Update on the ActivityOwner.Com MindManager Add-ins
I wanted to provide an update on my project of converting tools on the activityowner.com site to MindManager Add-ins.
The wiki.activityowner.com now has three independent stand-alone add-ins installs with domains that point to them:
- http://wiki.activityowner.com/index.php?title=MindReader,
- http://wiki.activityowner.com/index.php?title=Mark_Task_Complete
- http://map2excel.com,
and of course http://wiki.activityowner.com/index.php?title=OutLinker.
Each add-in is really stand-alone now and will be less intimidating for new users to understand and install separately. The buttons on the toolbars can be added to the quick-access toolbar as well. The add-ins only act when their command buttons are pressed, so one should expect any impact on performance or other incompatibilities by installing them.
Map2Excel interface:
It has been an interesting puzzle to convert legacy MindManager macros to more modern (and faster executing) VB.Net code. Thank you to the folks who have tested early version of these. I think the major bugs have been worked out, but there will be a few more for sure. Please kick the tires and comment below as you encounter them.
The new add-ins are no longer depend on GyroQ or the legacy setup/installation, but they backward compatible and share the “legacy” MindReader for GyroQ configuration files, so old and new can be used in parallel. OutLinker still needs to be ribbon-ized in OutLook to simplify its installation.
MarkTaskComplete interface:
The wiki has been overhauled to point to the new add-ins. All four should have some appeal to regular MindManager users. You don’t need to be ResultsManager user to make good use of them. With some menu elbow room they should grow a bit in functionality over time (e.g. new button to open last months completion map, analyze it, etc).
Note that Mindreader install brings along dashboard buttons, NAA, and Outlook dashboard syncing, but hides them unless user has RM installed.
The site is up to about $85 in donations (thank you), so we will need to see if this can be sustained once my Visual Studio trial expires.
MindReader interface:
Entries 
ActivityOwner said,
March 28, 2011 @ 7:50 pm
Note that the version of the marktaskcomplete add-in uploaded Saturday didn’t automatically activate itself. It needs to be manually activated under mindmanager options. The new version should install OK.
ActivityOwner said,
March 28, 2011 @ 8:44 pm
Actually MarkTaskComplete is not working so well at the moment, so hold off on that one.
ActivityOwner said,
March 28, 2011 @ 9:26 pm
OK — MarkTaskComplete is working better. Under XP/MM8, I found I had to uninstall the previous version to get the new version to “take”. It should be doing that automatically.
ActivityOwner said,
March 29, 2011 @ 7:34 am
Note that if you are not using dropbox or you are not worried about having files open from more than one machine, you can speed up marktaskcomplete by changing the “savemaps” option in the completedconfig.mmap to 0.
ActivityOwner said,
March 31, 2011 @ 7:50 am
I have also noticed that the version checking code is not working correctly in some of the add-ins. If you get an error after it prompts you to see if the code is up to date, you need to go into the configuration map in the AO directory for the program and set the versioncheckfrequency option to 0. Sorry about this. It will take me a few days to fix and put up a new version.
ActivityOwner said,
April 1, 2011 @ 6:51 am
A new version of MindReader is now uploaded that addresses the version check issue. It also adds 6 context buttons (@home, @phone, @errand, @web, @desk, @anywhere) and 3 time-required buttons (15m, 1h, 2h). Eventually I’ll get the context buttons to be configurable.
ActivityOwner said,
April 3, 2011 @ 7:43 pm
Note that the latest version of the MindReader add-in allows the user to configure the context, time, and due buttons to whatever set of keywords they desire. For example, the 15m, 1h, 2h buttons can be reconfigured to P1, P2, P3 for setting priority.
Fred Beiderbecke said,
April 10, 2011 @ 9:39 pm
Have you considered BizSpark for you Visual Studio licensing? It is a Microsoft program to get tools in the hands of developers. Here is the url http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/.
Migrating some of your tools to Windows Phone 7 would probably get their attention.
Nicholas said,
March 29, 2013 @ 12:57 am
Hi, I’ve just stumbled across your blog after trying to research
a way to improve my goal achieving productivity. I’m attempting
to create a re-occurring task in mindjet which can be exported
into MSProject. Is it possible to do this with your tools?
So far I’ve installed “Mark Task Complete” and added the categories
“Monday”, “Wednesday” and “30m” to a task which has a duration extending to 2 months
but when I export the mindmap to MSProject (2007) it doesn’t show the
task occurring on mon/wed only over a long duration of two months.
(As it would without the add-in)
I’m pretty new to all this and would appreciate anyway you
can help me fix this (as mindjet doesn’t contain re-occuring tasks
and msproject doesn’t convert re-occurring tasks, only replaces them)
Here is an image example:
http://s15.postimg.org/6hklwwtu3/Screenshot.jpg
Kind regards
ActivityOwner said,
April 23, 2013 @ 7:31 am
Hi Nicholas — Sorry for the delay in my reply. Your comment slipped by me. The Mark Task Complete add-in reads the tags on the task to set the next due date (and/or start date) at the time that the previous task is completed. There isn’t an inherent reoccurring feature in a map that would export to MSProject.
Travis Carnahan said,
January 31, 2017 @ 10:10 pm
Any plans to upgrade mindreader for GyroQ to be compatible with MM16?
ActivityOwner said,
January 31, 2017 @ 11:42 pm
Hi Travis — “Mindreader for GyroQ” morphed into something I don’t think Gyronix ever anticipated in terms of complexity and functionality, largely because it was the only way I knew to add functionality to MindManager and ResultsManager. Feeding all that complexity into a queue file with potential special characters to break things was concerning, and it was not as fast as I would have liked.
With some coaching from Olympic, I was able to convert mindreader into a compiled add-in, and included in that a pop-up window that mimicked the way MindReader for GyroQ functioned. I’d recommend giving that a try. Its not feasible for me to go back and try to upgrade the (very) old code from that era.
With mobile devices and cloud syncronization, I’ve moved to Omnifocus for GTD type project management at home and to more intense use of the Outlook task list at work, so limit MindManager to brainstorming these days.