These were written with the OS X client in mind, but hopefully the spirit of the updates could be reflected on the other clients as well.
Bulk Change Due Date
This will be extremely convenient for anyone trying to do something non-trivial with the Reminder feature. There is currently no alternative except to manually click each note, go to Reminder -> Change Date -> click calendar/click the text entry field and update it there. If you want to change 10 date-less reminders to be due at the end of the month, it's a big hassle.
Users should be able to change the Due Date on multiple reminders at once.
When multiple notes are selected, the "multi-select" screen that appears in Snippet View should have a "Set Reminder Due Dates" field.
The right-click menu should have an "Add/Change Reminder Due Date" entry which changes to "Set Reminder Due Dates" when multiple notes are selected.
The "Note" menu should have an "Add/Change Reminder Due Date" entry which changes to "Set Reminder Due Dates" when multiple notes are selected.
Completion History
The current lack of history and searchability of completed reminders is contrary to Evernote's core premise of being able to find stuff based on any relevant vector. It's pretty reasonable to ask "Okay... what did I get done last week?", and I was honestly surprised to find that it is currently not possible.
When a user marks a note reminder as Complete...
The "Alarm" icon changes from blue to green.
The completion is noted permanently on the Note somehow. Ideas:
A "Completed Date" field appears in the Note Info dialogue with today's date ("Completed:" would also show up next to "Created:" and "Updated:" in the main note view). This is much more invasive to code since it would get the Reminder model chocolate all up in the Note model peanut butter, but is much more preferable because it encourages searchability and has a cleaner appearance.
A History entry is created for the note that reads "Marked Complete by {User}"
A "completed" tag is automatically added to the Note. In Preferences -> Reminders, there is a checkbox called "Tag completed Notes" that toggles this behavior. When the checkbox is checked, Input A and Input B become enabled. Input A is a text box which is populated by default with "completed". Input B is a checkbox with the label "Append the current date to completion tags", which will result in completed Notes being tagged "completed 1/6/2014" for example.
Reminder Milestones
The Reminders feature is excellent, especially with the beautifully-implemented "Upcoming Reminders" list that appears in Snippet View.
I think a simple "Milestones" feature would make them even more functional and intuitive.
Basically a Milestone is an unspecified point in time that represents a bunch of other tasks being completed.
For example, you could have a "To-Do List" notebook, and create a Milestone Note for each month. Or if you're working on a home improvement project, you could have a Milestone for "Licenses and Raw Materials", another for "Basic Construction", and another for "Finishing Touches".
When a user clicks on the gray Alarm icon for a Note with no reminder, the resulting popup now has two buttons. In addition to the "Add a Date" button, there is a "Set Milestone" button.
When a user clicks on the blue Alarm icon for a Note with a reminder, there is a fourth button that reads "Clear Milestone"/"Set Milestone" based on whether the Note is already a Milestone.
Milestone Reminders have a distinct background color in the "Upcoming Reminders" list, and their title appears in Bold-weighted font. They are otherwise functionally identical to normal Reminders in terms of setting dates, dragging to reorder, and notifications.
Nice-to-Have: Notes with Milestone Reminders have another button/icon somewhere that automatically updates their text to be a Table of Contents listing ONLY the Notes that are part of that Milestone, which is determined by the following rules:
A note is considered to be part of a Milestone if it...
Appears ABOVE the Milestone in the "Upcoming Reminders" list (either by default positioning or by a user manually dragging it there)
Does NOT appear above any other Milestones in the "Upcoming Reminders" list.
In other words, a Note can only be part of one Milestone at a time, and a Milestone is comprised of all Notes that appear BETWEEN that Milestone and either the next Milestone above it OR the top of the "Upcoming Reminders" list.
Nice-to-Have: When a Note is completed, if it is part of a Milestone according to the above rules, a link to it is added to a "Completed Reminders" list at the bottom of the Milestone Note. If the list does not exist, it is created. This is similar to the "Table of Contents" functionality, but on a Note-by-Note basis.
ALTERNATIVELY, there could be a lo-fi way of doing this by simply allowing Reminders to have some basic formatting applied on the "Upcoming Reminders" view. For example, if you select one or more Reminders on the "Upcoming Reminders" list, open the Color list, and select a color, the background color of that Note's entry would change to the selected color. It could conceivably work with the Font list too.
Idea
couch bandit 3
These were written with the OS X client in mind, but hopefully the spirit of the updates could be reflected on the other clients as well.
Bulk Change Due Date
This will be extremely convenient for anyone trying to do something non-trivial with the Reminder feature. There is currently no alternative except to manually click each note, go to Reminder -> Change Date -> click calendar/click the text entry field and update it there. If you want to change 10 date-less reminders to be due at the end of the month, it's a big hassle.
Completion History
The current lack of history and searchability of completed reminders is contrary to Evernote's core premise of being able to find stuff based on any relevant vector. It's pretty reasonable to ask "Okay... what did I get done last week?", and I was honestly surprised to find that it is currently not possible.
Reminder Milestones
The Reminders feature is excellent, especially with the beautifully-implemented "Upcoming Reminders" list that appears in Snippet View.
I think a simple "Milestones" feature would make them even more functional and intuitive.
Basically a Milestone is an unspecified point in time that represents a bunch of other tasks being completed.
For example, you could have a "To-Do List" notebook, and create a Milestone Note for each month. Or if you're working on a home improvement project, you could have a Milestone for "Licenses and Raw Materials", another for "Basic Construction", and another for "Finishing Touches".
ALTERNATIVELY, there could be a lo-fi way of doing this by simply allowing Reminders to have some basic formatting applied on the "Upcoming Reminders" view. For example, if you select one or more Reminders on the "Upcoming Reminders" list, open the Color list, and select a color, the background color of that Note's entry would change to the selected color. It could conceivably work with the Font list too.
Thank you for your time!
- Max
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