[NTLK] Something Action Names users should know.

From: Dan (dan_at_dbdigitalweb.com)
Date: Tue Feb 03 2004 - 19:51:30 PST


I thought I would mention a few things about action names. It has been
mentioned before that AN has its own format for Todo's and Calls. And as I
have said it can import to and from the original Todo and Calls soups.
However with Calls it gets interesting in that when you convert to AN, it
will lose the Name line of Calls. Actually when you import from Calls to AN
it does take the "Title" line from Calls, but often not the name of the
person you called which is on the Name line.

For instance if you just pulled up names, taped the phone icon to make a
call (which brings up the Calls app with everything filled in and the timer
starting), then import to AN, it will often loose the name. You will see
"Call Placed" which is the default title in AN but nothing on the "Who"
line which should be the name of the person you called.

Now if you start the call from the Calls app itself, the title will have the
name of the person you called (ex Call to Joe Shmoe). Which will then be
moved to AN when you convert (on the "Title" line of AN). And if the person
is still in names, the "Who" line will be filled in with the name of the
person you called as well.

The reason why I mention all of this is when I first installed action names
I found that I had a ton of calls that I could not tell who they were to.
All I had was "call placed", the phone number, and any info that was in the
notes section. Needless to say I was very grateful I made a backup before
installing AN!

So if you have a bunch of entries in the Calls app that only have "Call
placed" for the title, I would suggest copying the name to the title before
you install AN. Anyone know of a package that does this easily?

Thankfully converting the AN data back to the standard Soups does not have
any pitfalls other than you will probably loose AN specific links/hyper
names and the "when" picker in Calls is dated to the time the data back from
AN to the original Calls soup. But all notes will convert back without
problems. Also the Todo's don't seem to have any problems converting one
way or the other. I am really surprised though that AN just does not
convert from the "Name"line on the Call app to the "Who"line in AN.

Oh one other thing I have found, if "Rollovers" (set in preferences) for
Todo's and Calls is disabled when you convert, AN seems to run out of heap
and you get the "Newton does not have enough memory to do what you
asked.....etc" message.

-Dan

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