Ok, I’ll admit it... I’m a long time fan of Spb Software House’s products, we just seem to think along similar lines, so I was intrigued when Spb Diary appeared in my in-box the other day.  A Diary?  Surely Spb can’t be adding a journal to the PPC I thought, P.I. and Fusion have that area well covered already.  So what is Diary about and would it meet my usual expectations? 

Spb Diary is a Today screen plug-in which provides direct access to the calendar, tasks and contacts from the today screen.  The plug-in can operate with Pocket Outlook or integrate with Pocket Informant or Agenda Fusion.

Once installed and enabled, the plug-in displays a panel on the Today screen with three tabs to the left - Calendar, Tasks and Contacts - this provides quick and convenient access to possibly the most important data held in a user’s pda.  All tabs consist of a header across the top followed by multiple entries and a scroll bar down the right hand side;  the header may be hidden, minimised or shown.

On the Calendar tab the header has a date range selector to the left and to the right is a category filter. The date selector drops down to following menu:

• Today (the first seven menu items cause the selected number of days, relative to today, to be displayed).
• Next 2 days
• Next 3 days
• Next 5 days
• Next 7 days
• Next 14 days
• Next 31 days
• Calendar... - displays a dialog containing a single month calendar.  The dialog shows a traditional month with week numbers down the left hand side, controls are provided to scroll to other months and to go to today.  The individual days all show horizontal time bars representing appointments within the day, tapping on any day displays the following popup menu:
  • Load Selection - loads the single selected day.
    
  • Load Week - loads the entire week (Monday to Sunday) containing the selected day.
    
  • Load - loads the entire month containing the selected day.
    
  • Create Appointment - opens the New Appointment screen of the default PIM pre-populated with the selected date and current time.
    
  • Create Task - opens the New Task screen of the default PIM pre-populated with the selected date.

...and the category filter displays the following menu:

• All Items - no filter is applied and all items are visible.
• - only items which match the selected category or filter (see below) are displayed.
• More... - displays a dialog which enables the user to select one or more categories in combination to create more complex selection filters. 
• Show - displays the following sub-menu:
  • Tasks - toggles current (in progress) tasks on or off in the calendar tab.
    
  • Overdue Tasks - toggles overdue tasks on or off in the calendar tab.  If on, the overdue tasks appear grouped together in a collapsible section above the dates.
    
  • Completed Tasks - toggles completed tasks on or off in the calendar tab.  If on, completed tasks remain visible in strike-out  font, otherwise they disappear when completed.
    
  • Past Appointments - toggles the display of past appointments.  If on, past appointments continue to be displayed after their time has passed;  if off, they disappear.
    
  • Empty days - controls whether empty days are to be displayed or not.

Each collapsible day entry consists of a header row containing +/- button, date, entry count and optional time bar.  The format of the header may be customised, the time bar indicates graphically when appointments occur within the day. 

Appointments are displayed using one of three layouts and can include or exclude a status bar vertically to the left (busy, free, etc.), location, end time and icons.  Appointments wth long descriptions may be shown in compact (single line), expanded (multi line) or auto expand modes. Various icons for recurrence, alarm, attendees, categories and etc. may be displayed or hidden.

• Appointment entries display the following tap and hold popup menu:
• Open Appointment - views the selected entry.
• Edit appointment - edits the selected entry using the edit screen of the default PIM
• Make a Copy - duplicates the selected entry, does not operate on repeating entries.
• Modify - displays the following sub- menu:
• Reschedule - displays a small dialog which enables the start and end dates and times, plus all day status, to be set.
• Reminder... - displays a small dialog which enables the user to set or cancel an alarm on the selected entry.
• Status - displays and/or sets the Busy / Tentative / Free / Out of Office status.
• Private - displays and/or sets the private status.
• Delete Appointment - deletes the selected entry.
• Options... - opens the Spb Diary Options screen for Calendar.
• Beam Appointment - beams the selected entry via IR or Bluetooth using the Windows beam mechanism.
• Repeating Alarms - available only if Pocket Plus installed.  Permits the user to override the default alarm settings for the selected appointment.

Tap and hold on the Calendar tab or header to display the following menu:

• New Appointment - opens the default PIM’s new appointment screen.
• New Task - opens the default PIM’s new task screen.
• Open Calendar - opens the default PIM’s Calendar application.
• Open Tasks - opens the default PIM’s Task application.
• Options... - opens the Diary options screen.  The screen permits the user to configure the General, Calendar, Task, Contact settings and Category icons.

If the tap and hold is performed on the header row of a collapsible section the following items will also be displayed according to whether the section is already expanded or collapsed:

• Expand - expand the selected section.
• Expand All - expand all sections.
• Collapse - collapse the selected section.
• Collapse All - collapse all sections.

Note: the popup calendar can also be displayed by tapping the Calendar tab when the calendar panel is displayed.

Tapping on the time bar displays a small dialog which shows a larger version of the time bar. Just tap and on drag on this larger time bar to define a time range (in half hour increments) and create a new appointment from the resulting popup menu for the selected date and time.  One thing I failed to understand at all was why some of the time bars were displayed in grey and some in white.  Try as I might I just couldn’t see any correlation between my appointments and the background colours.

The Tasks tab header has a Group By control to the left and a Category filter to the right - the category filter operates the same as the calendar one.  The Group By control drops down the following menu:

• Category - groups by the available categories.   Sadly items which are in multiple categories only appear in one (arbitrary) group rather than all that apply.
• Complete - groups by Complete and Incomplete
• Due Date - groups tasks according to:
  • Undated
    
  • Overdue
    
  • Due Today
    
  • Due Next 7 Days
    
  • Due Next 30 Days
    
  • Future
• Priority - groups by High, Normal and Low.
• Sensitivity - Normal or Private grouping.
• Start Date - groups tasks according to:
  • Without Start Date
    
  • Active Tasks
    
  • Start Tomorrow
    
  • Start In Next 7 Days
    
  • Start Next 30 Days
    
  • Future Tasks
• No Grouping
• Sort Order - various sort orders are offered according to the grouping selected.

Each collapsible group consists of a header row containing +/- button, title and task count (no header is displayed if No Grouping is selected).  Each task consists of an optional icon, optional checkbox, the task text and any other icons. 

Current Tasks (in progress) are displayed in bold text, overdue are displayed in italics. Tasks may be forced to just one line, use multi-line if required or expand when selected.  The optional checkbox permits the user to mark an item as complete (or not complete if completed tasks are displayed).

Task entries display the following tap and hold popup menu:

• Open Task - views the selected entry.
• Edit Task - edits the selected entry using the edit screen of the default PIM
• Make a Copy - duplicates the selected entry.
• Reschedule - displays the Calendar dialog (see above) to permit the date to be altered. Unfortunately on tasks without a start date or with a start date which is different from the due date, this option sets both dates to the new selected date.
• Modify - displays the following sub-menu:
  • Date & Reminder... - displays a small dialog which enables the start and due dates to be set, plus any reminder alarm.
    
  • Priority - Displays and/or sets the task priority via a sub- menu.
    
  • Private - toggles the private status of the task.
    
  • Complete - toggles the completed status of the task.
• Delete Task - deletes the selected entry.
• Options... - opens the Spb Diary Options screen for Tasks.
• Beam Appointment - beams the selected entry via IR or Bluetooth using the Windows beam mechanism.

Tap and hold on the Tasks tab or header to display the following menu:

• New Task - opens the default PIM’s new task screen.
• Open Tasks - opens the default PIM’s Task application.
• Options... - opens the Diary options screen.

The Contacts tab header has a Group By control to the left and a Category filter to the right - the category filter operates the same as the calendar one.  The Group By control drops down the following menu:

• No Grouping - all items are shown without a grouping header.
• By Company - items are grouped by company name, those without a company appear in a group called None.
• By Category - items are grouped by category.   Again items which are in multiple categories only appear in one group rather than all that apply.
• First, Last - applies a first name, last name sort order to the contacts within the groups.
• Last, First - applies a last name, first name sort order.
• File As - uses the File As property for the sort order.

Each collapsible group consists of a header row containing +/- button, group title and contact count (no header is displayed if No Grouping is selected).  Each contact is displayed as name, optional icon and phone number/email;  the format may be switched between one of three which all occupy just one line.

Contact entries display the following tap and hold popup menu:

• Open Contact - views the selected entry.
• Edit Contact - edits the selected entry using the edit screen of the default PIM
• Make a Copy - duplicates the selected entry.
• Delete Contact - deletes the selected contact.
• Options... - opens the Spb Diary Options screen for Contacts.
• Beam Contact - beams the selected entry via IR or Bluetooth using the Windows beam mechanism.
• Send E-mail - Opens the e-mail application and creates a new e-mail with the contact’s address populated (only available if contact has an e-mail address).
• Dial Home - opens the phone application and dials the home number (only available if contact has a home number).
• Dial Work - opens the phone application and dials the work number (only available if contact has a work number).
• Dial Mobile - opens the phone application and dials the mobile number (only available if contact has a mobile number).
• Save to SIM - saves the contact to the SIM card.
• SIM Manager - opens the O2 SIM Manager application.
• Send SMS - Opens the e-mail application and creates a new SMS with the contact’s mobile number populated (only available if contact has a mobile number).

Tap and hold on the Contacts tab or header to display the following menu:

• New Contact - opens the default PIM’s new contact screen.
• Open Contacts - opens the default PIM’s Contact application.
• Options... - opens the Diary options screen.

Across the bottom of the Contacts tab is one of its best features.  Looking similar to the common ABC tab strip is a predictive text-like search feature.  Tapping a letter tab matches any of contained letters to the start of any name - first or last or company;  tapping a second tab then matches any of the second tab’s letters to the second letter of the first matches - does that make any sense at all?

e.g. tap MNO to match Mark, Mike, McPherson, Nancy, Nigel and Oscar;
now tap ABC to match these down to Mark, McPherson and Nancy.

A << tab acts as backspace.  This is a very efficient way of searching and one of the features which I would really like to see in other PIMs.  Sadly it is not enough to save Diary for me.
 
Conclusion
I guess it had to happen some time but this is the first time I've been genuinely disappointed with an Spb product.  While the general build quality was up to their usual high standard I found the software features to be lacking in a number of areas.  Given that there are already a number of similar products out there, which generally have more features, I think Spb have sadly fallen a little short of the target with this one.

I like:

• Having my contacts directly available from the today screen.
• The predictive text-like searching of the contacts.

I dislike:

• The poor date manipulation of rescheduled tasks.
• Multiple categories per item are not processed correctly.
• The wasted space below the tabs (to the left).
• The lack of colour use.  

All in all, Spb Diary could be considered a fair first attempt were it not for the fact that all Spb’s other products are so much better and the Diary competition so much more advanced.  Hopefully Version 1.x or 2 will be up to their usual standard.

Spb Diary gets just 6/10, “must try harder”.