer.com/featured/merging-word-2008-templates-and-daylite-372/ http://mac-lawyer.com/featured/merging-word-2008-templates-and-daylite-372/#comments Tue, 08 Apr 2008 20:47:34 +0000 Kevin http://mac-lawyer.com/featured/merging-word-2008-templates-and-daylite-372/ In the last couple of months, I’ve really focused on Daylite (DL). Case management is the single most significant piece of the transition puzzle, at least for me. What I’ve learned as I’ve read about Daylite and used the demo has actually encouraged me to dig deeper into the program. And my efforts have been rewarded.

I’ve been able to emulate the Timematters (TM) powerview using a modified version of Andy Warwick’s FTP Login widget described in Screencast No. 1. I’ve been able come up with a simple document management system that is less cumbersome, though less comprehensive, than the TM system. And I can also show the content of all notes in a single window in the Heads Up Display (HUD) in a project. In short, I can duplicate a lot of what I like best about TM by using widgets and some simple coding.

So now it’s on to the subject of merging. I’m a big fan of integration. Being able to get data out of DL and into a word processor is very important to me via the use of merge templates. I just crossed into that new frontier this past weekend, and I was pleased to discover that the merge capability in Daylite, at least for internal merges with the built-in editor, is much better than I expected. And it is very fast.

Merging with Daylite’s Built-in Editor
Thanks to two folks I’ve never met, Scott McCulloch and George Qualley, I’ve tweaked some of the code they’ve shared on the Marketcircle forum to create a sample merge letter in Daylite that pulls data from many sources during a single merge: the project, the contacts linked to that project, and the data in any custom form linked to the project. This is a Big Deal. It means, at the very least, that I can create a merge document using any data that is either (1) in a project or (2) connected to a project with just a few keystrokes.

The downside is that the built-in editor’s lack of page numbering, headers and footers, and other basic word processing capabilities make multi-page merges problematic, but even here, the built-in editor can generate a rough draft without the formatting which can then be copied and pasted into Word or Pages to complete the final draft. It could even be copied into Wordperfect running in Fusion or Parallels if your federal court requires Wordperfect format.

Merging with Word 2008
Merging with Word 2008 also works, but there’s also a significant downside. The merge keys available for external merges are much more limited than those for merges with the built-in editor. That means that for most merging, the built-in editor will have to suffice.

Merging Data into Government Forms
We use lots of Social Security forms and Industrial Commission forms in my practice. I have these forms in Wordperfect merge templates. The merges are fairly simple to run. To do the same thing with Daylite, you have to turn to Word 2008. The built-in editor doesn’t have the feature set necessary to do this.

So I recently tested a theory, and after several trials, it worked. Here’s what I did. I made an image of the form, inserted the image as a watermark in Word 2008, then used tables (one cell tables!) to precisely place the merge keys over the different boxes to receive merged data. I also used these table cells to type in data that doesn’t change (my name, address, phone number, etc.). Saved it as a .doc file. Then, when running the merge from within Daylite, I selected Word and the .doc file and completed the merge. It worked and it was reasonably quick about it. It would be better if you could add mergekeys to a PDF document and merge directly into that document, but I don’t think that’s possible. So, for now, this might be an acceptable workaround.

All this to say that I’m beginning to think that Daylite will work as an effective case management alternative to Timematters. I hadn’t felt this way for quite a while.

I’ll probably do a screencast on merging with the built-in editor and one on the widget I’ve customized to display a scrolling list of notes within a few weeks. The first two screencasts were plenty long (probably too long) so I’ll try to bring the next one in under 15-20 minutes.

Then it’s on to consider using Daylite to do some interoffice communication. Ben Stevens gave a very helpful presentation at the Macs in Trial seminar at the end of February. He packed a lot of good ideas into 10 minutes. (I didn’t make the seminar but got a copy of the DVD yesterday.) I want to try out some of what he’s doing with Daylite.

Finally, I’ve been keeping an eye on time and billing programs. I’m more willing to ditch the integration principle when it comes to these programs, if only because they are such complicated animals. Frankly, there’s not much out there that combines the great Mac interface with the tools needed to handle time and billing. But this isn’t a deal breaker in terms of moving to Macs. VMWare Fusion runs my Windows programs quite nicely, and if we have to use some legacy software until Mac developers catch up with their Windows brethren, I can wait.

]]> http://mac-lawyer.com/featured/merging-word-2008-templates-and-daylite-372/feed/ http://mac-lawyer.com/case-management/screencast-2-document-management/ http://mac-lawyer.com/case-management/screencast-2-document-management/#comments Sat, 05 Apr 2008 09:50:15 +0000 Kevin http://mac-lawyer.com/case-management/screencast-2-document-management/ This latest screencast modifies the Opportunity record in Daylite to track certain documents. (Right-click on the link to download.) At 37 minutes, it’s a bit long, but it gives you a good overview of one approach to document mangement using an object in Daylite that otherwise would not merit much attention.

There’s much more that could be discussed that I omitted from the screencast: File naming conventions, scanning documents and creating document records from those scanned docs, more about the file path in the FTP login widget described in the previous screencast. Not enough time and the thing is ponderous as it is.

Review the show notes I wrote several weeks back for more information about this screencast. Hope it’s helpful!

]]> http://mac-lawyer.com/case-management/screencast-2-document-management/feed/ http://mac-lawyer.com/using-macs/vmware-fusion-contest/ http://mac-lawyer.com/using-macs/vmware-fusion-contest/#comments Fri, 04 Apr 2008 13:15:56 +0000 Kevin http://mac-lawyer.com/featured/vmware-fusion-contest/ It’s a pretty cool idea. Get your customers to produce a video or blog post about why you switched to Fusion and win a MacBook Air or an iPod Touch–and other goodies just for participating! Here’s an excerpt about the contest:

My Switch to VMware Fusion

The VMware Fusion team is proud to announce a new video contest, entitled “My Switch to VMware Fusion”:http://www.vmware.com/landing_pages/switchtofusion/video-contest.html

As part of our new campaign (http://vmware.com/switchtofusion) encouraging Mac users to switch to VMwareFusion for Windows on Mac, we are kicking off a video contest wherein users who have already switched to Fusion pull together a 60 second video on why they switched to VMware Fusion to run Windows on their Mac, and post it on the web. . . .

In thanks, every single participant will get a VMware Fusion team t-shirt exactly like the team had at Macworld, and a “My Mac Loves VMware” bumper sticker. All they have to do is submit their work on the video contest page! . . .

Blogs too!

Not into video? That’s ok. Users who simply blog about their “Switch to VMware Fusion” will get a “My Mac Loves VMware” bumper sticker, and the best story of a Switch to Fusion will get a shiny new iPod touch. Can’t run Windows on it, but it’s still cool!

End excerpt

Maybe I can find some time. If you’re a switcher and have the time, no reason not to participate. I love these guys (in the generic, gender-inclusive sense)!

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