Calendar Integration

andrew

Jay The way I use Legend, I would delete from Google Calendar 100% of the time. Please make this an option or provide some other way to bypass the prompt, whether using a different hotkey and/or context menu item.

ahp

andrew Agree with the need for some options to handle various people’s use cases.

For my use case, the use of Calendar integration is primary to “pull/drag” calendar events into an Outline (because my mental model for work notes ties events to notes.

But, for my personal notes/knowledge repository side of using Legend, I really don’t care for notification/confirmation prompts (it’s not a big deal if I accidentally delete a sync’d gCal event that I’ve invited my wife to and need to re-add it).

@Jay One additinal way to think about the notification options may be to tie them to the Calendar settings? So, under Sync Plugins -> Calendar, where you show the Calendar Name / Sync / Is Default Save table, add a column for “Confirm Changes” on a per calendar level? So, in my “work” calendar I would enable the option. And, in @andrew ’s case, he would uncheck the option for all calendars.

andrew

ahp Actually I didn’t even realize that you could drag a calendar event to the outline… have never done that in almost 5 years of using Moo.do/Legend. I can see how that could be pretty useful and may start doing that myself. And I see why in that case it is more important to have control over how changes and deletions to the outline item affect the calendar event.

Perhaps when an item is created in the outline, it can be internally noted whether it was created from an existing calendar event or not, and then when deleting (or changing?) an item, if it was created from an existing calendar event, then there is a confirmation prompt, otherwise not.

You’re idea of making it a calendar-specific option would work for me also, since all my Legend items go into a separate calendar from my other calendars.

Jay

ahp I like this idea to add an option per calendar. I’ll try to aim for that. It seems like in the latest version it is not removing from Google Calendar when you select “No”, but it does disappear from panes until the next refresh. I’ll try to fix that in the next update.

Jay

ahp I have a change coming that adds a setting for an “Editable” setting with three options:
Yes: Edits sync automatically
Prompt: Prompt before editing outside of Calendar
No: Edits are not allowed outside of Calendar

Prompt keeps the item editable until selecting into a different item as you suggested. I like that.

By default it’s Yes, which would have the same behavior as before. But this will give you the ability to have some calendars that are safer with prompting, or some that are fully safe by just not being editable.

I think these changes should only affect non-Calendar panes? If you move or rename an event in a Calendar pane, that should just save rather than prompting, right?

Does that sound good? It’s after midnight here so I’ll test it more in the morning and release a new beta.

Jerud

I think much of what you want to do can be handled with existing tools (so long as you don’t run afoul of some of the bugs/issues). See below for my input on those.

The biggest problem you’re going to hit is with Google Calendar-synced events and features. Gcal sync is neat but in all my years of using Legend it’s never been robust enough for me to trust it. Too many things don’t survive the sync (like prefixes), Gcal features don’t get pulled in to Legend (like attendees), and something always seems to break (currently, changes to time/date in Legend don’t push up to Gcal). I no longer Gsync events but I don’t coordinate with others so that works fine for me.

Ability to use the “/” menu to add a calendar event into my Outline

A ‘calendar event’ is just an item with a !date assigned. So you can drop that new item into your outline in the Board you’re already viewing, or use the “new item” dialog box (hotkey is available) to create a new item and apply the !tag in there.

Ability to “merge” or “link” a Outline section to an existing Calendar event.

Do this with a [[link or ((mirror to connect existing Legend items to other items that have !dates (i.e. calendar events). I’m not sure how well this will hold up if you Gsync though.

Synchronized Calendar and Outlook pane locations

Try using “Highlight in all Panes” from the RMB (right mouse button) menu. Also available via hotkey.
This is not “idiot proof” – you have to make sure that at least one of the other Panes on your Board is pointed to the Document which contains your events and doesn’t have filters that would hide the item. So if your calendar holds items that come from multiple Documents, you’ll need one Outline Pane for each of them. The Board therefore needs to be structured with this type of use in mind to start with. If you have a pretty well-defined “system” and workflow already in place, this shouldn’t be an obstacle. But if you’re hunting for a misplaced or errant event, you’re better off using “Global Search.”

Confirmation Prompt before editing calendar events (particularly ones with other meeting participants).

I don’t think Legend is able to work with “participants” at all, this one is a miss.
Aside from that, I see editing an event as no different than editing any other item and would not want the extra step of a confirmation.

ahp

Jerud Gcal sync is neat but in all my years of using Legend it’s never been robust enough for me to trust it.

Yes, based on what I’ve seen of the Gcal integration in my few weeks of use, I agree that it isn’t mature enough to be used the way I was originally expecting/hoping for my professional/work use.

Where I stand right now, I’d really just prefer the ability to PULL (one-way sync) down Gcal into the Legend Calendar. over any of the more creative ideas I suggested in this thread. That way, if someone (mtg host) changes event details or I change the meeting date/time in Gcal, the modification would automatically get sync’d down into my Outline Pane. But, if I delete, add some “raw/unfiltered notes” in my outline that’s tied to a calendar event, there’s no risk of it rolling back up to the Gcal entry. Hoping that’s an easy enough implementation for Jay to push soon.🤞

P.S. Ironically, the part of the Gsuite integration I DO need two-way sync on is Contacts. But, that doesn’t seem to be in the cards so I’m using the #@Name approach you suggested in another thread (thanks for the idea!)

ahp

Jay Jay basically, deleting an event in the Outline pane still deletes the event from Google Calendar (bad), even if I select “No (N)” in the popup Model that asks:

I would expect that selecting “No” here would delete the Bullet in the Outline pane, but leave the original Google Calendar event untouched.

Jay

ahp I think this should be working correctly now in the latest update. If it’s not, can you tell me which method of deleting the item you’re using?

ahp

Jay I like the approach. I’m likely to start with the “No” path for safety, so could you validate what happens when I drag an event from the Calendar onto the Outline Pane and want to add personal notes (sub-bullets) under the cal bullet?

Jay I have a change coming that adds a setting for an “Editable” setting

Here are my interpretation/uncertainties of the Editable states, based on the current description provided (behavior we may want to clarify in documentation):

Yes = any change is immediately sync’d back.
- But, if there are attendees on the cal sync’d invite, they would NOT get an email with an update cal invite for each character I just added, right!? Is the default Legend behavior to update the cal entry, without sending an email? For comparison, if I’m editing in gCal directly, it gives me a prompt asking if I want to “send email” when I save the changes. If I’m doing it through Legend, I’m unclear what would happen.
Prompt = on first entry, I have to confirm I want to edit.
- If I select Yes, it follows the logic of “Yes”, for the duration of my cursor remaining on that bullet?
No = no edits can be made to the Outline pane instance of the calendar entry
- but, I can add sub-bullets under the entry, that would NOT get sync’d back to the calendar (what I’d prefer/hoping for).

Jay I think these changes should only affect non-Calendar panes? If you move or rename an event in a Calendar pane, that should just save rather than prompting, right?

I agree with this logic. If a user is directly editing in the Calendar view, I think it’s safe to assume the intent is to edit the entry; whereas an event in the Outline pane may include personal/private notes tied to that event.

Jay

ahp Ok, the update is out. To clarify your questions:

Notes sync to the notes of the event on Google Calendar
Adding children (sub-bullets) does not sync with Google Calendar at all
Legend does not currently does not message attendees for changes. We could add that at some point though.
Prompt allows editing until selection changes to a different item
If an event is read only you can still add children all you want, since they don’t sync

I’ve put on my todo list to change:

If a calendar is marked as not editable, it should not sync notes to it. Prompt mode should prompt for whether to sync the notes.

ahp

Jay Most of the use cases we discussed appear to respect the editable tag. Here are a few new use cases I came across that are still failing in the Outline pane when Editable=No

If I hit “enter/return” in the middle of an event title, I would expect an ‘is not editable’ notification. Instead, it breaks the title into a second line and sync’s the edit back to gCal.
I am still able to enter notes for the event and they sync back to gCal. I would expect an ‘is not editable’ notification.
Editing the date/time does sync back. I’m torn on whether this should be allowed or not – since an accidental edit here is not as likely as the other cases.

Ultimately, if Editable=No, I think the logical expectation should be that everything should be treated read-only in the Outline pane. If I wanted some flexibility, I’d select Editable=Prompt, in which case I’d expect a confirmation popup for each of the use cases we’ve discussed.

ahp

I have a few 15min meetings on my calendar and find that Legend only allows me to drag items that are that short. Another good reason to allow insertion of cal events using the / menu!

ahp 1. Ability to use the “/” menu to add a calendar event into my Outline
Example workflow… I’m about to join a scheduled meeting but am on a Legend Board view that isn’t showing a calendar pane. I’d like to be able to hit “/cal” and have it popup today’s next event.

ahp

@Jay I have “Bullet” set as my default item prefix for new items. When dragging a calendar event to the Outline pane, I run into a very annoying bug where it doesn’t add a bullet to the item. Even if I try to drag it on a line that I’ve already populated a bullet on. Is this by design or a bug?

See video recording for clarity: https://www.loom.com/share/db7d60b0d91a4124bdf0af9720168f9e

Jerud

ahp The reason you’re getting a child item is that you’re dragging the calendar event “onto” that line which already has a bullet. This is indicated by the blue rectangle “drop target”. If you move slightly above or below that item the “drop target” switches to a blue line, and if you release the drag at that point you should get a sibling item instead of a child.

As for getting the default prefix on-drop…I totally understand why you expect to get a bullet on that dropped item, but can also see an argument for the current behavior; It doesn’t seem like there’s an objectively obvious right/wrong. So I hesitate to call it a bug – but it should perhaps be a feature-request for a user setting?

ahp

Jerud Yes, it behaves as you describe. It’s the combination of that plus the bullet issue that presents an odd user experience. And, upon further testing over the last week, I found that it’s not just a calendar issue. If I drag a file or email onto a bullet, the same thing happens.

Regardless, if I have set “new item type” to bullet, should all “new items” honor that setting? If I drag an image, cal entry, email, etc – those are all “new items” and the new item type setting should apply, in my opinion.

Jerud

Oh, I follow your rationale, I’m just saying some other users may not. It’s always enlightening to read posts in this forum and get a glimpse into how the minds of others work. Things that make zero sense to me are sometimes perfectly intuitive to other users because they’re coming from a different perspective. I’m just saying It’s worth getting some additional feedback.

BTW have you tested if Gcal-synced events “remember” their prefixes? That is: if you create a new item in Legend (which will get a bullet, in your case), then drag/drop it to Gcal to sync? This hasn’t worked in the past – and in that context, the behavior you describe actually makes sense – because no Gcal event could have a prefix in that situation. I actually used to name my Gcal events by manually typing “[ ” as their initial text, to force Legend to show them as Tasks. I’ve since moved away from using Gcal sync though, so I dunno if that’s been fixed since then.

ahp

Jerud No, the prefixes are not copied into the sub-bullets/notes section of the Gcal entry (which only also only shows the 1st-level sub-bullets). But, for me, that’s not a dealbreaker since the prefix states are “remembered” in the Outline pane (which is where I use them)

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