Windows Phone Thoughts: A Whole New Today -- Snoopsoft Dashboard v2 Reviewed

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Friday, April 23, 2004

A Whole New Today -- Snoopsoft Dashboard v2 Reviewed

Posted by Don Tolson in "SOFTWARE" @ 09:30 AM


Integration With The Standard PIM Applications
One of the best features of the Dashboard is its ability to bring more of the PIM information to the Today screen of your Pocket PC. There are lots of replacement PIMs that integrate appointments, tasks, and email, but they require that you go into the PIM to see the consolidated view. With Dashboard, everything is right there when you turn on the PDA.

Since each skin may present the information in a different manner, I’ll focus on the default skin provided by Snoopsoft.

Dashboard provides view modules for:
  • Agenda items;
  • Tasks;
  • Email and;
  • Contacts.
Each of them makes use of the existing Pocket Outlook databases, so there is no concern about keeping different versions of data in sync. The response time moving from PIM-related view-to-view was sometimes a little slow -- taking about three to four seconds to load information for the new view. Readers of my other articles will know by now, though, that I tend to keep a lot of information in my appointment and tasks databases (almost 18 months worth!) and have approximately 200 contacts.

The Agenda module shows upcoming appointments for today and tomorrow, with icons to the right to show if this is a recurring appointment, all-day event, meeting with others, etc.


Figure 6: Dashboard’s Agenda view (with tasks).

Arrows to the left and right of the clock at the bottom of the screen allow you to move backward or forward one day. Tapping on the clock itself will present a calendar where you can select which day to display. The arrow to the left of the date is an icon which, when tapped, collapses the appointment information for that date through three levels – full, single line per appointment, or just the date line (no appointments visible).

Using the magnifying glass icon at the bottom of the screen, you can change the size of the font through two larger sizes – making things a bit easier for us eyesight-challenged folks. The Agenda module also shows Tasks, according to the currently defined criteria in the Tasks module.

The Tasks module can be configured to show All Tasks, Active Only, Due Today, or by any of your defined categories. This is done by tapping the Tasks header displayed on the screen. Something to be aware of with ‘Active Only’ is that it does not by default, display Tasks with no due date. This is a bit different from the operation we see in the Tasks module of Pocket Outlook, but can be adjusted via the Task module options.


Figure 7: The Task module (configured for ‘All’ tasks).

The Contacts module is similar to that provided in Pocket Outlook, but according to the standards of the skin selected. One neat addition is that when you tap on an entry in the Contacts list, a separate box opens up overtop of the screen, displaying all the contact information available.


Figure 8: Contacts module display.


Figure 9: Display of expanded contact information.

I don't have a POP3 email server available :( , so I wasn't able to try out the email portion of Dashboard. I understand from the documentation though, that there are two versions available. Basic email functions (review, reply, etc.) are provided in the module supplied with Dashboard. If you want advanced email functionality, you can purchase a different module from Snoopsoft.

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