ActivityOwner.Com – Getting Things Done with MindManager

It’s not actually “ResultsManager 7” — the humble folks at Gyronix have only incremented their 3rd digit (2.7.7 to 2.7.8) — but for a free upgrade, their upcoming MindManager 7-compatible release provides a significantly improved interface and adds real day-to-day value. While experienced users may have some difficulty generally adapting to MindManager 7’s Microsoft Fluent UI, I believe the converse will be true for ResultsManager itself.

The new ResultsManager tab (below) on the “Ribbon” toolbar pulls all its functions and features together into one place — accessible visually with one mouse click or by their familiar short-cut keys. This simplifies day-to-day use as well as providing a focal point for training new and potential users. I’ve been beta testing the program for a couple weeks and got the OK from Nick to give a a quick run down for ActivityOwner.Com readers. Here are the highlights by command group:

Dashboard
You can create a dashboard or send changes from a dashboard with a button click (or Alt-e-d). In addition, you can now open the dashboard’s underlying template in one click. This previously took several steps to track down which template was associated with the dashboard, find it, and open it. This is a huge time saver if you are developing a template or just curious what is going on behind the scenes.

Activity
You have quick access to the “edit activity” button, or can access it with Alt-e-y or by clicking right on a topic. You also have button access to insert activities (alt-i-y) or set them complete (alt-e-c). My favorite new feature is quick and visual access provided to the common icons used by ResultsManager. Now you have one-click ability to toggle a branch’s exclusion or toggle its activity, project, or someday/maybe status. You previously would need to launch the (sometimes sluggish) “edit activity” dialog to do this or drag icons from other topics. Again, this is a huge time saver.

Tools
The “Multimap Checker” searches your map network for broken links, maps you have a role in, and outlook business topics. This has been around for awhile, but the accessibility granted by this button will increase its use. I actually hadn’t even used it frequently enough to realize the benefit of the “has tasks I own” functionality. The “add dashboard filter” button aids in building custom dashboard templates. Again, this is something I’ve tended not to use when it was buried in Mindmanager 6 menus.

Options
You can customize the order of the the command groups in the ResultsManager tab under “options”. Some may prefer the order to be “Dashboards” followed by “Activity” (as shown above), rather than the default “Activity”, “Dashboards”.

Help
Help is more accessible along with the demonstration and implementation maps.

“Instrumented View”
A final new feature (available for version 6 users as well) is an “instrumented view” of what ResultsManager is up to while it is generating a dashboard. Instead of seeing a progress bar advance and reset multiple times, now you can watch the program progress through opening all your maps and then generating the dashboard. This gives you a good sense of the where the program is as well as to identify opportunities for improving generation speed.

General
The Ribbons is “smart” — it knows what type of map is currently open and only highlights the applicable functions. This helps you understand what you can do in a given context and avoid error messages. Commonly used ResultsManager commands have also been added as appropriate to the individual MindManager “Home”, “Insert”, and “Tools” ribbon bars for more convenient access.

Gyronix could have easily taken the easy road on this upgrade and just assigned the existing commands to shortcuts under the Application menu and the topic context menu. Their hard work here really hits it out of the park and saves MindJet’s bacon by making V7 a compelling rather than disruptive upgrade that adds significant value to new and existing ResultsManager users.

MindManager 7 is available today for a 21-day trial and an upgrade price of $119. Although not recommended, you can use V7 side by side with v6 (a feature in itself) with just occasional glitches due to v7 “winning” (e.g. when you double click on a map, Snag-it imports) on ties. The earlier ActivityOwner.Com review of MindManager 7 points out some of the nice features in upgrade. The main downside cited was the learning curve associated with the new Ribbon interface, which lessens over time. You can avoid a major portion of the learning curve if you re-enable the side-bar tabs. Instructions for exercising this somewhat hidden option are available in the “MindManger 7 Setup Tips” under construction on the wiki.

ResultsManager is still in beta testing as Gyronix runs the new code they have added through its paces. Current licenced users can download it at http://www.gyronix.com/go.php?750 and help Gyronix shake it down, recognizing that is is not officially released at this time.

MindReader has been upgraded to work with Version 7 and works well with our without GyroQ. The only remaining “ActivityOwner Tool” issue to be worked out for v7 is getting the automated GyroQ “Put it in Front of the Door” script working reliably. It current can be made to work for one dashboard by using send keys to trigger the dashboard regeneration rather than the GyroQ run:rm:dashboard command. Hopefully this can be simplified in future MindManager releases. . See Putting it in front of the door again for instructions on addressing this issue.