Windows Phone Client Quick Start Guide

Introduction

FCmobilelife by FranklinCovey is a real-time mobile communication system that supports collaboration in small groups.   A group of connected FCmobilelife users is called a team.   Team members can assign and track Tasks for themselves and others, they can create and share events on their calendars (Schedules) and they can exchange informational multimedia messages (Posts).   Collectively, all these collaborative messages are called Actions.   The key to these communication features is the real-time delivery of new and updated Actions to the web client or the phone and status tracking for all Actions.   The task feature is a good illustration of the collaborative power of FCmobilelife: using the web or your phone, you can create a task and send it to a colleague.   You are notified as soon as the task is viewed by the recipient.   After they view it, the recipient can either accept or decline the task and you are also notified of that choice in real-time.   If the task was accepted, the recipient can mark it as completed when they finish the task.   Again, you are notified of the completion as soon as it occurs.   Thus, FCmobilelife provides complete accountability and tracking for collaborative Tasks management.   In addition to the collaborative Actions, you can create your own personal Goals, track them and link them to Tasks that are in support of your Goals.

The FCmobilelife solution is a self-contained group collaboration system consisting of a FCmobilelife server that communicates with FCmobilelife web and phone clients.   No user-supplied server hardware or software is required (e.g., Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft Outlook).

The rest of this guide walks you through the use of the Windows Phone client version of FCmobilelife.   The screens shown are from a T-Mobile Wing.   The same screens on other Windows phones may look slightly different because of variations in screen size, orientation, resolution, and the version of Windows Mobile running on the phone.

NOTE: It is assumed that you have already registered for an account and installed the application on your phone.   If you have not, then please go to

http://www.fcmobilelife.com/

to register for your FCmobilelife account, set up your account preferences and download the application.

Starting the Windows Mobile Client

Tap Start > Programs and select the FCmobilelife program icon to start the application.  

You can also start the application by selecting the FCmobilelife icon from the Start menu list:

You will first see the application splash screen:

Wait for the login screen to appear if this is the first time you are starting the application.

Enter your username (which is the email address you registered with) and your password. The application will connect to the server for authentication and data retrieval (your cell phone must be connected to the network).  Click the ”Hide password” checkbox if you want to hide your password as you type it in.  

After a successful login and data retrieval, the home screen shown below will appear.   (If you have new items, you will see the incoming list instead of the home screen.   The incoming list is described later in this document)

You can navigate to the different functions (Schedule, Team, etc) by using the five-way control or the stylus (if your phone has a touch sensitive screen).

Setting up your Team

Select the “Team” icon from the home screen.  

This will bring up a listing of your team (which will be empty the first time you start the application).   In any case, you will start from this screen to add team members.

The FCmobilelife service uses an invitation only contact model.   You can ask (invite) someone who is already a FCmobilelife user to be on your team.   They will receive an invitation email.

If they accept:

• They get added to your team.
• You can send Actions (Posts, Tasks, and Schedules) to them.
• You get added to their team automatically and they can send Actions to you.

If they decline (block):

• You cannot send Actions to them.
• They cannot send Actions to you.

To invite someone,

• From the Team Manager screen, select “New”.
• Enter the full or partial name of the contact and click "Find".  Alternatively you can enter an email address.   Note that for privacy reasons, partial searches are not done on emails so you need to enter a complete email address.

• The matching contacts will be shown in a results window.
• Select the contact and you want and click “Add”.   (Note, if you get more than one match from your search and cannot determine which contact you want, then you will have to rerun the search using the contact’s complete email address in order to get a unique result.)
• An email invitation will be sent to the contact you selected.   As soon as they accept, they will appear in your team list

After you are done adding team members, click “OK” to return to the Home screen.

Using the Windows Phone Client

The Home screen is shown again below, with the Menu > List choices shown:

Menu > List > Incoming goes to a list of your incoming Actions (more on this just below).   Menu > List > Archive goes to a list of the Actions that you have archived.   Menu > Sync will manually retrieve data from the server. Note that if you have set up your account preferences specifying a Windows phone and entered your phone number and carrier, then data will be retrieved automatically.   (See the Account Preferences screen at www.fmobilelife.com for details on how to set your preferences.)   Menu > Sign out lets you change users if you have multiple accounts (use Menu > Change User after selecting Menu > Sign).   Menu > Exit ends the application.  

Again, if your account preferences are set up with your phone number and, then when someone sends you a new Action, or an Action is updated, the data will be downloaded in real time to you phone and you will get an alert on your phone (as shown below superimposed on the home screen.)  If you click on the alert, you will be taken to the incoming list.

You can also bring up your incoming list from Menu > Switch > Incoming from most screens.   This is what the incoming list looks like:

The first column shows the status of the Action (either an update to an existing Action or a new Action).   The second column shows the date of the Action and the third column shows an icon that denotes the type (task, Post or Schedule).   The fourth column is the Description.   The fifth column indicates whether this is an Action that you sent to someone else (the arrow points away from the figure), an Action that someone sent you (the arrow points in) or an Action that you assigned to yourself (no arrow).   You can highlight any Action and select it (with the center key on the five way or tapping it with the stylus) to bring up the details of that Action.   Here is an example of a new Post Action selected from the incoming list above:

Note that the date sent is shown, as well as who sent it and who all the recipients were.   The text indicates who added what text.   In this case there is only a message from the sender (Jay) at this point.

The other lists of Actions are similar. For example, here is a list of Tasks which always contains all the active Tasks that you have sent and received.

The first column shows the due date of the task.   The second column shows the status of the Tasks (U=unread, D=Declined, A=Accepted, C=Complete).   If the task was assigned to multiple recipients and they have different statuses, then an * shows in this column.   The other columns are like the ones in the incoming list.   The list of Posts is similar.  

Be aware that Actions that you read and respond to will be removed from your incoming list, but they will still be on the appropriate active Action list (based on their type) until you delete or archive them.

Receiving an New Action (Schedule)

When you receive a new or updated Action, it will appear in your Incoming list.   If you click on it, it will bring up the View screen.   In this example we will look at an updated Schedule Action that a user sent out.

The View screen shows all the details about the Action such as who sent it (“Me” in this case), who received it, the date, time and duration etc.   For a Schedule Action, you need to respond with accept, decline or tentative using the Menu selections.   When you respond, you can also add a text reply in the “Reply” box as well as attachments.   In the example above, the recipient Marta has added a reply and it is visible to the sender and all recipients.   If you select the status button, it will show all the recipients and the status for each one.

Creating New Actions

To create a new Action, you select the “New” menu from one of the list screens.   This will bring up an edit screen for a new Action.   This example is for a new Post (by default new Actions have “Me” as a recipient):

If you select the small team icon to the right of the “For” area, you will bring up a list of your team members.  

Select one of more of these to be the recipients of this Action.  

You can make yourself a recipient and you can select named groups as recipients as well.  

Attaching an audio file and/or an image to the Post is done using the camera and microphone buttons in the lower left of the screen are used to attach a picture or voice message.   Here is the screen to add a picture attachment.

You use this screen to either select an existing photo on your phone, or to use the phone’s camera to take a new picture to attach.

Back on the edit screen, selecting the audio attachment icon, will bring up a screen that allows you to record a voice message.

The record button starts recording your voice message until you tap the stop button.   You can check the message by playing it back with the play button.   You can record a new version of your message by selecting record again.  When you are done you can either save and attach the message using the “Done” menu or cancel the voice attachment using Menu > Cancel.  

The next screen shows a Post that is ready to send.   The recipients are shown, the text contains a message and both a voice and picture attachment (note that both attachment icons are red to indicate attachments have been made).   If you click on a red attachment icon, you can delete or replace the attachment before you send the Post.

When you are ready to send the Post to its recipients, select “Send” (“OK or Menu > Cancel will cancel the entire operation without sending anything).

Viewing and sending Schedule Actions

Schedule Actions (meetings) are shown in a calendar format.   You can view your calendar in a daily, weekly or monthly format.   You can also see an agenda view which is a list of meetings and Tasks for a single day.   Here is the monthly view.

A day with an all-day event shows an outline box.   Timed events are shown as a solid box.   If you click on a day in the week or month view, it will bring up the daily view of that day.   Here is the daily view showing hourly time slots.

You can create a new Schedule item by clicking on a time slot on the daily view.   For example, if you clicked on 6PM in the screen above, that would bring up the following Create Schedule screen.

Note that the date and time are filled in with a one hour default length.   You select the recipients by tapping or selecting the team icon to the right of the “For:” label.   “Me” is included by default, but you can remove it if you are setting up a meeting for others.   You enter a description of the item in the “Text” field.   If you scroll down on this screen you see more options as shown here:

The “Show Time As Busy” check box is selected by default.   This lets other users see that you are busy in this timeslot when they use the Busy Search feature.   If you select the “Private” checkbox, then others will see that you are busy, but they will not be able to view the details of the item.   Selecting “All Day Event” overrides the hour and minute settings and simply Schedules the entire day for this event.   You can create Schedules that span multiple days by simply selecting appropriate start and end dates.   You can also add attachments to the Schedule before you send it, just as you could with Tasks and Posts.

When you are creating a new Schedule, you can use the Busy Search feature to check the calendars of the recipients (you need to select the recipients first).   Bring up the Busy Search screen from the Schedule New screen with Menu > Busy Search.    In this example you are checking the calendars for Marta, Jay, Eric and yourself.   The darkened blocks in the grid represent busy times.   If you click on a block you can see what is scheduled for that team member at that time

You can navigate to different time slot ranges with the scroll bars on the right.   You can also navigate to different days with the arrow on the top bar, or use the calendar control to select a different month and day.   When you find a clear timeslot that you want to use, just click on any block in the row to return to the Schedule New screen.   The date and time you selected will be filled in.

Creating and Tracking Goals

You can set goals for yourself and track your progress in FCmobilelife.   To start, select the “Goal” icon from the home screen and then select the New menu button. This will bring up the “Goals New” screen:

You can select a start and end date for the Goal as well as a description.   Goals can be tracked as percent complete (Method = %), or as a target number (Method = #).   You can also attach a photo and/or voice message to a goal (this is the Goals New screen scrolled down to show the progress field and the attachment icons:

After you save a Goal, it will appear on your Goal list along with the current progress:

To update your progress on a Goal, open the Goal and enter the current progress. In this case you are updating the progress of a numeric goal to 6 out of 15 completed.

When you have a goal open, you can also link one or more Tasks to that Goal (e.g., for Tasks that are related to that Goal).   Select Menu > Link when viewing a Goal to bring up the task linking screen.

Below is the task linking screen for a Goal.   It shows all your tasks and you can use the checkbox at the left to link (or unlink) specific tasks with this goal.   By default, the task list is sorted by the checkbox column (so the linked Tasks are at the top of the list).   You can also sort the list of tasks by any of the other columns to search for a task to link.

This has been a brief introduction to the FCmobilelife Windows client.   If you have any sign-up, installation, configuration or usage issues while using the product, please visit http://www.fcmobilelife.com   and check the support pages.