Spb Diary Help

Spb Diary Help

About Spb Diary Today Plug-in
Calendar
Tasks
Contacts
Notes
Messages
Special Events

Options
Main Screen
General Options
Calendar Options
Tasks Options
Contacts Options
Notes Options
Messages Options
Special Events Options
Category Icons Options

Calendar

Spb Diary acts as a powerful Today plug-in for PIM applications. Calendar is one of them. The Calendar tab shows your appointments and (optionally) tasks, grouped by days and filtered, if necessary. The Calendar tab can also dislplay such information as birthdays, weather forecasts, financial data and messages. Birthdays are taken from your own contacts. Weather information is taken from Spb Weather application, if installed. Finally, Spb Diary takes information about scheduled transactions from Spb Finance application (if installed) and puts it on the Calendar tab.

A lot of different icons may accompany your entries. These icons are either informative or provide fast access to some extra information. For example, tapping on the note icon opens the appointment or task notes in a separate window. Tapping on the alarm icon opens a window, where you can quickly customize the reminder options. You can specify, which icons should be shown, in program options. Use tap- and-hold feature to get fast access to a lot of commands and options of Spb Diary. We would recommend you to try to use tap-and-hold almost everywhere on the Spb Diary Today plug- in. You will find it very practical.

Almost all most frequent actions can be performed right from the Today plug-in. For example, double-tap on any list item opens it for editing in the correspondiong PIM application (this is the default behavior, it can also be changed in options). You can find more options from the context menu (opened by tap-and-hold). For example to quickly add a task for tomorrow, tap-and-hold on the "Tomorrow" entry and select New Task from the context menu.

Tasks

The Tasks tab of Spb Diary Today plug-in represents your tasks. There are several ways to group and sort these items. You can group tasks by category, completion state, due date, priority, sensitivity, start date or not group them at all. Every grouping style implies several sorting modes that can be applied to your tasks. You can also specify and apply a category filter for your tasks. All words said about icons in the Calendar tab can be referred to tasks, too.

Contacts

The third tab of Spb Diary Today plug-in is the Contacts tab. All your contacts are represented here. Similarly to appointments and tasks you can apply filters and select different grouping modes, like "By Company", "By Category", or no grouping. You can also activate sorting by the first or the last name of people in your contact list.

A powerful of Spb Diary is possibility to represent your contacts with photos. If you go to Contacts options and select the corresponding option your contacts that have photos will be represented at the top of the list with these photos.

You can select, what contact to show for every person in your list. This can be either one of his/her phone numbers (mobile, office, home, etc) or an email address.

When you tap a contact, you will see a pop-up with ability to quickly dial the contact's number and send him a message.

If you want to quickly find a person in a large list, you can use the alphabet panel at the bottom. For example, if you want to find some 'Monroe, Jules', you should tap the [mno] button. You will see the list of all entries starting with 'm', 'n', or 'o'. If the list is still big enough, tap this button again because the second character of 'Monroe' is 'o'). The list will narrow down to all names starting with only 'mm', 'mn', 'mo', 'nm', 'nn', 'no', 'om', 'on', 'oo'. You can keep narrowing this list down until you find the desired name.

You can also use the hardware buttons to move by the contact list and the search panel.

General Options

In General options you can customize some options related to all items appearing on Spb Today plug-in or to the whole plug-in.

General Options. Common:
Height of the plug-in, associated PIM application, header style, action on double-click…
General Options. Font:
A font used by Today plug-in...
General Options. Group Style:
Separating line style, counters…
General Options. Long Date:
Long date format
General Options. Short Date:
Short date format
General Options. Tabs:
Tabs used in the Today plug-in
General Options. Skins:
Skins used in the Today plug-in
General Options. Auto Return.:
The default screen view when idle

See Also
Spb Diary Help

Calendar Options

In Calendar options you can customize the interface of the Calendar tab of Spb Diary Today plug-in.

Calendar Options. Common:
First week of the year, number of days to display...
Calendar Options. Show:
Showing Spb Finance transaction, birthdays, past appointments, empty days...
Calendar Options. Tasks:
Showing overdue tasks, completed tasks, undated tasks...
Calendar Options. Titles:
Cutomize the appearance of groups and Spb Weather integration
Calendar Options. View Style:
Subject showing, view style (one of three), status bar, location, start time...
Calendar Options. Icons:
Selecting icons to go along with your appointments

See Also
Spb Diary Help

Tasks Options

In Tasks options you can customize the interface of the Tasks tab of Spb Diary Today plug-in.

Tasks Options. Common:
Task complete message, active task showing, completed tasks showing...
Tasks Options. View Style:
Customize the appearance of task items at the Today screen
Tasks Options. Icons:
Select icons to go along with your tasks

See Also
Spb Diary Help

Contacts Options

In Contacts options you can customize the interface of the Contacts tab of Spb Diary Today plug-in.

Contacts Options. Common:
Customize the search panel, sorting/grouping mode, action by single tap, photo contacts showing...
Contacts Options. View Style:
Sorting mode, common view of your contacts (one of three)...
Contacts Options. Icons:
Select icons to go along with your contacts

See Also
Spb Diary Help

Category Icons Options

In Category icons options dialog you can assign an icon that will accompany all items within a certain category.

Options. Category Icons:
Select a category and assign an icon, select the category color

See Also
Spb Diary Help

Main Screen

In this dialog you are offered to start customization of Spb Diary options. The options are divided into several groups:

General: tap to customize the Today plug-in options, such as plug-in layout, fonts, group styles, date formats, integration with PIMs, tabs, etc.

Calendar: here you can customize the calendar- related options, such as items to show, view styles, icons, integration with Spb Weather and Spb Finance, etc.

Tasks: options that configure the view of your task entries, such as items to show, view styles, and icons, etc.

Contacts: options that configure your contacts representation: grouping, sorting, and view styles, etc.

Notes: options that configure your notes representation: grouping, sorting, and view styles, etc.

Messages: options that configure your Message tab representation

Special Events: options that configure your Special Events tab representation: duration, which items to show, etc.

Category Icons: select to associate different icons and colors with categories. You can select icons from a big collection.

See Also
Spb Diary Help

General Options. Common

Plug-in height: Provide the height of Spb Diary plug-in. If the plug-in content does not fit this area you will be able to scroll it with the scrollbar. Also, if you require automatical height adjustment (see below), here you can customize the minimal height of the plug-in.

If your Pocket PC supports landscape and portrait modes, this parameter can be customized and kept for every screen configuration.

Auto height adjusting: if selected, the program will automatically adjust the plug-in height, taking all available unused screen space.

Integrated with: Spb Diary can stand as a Today plug-in for different PIM applications. Please select a PIM application that will be used for handling PIM operations. The PIM application you specify here will be called for viewing and editing your tasks, appointments, and contacts.

Header: Select the desired header behavior.

Always Shown: The shown header provides you with access to grouping, sorting and filtering menus.
Always Hidden: If you don’t need to change your filtering/grouping/sorting modes often you can save some screen screen estate by hiding the header. All header functionality will be available via context menu.
Minimizable: This is the default behaviour. You can minimize or maximize the header in one tap. To hide the header, tap on the little icon on the right. To show it, tap on the horizontal line shown instead of the header.

Action on double click: Select an action that should be performed when you double click on a task, appointment, or contact.

Horizontal tabs in Spb Pocket Plus: If selected, Spb Diary tabs will be represented as horizontal tabs of Spb Pocket Plus plug-in (in case Spb Diary is not already integrated into it).

General Options. Font

Use standard Today items font: If selected, the standard font selected for the Today screen, will be used for Spb Diary Today plug-in, too. If you want to change the font, unselect this check box and provide the desired font face and size. You can preview the sample text at the bottom of the dialog.

General Options. Group Style

Line position: Select the position of a horizontal line that separates groups in the list. See the result in the preview window.

Show counter: Select this check box if you want to see the number of entries within each group.

General Options. Short Date

Short date format: Look at the sample date and change its format with the following options:

Don't use year: Select check box if you don't want to see year in short dates.

Short year: Select if you want to show year in short format (e.g. 05 instead of 2005). Option unavailable if year is not shown.

Other details for short date format are taken from current regional settings. You can follow the link at the bottom of the dialog to jump to Regional Settings to change them.

Calendar Options. Common

First week of year: select the most habitual first week of the year definition:

As in regional settings: the first week of the year is selected in accordance with Regional Settings
First 4-day week: the first week that has at least 4 days of the new year is declared the first week of the year
First full week: the first week that has 7 days of the new year is declared the first week of the year
Starts on Jan 1: the week when January 1 happened is considered the first week of the year (even if January 1 was the very last day of that week).

Number of days to display: Select the number of upcoming days simultaneously put to the Today screen.

Collapse all days but today on startup: If selected, all days' entries will be collapsed, excluding the today's ones. This will happen on every Spb Diary loading and on every date change. Otherwise the entries will be expanded.

Calendar Options. Show

In this options dialog you can select items to be placed to the Calendar tab of Spb Diary Today plug-in. The items are self-explanatory and mostly do not need more detailed explanation. However, some details are to be mentioned:

If you have Spb Finance application installed on your Pocket PC, you can integrate it with Spb Diary. Thus, if you have any scheduled transaction in Spb Finance, they will be displayed in the Calendar tab of Spb Diary, if you set the corresponding option in this dialog.

The Show "today" always option forces the "today" group to be shown even if there are no events for this day. This helps to always be aware what day is today and it also helps to create new items for today.

Calendar Options. Titles

These options define the look of day titles.

Show "today", "tomorrow": Select this check box to enable showing these words along with actual dates.

Show time span: Select this check box to enable showing the time span. The time span is a minimized time rule represented with a short thick line that allows you to see taken and free time and to create new appointments.

Integrate with Spb Weather: By selecting this check box you allow showing some information in your Spb Diary Today plug-in taken from Spb Weather. If Spb Weather is installed on your Pocket PC, Spb Diary will take the weather forecast icon from this product and add it to the day title lines.

Show day offset: Select if you want to see the number of days that separate today's date from the day in question. For example, the day after tomorrow has a +2 day offset, the yesterday's day has a -1 day offset.

Calendar Options. View Style

Show subject: This option defines how to handle long strings in appointment’s subject and location. The "Always shorten" option forces to show all the strings shorten to one line. The "Always expanded" option leaves all the long strings full length. "Expand when selected" is a recommended option and forces all the strings to be shorten unless you select an item. In the latter case all the strings are expanded. It option is a good compromise between saving screen estate and getting full information about an item quickly. See the result below (please note that in the preview "Expand when selected" and "Always expanded" look the same way).

View style: Here you can change the general style of your appointment list. Select a variant and see the result below.

Show status bar: Select this check box to enable showing the vertical bar along one appointment entry in the list. The color of this bar indicates the appointment status, which can be one of Free, Tentative, Busy, and Out Of Office.

Show location: Unselect this checkbox to hide the appointments’s location.

Only start time: Unselect this checkbox to hide the appointment’s end time and save some screen space.

Calendar Options. Icons

At this page you can select icons accompanying appointments in the list. These icons provide additional visual information about every appointment. Besides, more actions get available through these icons. For example, tapping on the attached "note" icon opens a pop-up with this note, and the "reminder" icon allows to quickly change the reminder time for a given appointment.

Icon to the left: Select an icon that will be displayed to the left of an appointment (unless this icon is not applicable for this appointment).

Other icons shown: Select other icons to go along with calendar entries (if applicable). See the sample entry below.

Tasks Options. Common

Ask to confirm task completion: Keep this check box selected if you want to see the confirmation message when completing tasks to prevent accidental task completion by mistake.

Show active tasks only: If selected, then you will see only your active tasks. A task is called active if it is not yet completed and its start date is today or in the past or it does not have start date at all.

Show completed tasks: If selected, the completed tasks will be shown, too.

Show tasks in all categories: This option is important when you group tasks by category and some of your tasks are associated with more than one category. If you select this check box then every particular task will be displayed within one single category it is associated with. Otherwise it will be shown within each category it is associated with.

Tasks Options. View Style

Show subject: Select one of three possible ways to display long task subjects in the list.The "Always shorten" option forces to show all the strings shorten to one line, if needed. The "Always expanded" option leaves all the long strings full length along with all icons. "Expand when selected" is a recommended option and forces all the strings to be shorten unless you select an item. In the latter case all the strings are expanded. It option is a good compromise between saving screen estate and getting full information about an item quickly. See the result below (please note that in the preview "Expand when selected" and "Always expanded" look the same way).

Show completion check box: Unselect this option to hide the completion check box. If it is enabled then you will be able to use it to mark a task as completed by tapping the checkbox. If this option is disabled you still can complete task via the context menu.

Make date indent: Uncheck this option to disable a date-width indent to the left of every task entry to save some screen space (applicable for long task subjects).

Tasks Options. Icons

At this page you can select icons accompanying tasks in the list. These icons provide additional visual information about every task. Besides, more actions get available through these icons. For example, tapping on the attached "note" icon opens a pop-up with this note.

Icon to the left: Select an icon that will be displayed to the left of a task (unless this icon is not applicable for this task).

Other icons shown: Select other icons to go along with tasks (if applicable). See the sample entry below.

Contacts Options. Common

Search panel (None, Latin, Cyrillic, Both): Select a character set to be represented in the search panel of your Contacts tab. Select None to avoid showing the search panel.

Group by: Select a grouping method for your contacts. Grouping is especially useful when you have a lot of contacts.

By single tap (No action, Open item, Edit item, Show preview): Select an action that will be performed on sigle tap on a contact list entry.

Show contacts in all categories: This option is important only when you group contacts by category and have some contacts which are associated with more than one category. If not selected, every particular contact will be shown only in one category it is refered to. Otherwise it will be shown as many times as many categories it is associated with.

Show photo contacts: Nothing can represent your contacts better that photo thumbnails. Representing contacts with photos keeps all the functionality, such as using search panel, context menu, etc. If you want to represent your contacts as small photos, select this check box. In this case all contacts that have photos will be put at the top of the contact list.

Contacts Options. Icons

At this page you can select icons accompanying your contacts in the list. These icons provide additional visual information about every contact. Besides, more actions get available through these icons. For example, tapping on the attached "note" icon opens a pop-up with this note.

Icon to the left: Select an icon that will be displayed to the left of a contact (unless this icon is not applicable for this contact).

Other icons shown: Select other icons to go along with your contacts (if applicable). See the sample entry below.

Avoid left indent: This option is available when there is no icon shown to the left of the item for saving some screen real estate.

Options. Category Icons

To select an icon to go along with items within a certain category:
Select a category in the list and then press the Add/Change button. You will be proopsed to select an icon.
When you have a certain icon selected for a category, you can remove it by pressing the Remove button.

You can also see all entries associated with a certain category in some specific color. To assign some color to a category, select the category and the color where proposed.

See Also
Spb Diary Help

Options. Category Icons. Choosing Icons

At this page you can see a collection of icons to be selected for different categories. If you select an icon, it will go along with all items within the specified category. Tap on an icon and then tap ok.

You can show the icon list in full viewor in compact view usng the menu.

You can select another icon set stored on your device. To do so, open the drop-down menu at top left corner of the screen and select Add Icon Set... Then browse your file system for an icon set location.

See Also
Spb Diary Help

New/Edit Filter Dialog

In this dialog you are supposed to configure a filter, your calendar, task or contact items will be shown in accordance with.

Filter text box: Select an existing filter or select New Filter to create a new one.

Delete: Tap to delete the selected filter from the list

Category list: Below you can see the list of existing categories. Select categories you wish to pass this filter. You can use the Check All and Uncheck All buttons.

Show items matching any category: If you selected more than one category, then by selecting this combo box you fix that you want to show only items matching any one of the categories.

Show items matching all categories: If you selected more than one category, then by selecting this combo box you fix that you want to show only items matching all selected categories.

Add newly created categories to this filter: Mark this check box if you want categories you create in the future to be automatically added to this filter. Just imagine that you have two categories altogether: "Business" and "Personal" and want to create a filter hiding all uncategorized items. In this case you should manually mark "Business" and "Personal" check boxes (leaving the "Add newly created categories to this filter" unmarked and having the "Business+Personal" filter as a result) or tap the "Check All" button and unmark the "No Categories" check box (having the "Add newly created categories to this filter" marked and having the "-No Categories" filter as a result). both filters described above will work in the same way — they will hide all the uncategorized items. So these two filters seem to work in the same way but they are different since that have different values of the "Add newly created categories to this filter" check box. In order to see the difference between them, just imagine that in a couple days of you create a new category named "Holiday". Now open the previously created "Business+Personal" filter. You will see that the new category is not marked. On the other hand, if you open the previously created "-No Categories" filter you will see the new category marked. As a result, the "Holiday" items will not pass through the first filter and will pass through the second one. So it is recommended to mark the "Add newly created categories to this filter" when you create a filter for hiding some categories and to leave it unmarked when creating a filter for showing one or several categories.

See Also
Spb Diary Help

General Options. Long Date

Default for current regional settings: Keep this check box selected if you are satisfied with the date showing format specified in Regional Settings. Otherwise unselect this check box and select the desired data format from the drop-down list.

Don't use year: Select if you want to skip year in dates.

Short year: Select if you want to show year in a short format (e.g. 05 instead of 2005). Option unavailable if year is not shown.

Short month: Select if you want to show month in a short format (e.g. Mar instead of March).

Short day name: Select if you want to show the day name in short format (e.g. Fri instead of Friday).

You can follow the link at the bottom of the dialog to jump to Regional Settings.

General Options. Tabs

In this dialog you can select which tabs of Spb Diary will be shown on your Today screen. Select Tasks, Contacts, Notes, Messages, and Special Events check boxes to allow showing of the corresponding tabs in Spb Diary Today plug-in.

Notes Options. Common

In this dialog you can configure some settings for the Notes tab of your Spb Diary Today plug-in.

Search panel: Select a character set to be represented in the search panel of your Notes tab. Select None to avoid showing the search panel.

Group by: Select a grouping mode for your notes.

Sort by: Select a sorting mode for your notes.

By single tap: Select an action to be performed when you tap a note. The default action is showing preview. In this case a small pop-up window appears for quick viewing of the note. From this pop-up you can open a full screen note for editing or delete a note by using icons in the title bar.

Notes Options. View Style

Show note size: Select to enable showing the size of note files.

Show modification time: Select to enable showing the time of last note file modification.

Make grouping indent: This option adds a small left indent to notes in the group, which makes viewing groups more intuitive. Disable this option to save a little screen space

Notes Options

In Notes options you can customize the interface of the Notes tab of your Spb Diary Today plug-in.

Notes Options. Common:
Search panel, grouping, sorting, ...
Notes Options. View Style:
File size showing, modification time showing, grouping indents, ...
Notes Options. Show:
Select what kinds of notes and files to show

See Also
Spb Diary Help

Notes

Notes is a separate tab of Spb Diary application. The Notes tab shows all your notes, grouped by date and time or folder and filtered, if necessary. The new feature of Spb Diary is possibility to show text and Pocket Word files as well as PhatNotes notes stored on your Pocket PC device in the Notes tab of Spb Diary Today plug-in.

You can quickly view a note by tapping on the note icon. For detailed viewing or editing a note you can select the "Open Note" command from the context menu.

As for other tabs of Spb Diary Today plug-in you are recommended to use commands of the context menus. From the context menu you can open and delete notes, rename and beam them, etc. You can also convert a note into appointment, task or contact via the context menu. Convertion means that you can quickly create a new appointment, task or contact looking at the note. For example, you had little time to write down someone's phone number. You write it in a new note and later choose to convert this note into a contact. You don't need to remember the phone because when converting, the number is in front of your eyes.

Messages

Messages is a separate tab of Spb Diary application. The Messages tab shows all your email messages, grouped and filtered, if necessary.

The message preview is very handy. By tapping on a message you can quickly preview it with ability to reply, forward, delete or open message for editing.

As for other tabs of Spb Diary Today plug-in you are recommended to use commands of the context menus. From the context menu you can open and delete messages, reply, reply to all, forward, mark as unread, mark for download and get access to options.

Messages Options

Sort by: Choose a sorting method for displaying your messages on the Today plug-in.

By single tap: Select an action to perform on single tap on a message. From the preview window you can quickly see the message, open it for editing, reply, forward or delete it by using the corresponding icons in the title bar.

Mark as read on preview: When selected, every message will marked as "read" if you have already previewed it. If you wan to keep the previewed messages unread, unselect this check box.

Show empty accounts: If selected, you will also see separate entries for accounts with no emails in their inbox, or no new emails depending on options (if you want to see only unread emails).

Show unread messages: If selected, only unread messages will be displayed in this tab and they will automaticalle disappear when you read them.

See also
Spb Diary Help

Calendar Options. Tasks

In this dialog you can set if you want to show tasks on your Calendar tab, and if yes, which tasks to show.

The items are clear enough and don't need any additional explanation.

Messages Options

In Messages options you can customize the interface of the Messages tab of your Spb Diary Today plug-in.

Messages Options:
Sorting method, actions of single tap, showing read messages, ...

See Also
Spb Diary Help

General Options. Skins

Spb Diary supports skins for changing the view of the Today plug-in elements (almost all icons that can be put on Spb Diary Today plug-in). Please select a skin and see the result below.

General Options. Auto Return.

You can set some of the six tabs of Spb Diary Today plug-ins as the main one. You can set the plug-in to automatically return into this main tab after a certain time interval. To do so, select the default tab of Spb Diary Today plug-in using the View drop-down list and provide the desired time interval using the Time-out drop-down list.

Contacts Options. View Style

Sort by: Select the order of personal names to sort contacts within each group.

View style: Select the style of showing contact entries.

Notes Options. Show

Here you can select what items to show within the Notes tab:

Standard notes: Select to enable showing the standard notes.
Recording notes: Select to enable showing the audio notes.
Text files: You can display your text files withi the Notes tab with ability to quickly open and preview them as standard notes.
Pocket Word files: You can also add your Pocket Word documents into the Notes tab.
PhatNotes notes: Spb Diary can now recognize and represent PhatNotes notes. If you have PhatNotes installed on your Pocket PC device you can see them in Spb Diary Today plug-in.

Special Events Options

In Special Events options you can customize the interface of the Special Events tab of your Spb Diary Today plug-in.

Special Events Options:
Period of time, showing birthdays, anniversaries, financial data, ...

See Also
Spb Diary Help

Special Events Options

Show events for next: Provide the time interval (from week to year), for which the special events will be chosen.

Show Birthdays & Anniversaries: Select to include birthdays and anniversaries into your special events. We remind you that all information about birthdays and anniversaries is automatically taken from your own contacts.

Show Finance scheduled transactions: Select to include scheduled transactions into your special events. All information about scheduled transactions is taken from Spb Finance application, if it is installed on your Pocket PC device.

See Also
Spb Diary Help

Special Events

Special events is a separate tab of Spb Diary Today plug-in. Special Events tab is the best way to quickly overview at all birthdays and anniversaries of people from your contacts and/or your scheduled money transactions for a long period of time.

Contact entries within the Special Events tab can be treated as normal contacts, with ability to see their profiles, dial their phone numbers, send messages, etc. Scheduled transactions from the Special Events tab can be treated quite as in the Calendar tab.

For your convenience events are grouped by months and by weeks for the current month (or, you can select to see all items without grouping from the menu).