Major Sub-Release 1.7.0 is Available

I'm glad to present a new major sub-release of Golden Rules Organizer, featuring these highlights:

• Better usability
• Scalable contact management
• Enhanced scheduler.

Better Usability

• Portable installation to USB drive (see instructions) allows to manage single database for all locations (e.g., home and work PC).
  
  NOTE: it is still highly recommended to always backup the data at end of work to an Internet storage provider, such as Dropbox or Google Docs, to recover from USB drive failure or loss.
  
• Activity details dialog rewritten for usability, and to accomodate new contact selection dialog (see below)
  
  
  
• Event notifications via reminders. Message box 'Some activities were escalated, canceled, or expired' is replaced by detailed reminders (combined with appointment reminders), with ability to jump to respective activity, project, or plan.
  
• Go-To Shortcut (Ctrl+Shift+G). Selecting a row in a secondary / third level grid (e.g., Contacts-->Activities) and pressing the shortcut, will reposition you to respective object (in this example, Activity) in its primary tab (respectively, Activities).
  
  Previously, this was achieved by right-clicking the object (e.g., Activity), choosing Go To in the popup menu, and selecting Activity in the sub-menu. This is still the correct process if you wish to jump to a referenced object (e.g., activity contact) while standing on referring object (activity) - no matter in which tab.

Scalable Contact Management

• Contact tags. It is now possible to allocate multiple hierarchical tags to a contact, making him in fact a member of multiple contact groups. Standing on a tag, all contacts belonging to tag or its descendants will be shown in the secondary Tags-->Contacts tab.
  
  It is possible to add multiple contacts to a tag in one action, or respectively, multiple tags to a contact.
  
  Also, project tags were added.
  
• New contact selection dialog. Drop-down list is replaced by a table driven selection dialog, with ability to select contacts by tags.
  
  
  
  It is possible to customize the table (fields, their order and width) like any grid table, using the table control in the upper right corner.

Enhanced Scheduler

Scheduler is a new facility, first appearing in v1.6.0 (this article covers changes since that release). Significant effort is spent, and will continue to be spent, to create state-of-the art, non-graphical scheduler.

• Agenda and Minutes-Of-Meeting. It is now possible to plan the agenda of an appointment, while agenda items may be optionally linked to existing activities, projects, contacts, objectives,and values. Duration and order of each item may be specified.
  
  Agenda may be printed, or e-mailed, using Appointment Report.
  
  By end of appointment, Log entries may be created per agenda item, and Appointment Report may be produced again - this time, including Minutes of Meeting.
• Appointment Reminders. Each appointment may be assigned a reminder; default reminder is 15 minutes before start, and it may be customized using Tools-->Options.
  
  Popup window with reminder sound will appear at requested time. Popup window may include multiple reminders, and allows to jump to an event record (in this case, appointment).