Though I was sad to lose the ability to filter based on the public/private checkbox in Outlook, because of my switch from Pocket Informant/Pocket PC to Keysuite/Palm, the Keysuite application did offer some other nice benefits.
First and foremost I was ecstatic to find that I could create an unlimited amount of categories, AND I was able to create a different set of categories for Notes, Tasks, Contacts, and Calendar Appointments. Further more, when you sync multiple folders within each type of data (task, contact, etc) you get a new set of categories to work with.
To be honest I have not fully investigated how this meta-data syncs to outlook. For the most part it seems that the categories are all syncing back to outlook. The Treo, having essentially become a standalone device that allowed for easy input and retrieval data removed my need to constantly sync to outlook.
One application of this extra flexibility in the categories was to create a series of context tags for my contacts. I had been looking for a way to test out the practicality of tagging all contacts and if there were benefits when trying to remember people.
The system basically started with very general context tags and progressively got more specific. I used special characters (-,#,&,(),etc) to avoid the default alphabetical order of Categories in Keysuite (which is something I have been doing a lot lately, and would like to address in a future post). This allowed me to be lazy in the case that I did not want too many tags, and all the General Ones would be at the top.
Contact Tags:
- Female
- Male
# Business
# Personal
& Acquintances
& Close Friends
& Family
& Friends
() Work 1
() Work 2
() College
() High School
() Job Search
() Hobby/Project 1
@ New York City
@ Colorado
@ Texas
+ Starbucks
+ Bar
+ Gym
If you wanted to, you could keep track of people down to the exact location where you met them. Its just an idea, and I havn’t really been sticking to it too much because I have way to many contacts to go back and tag them all. Especially now that I have moved away from Outlook.
Other benefits of Keysuite
- Keeping multiple sets of Address Books (not as useful when you are already tagging)
- Color coding calendar entries
- The ability to store more information in notes (which I used to keep CRM style logs for contacts)
