NovaMind News

NovaMind provides a very powerful synchronization service for your To Do lists and Events. This allows you to use the alarms, meeting invites, synchronization, to do lists and other features available in iCal, synchronizing directly from within NovaMind, using either automatic or manual synchronization of task information. The synchronization can be set up to be either one way, so that NovaMind tasks are pushed to iCal, or to be bi-directional, so that your iCal tasks are also synchronized back to NovaMind. Some iCal synchronization features are available in the Pro edition, and some only in the Platinum edition.

To turn on synchronization with iCal, use the File / Sync With iCal… menu option. You will see a number of options as defined below:

In NovaMind Pro, you will see the following options:

NovaMind 5 Pro iCal Synchronization Options

And in NovaMind Platinum, you will see the following  options:

NovaMind 5 Platinum iCal Synchronization Options

Although there is only one checkbox difference, there is a big difference in the functionality between NovaMind Pro and Platinum.

Here is an explanation of the options:

• Synchronize topics with task information with iCal events (Platinum edition only): When this option is checked, whenever a synchronization is performed, NovaMind will synchronize any tasks you have where they have a start and end date defined in your Mind Map, with iCal Events. iCal Events are the items you see on the main calendar in iCal. If your start and end dates have the time set as 12:00 AM, this is taken to mean that the hours and minutes are not relevant, and the Events created in iCal are therefore marked as All Day events.
• Synchronize topics with checkboxes with iCal To Do items (Pro and Platinum edition): When checked, whenever synchronization is performed, NovaMind will add any topics with checkboxes to iCal as To Do items. The amount of information that is transferred is dependent on whether you are using a NovaMind Pro or Platinum license.
• Add new Event and To Do items to: Choose the calendar that you want to have NovaMind add the events to. It is often a good idea to create a calendar for your project, in order to keep your tasks manageable. If you come into the setup sheet and then decide to add a new calendar for your tasks, close the setup sheet without synchronizing, and then open it up again once you have added the new calendar, and you will be able to select it. As soon as you synchronize your Mind Map, the tasks will be placed on the calendar you had selected at the time, so if you change to a different calendar later, that will only affect new tasks.

  If you completely delete a calendar that NovaMind was trying to synchronize with, NovaMind will inform you next time you try to synchronize, and you will have to come back to the setup panel and choose a different calendar to synchronize with. If this happens, NovaMind will re-sync all the tasks with the new calendar, but if you just change calendars part way through, only the new tasks will be synced with the new calendar, unless you manually remove the old ones from the old calendar.

• Auto-synchronize before save: If you turn this option on, every time you save your file, it will update iCal with any changes you have made in NovaMind. If you don’t have this option turned on, you will have to come back to the setup sheet and use the Sync Now button to update iCal.
• Accept changes made in iCal: If you have this option turned on, then any changes you make to data in iCal will be transferred back into NovaMind. Note that if you add additional information that does not relate to data stored in NovaMind (e.g. alarms), then that will remain stored solely in iCal. Only the data relevant to NovaMind will be transferred back in. If you have this option turned off, then the synchronization is purely one way – from NovaMind to iCal, and any changes you make in NovaMind will always overwrite your iCal information – but with all synchronization, it will only affect data that relates to NovaMind data.

  This option allows for updates to data that is made live while both iCal and NovaMind are running. Normal synchronization takes care of cases where the iCal data was changed while NovaMind was not running, or the particular map was not open, but they still honor your setting, and will only copy in data from iCal if you have this option turned on.

  Note that if you change the title of the To Do item or Event, then the synchronization only transfers back the plain text, so if your topic had other formatting on it, it will be lost, and the formatting will revert back to the formatting defined in the theme you are using. For this reason, we recommend that if you are going to change the name of a task, you change the topic title on the Mind Map and let it synchronize that way rather than the other way around, if you have set custom text attributes.

  The same applies for the topic notes, which are also synchronized with iCal.

• Warn before accepting changes: If you have this option turned on, you will be asked to confirm before any changes made in iCal are accepted into NovaMind.
  

  Synchronization from iCal to NovaMind

  This applies to both the live updates from iCal, and synchronization where the items in iCal may have changed while NovaMind didn’t have that document open, and the synchronization would lead to data being updated from iCal to NovaMind.

General Synchronization mechanism

When you synchronize between NovaMind and iCal, if you have altered a topic in a way that means that it should have an iCal task associated with it (adding a checkbox, or setting a start and end date), then the To Do or Event is automatically created.

If you do something that means that the Event or To Do would no longer be required, for instance removing the checkbox, or unsetting a start or end date, then the iCal Event or To Do is removed automatically – even if you have entered other information such as attendees and alarms on the Event or To Do. Also, obviously, if you delete a topic, its corresponding iCal item will be removed when you next synchronize.

If you cut and paste a topic, or graft it from one place to another, so long as you cut and paste without saving in between, your linkage to your iCal event will be preserved.

If you copy a topic, then the original will maintain its iCal event, and the new topic will get its own one next time you synchronize.

If you add additional information to items in iCal, we do not override that in our synchronization. This can be useful where you want the base tasks in NovaMind, and want to add things such as alarms in iCal. The only time that information would be deleted would be if the iCal item was being deleted as per the rules above.

NovaMind does its best to be self-repairing. If you delete the selected calendar, NovaMind will prompt you to choose a new one, and will re-sync your tasks with the new calendar:

Choosing A New Calendar

If you delete a task or event from iCal while NovaMind is not running, NovaMind will recreate the To Do or Event when it next synchronizes. If you try to access an iCal item from the inspectors and they are not available, NovaMind automatically resets the linkage so that next time you synchronize, it will create a new item in the calendar.

To Do Synchronization

When you synchronize To Do items, if you have a Pro edition license key for NovaMind, then a To Do will be created for any topic with a checkbox, and just the checked state will be synchronized, along with the topic title and notes. If you have a Platinum license key, the priority will also be transferred, and if you have an end date defined for the task, that will be transferred as the due date for the To Do.

When you have a To Do synchronized with a topic in NovaMind, the “View in iCal” button will be enabled on the inspector, but only if that is the only topic you have selected:

Checkbox Inspector With "View in iCal" Enabled

Note that in the To Do items on iCal, the checkboxes are simple checked or unchecked checkboxes, so we only transfer that information – if your checkbox is in an indeterminate state, it will be transferred to iCal as unchecked. This isn’t too much of a problem, but seeing as the data on the iCal calendar is not as rich as the data in NovaMind, we are forced to adapt the data coming in from iCal. This has the side effect that if a task is in the indeterminate state in NovaMind, and you export it, and then change one of the other fields that synchronizes with NovaMind (e.g. the priority, if you are running NovaMind Platinum), and then sync that change back to NovaMind, it will uncheck your checkbox in NovaMind even though you didn’t directly change that field in iCal. This is likely a very rare occurrence, but you have now been warned! And there isn’t anything we can do to work around this.

Event Synchronization

Events will only be added to iCal when both the start and end date are defined, and the start date is not after the end date. The start and end dates, topic title and notes are synchronized with iCal.

If you don’t set the time to anything other than 12:00 AM, then all day events are automatically added to iCal.

When you synchronize your events with iCal, the view in iCal button will be enabled, but only if you just have a single topic selected. When you click it, you will be taken directly to that calendar event in iCal:

Task Inspector with "View in iCal" Enabled

Toolbar Item

There is a toolbar item available, but it’s not on the default toolbar, so if you want to show it, you will need to use the Customize Toolbar option and drag it on.

iCal Sync Toolbar Item

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