Meeting timer for OneNote

[Sam]

Hi,

I want to have a multi-timer add-on to OneNote. Most meetings are conducted
in a disorganized way -- they take longer than anticipated, sometimes people
have meetings without even an agenda.

I recently started using a freebie Macromedia Flash app I dowloaded from the
Internet which is a multi-timer shareware. The cool thing is that because it
has some 9 timers, I set 3 timers for a typical meeting. Let's say it's a 30
minute meeting. I set the timers to 5, 25 and 30 minutes. This way, I get 3
alarms, first indicating the end of agenda/intro section of the meeting,
second telling me I have 5 minutes left in the meeting so I should wrap
things up and the last tells me the end of the meeting.

I thought it just would be great if this was an add-on to OneNote so that I
wouldn't have to switch back and forth between two windows to check the time
remaining.

Two questions: First, does anyone know of such an add-on for OneNote? If
not, can anyone give me some pointers on how to develop an add-on for
OneNote? I'm a C# developer and I wouldn't mind creating the add-on myself.
I just need the initial start up, for example, can I write the add-on code
in C#? I'd appreciate some pointers on OneNote programming. Thanks.

Sam

 

[Erik Sojka]

That would be a useful add-on feature to OneNote. It doesn't currently
exist in an automated fashion. the MS OneNote dev team reads this
newsgroup, but a quick message to (e-mail address removed) with this
suggestion would also help to get it in their hands. Put "OneNote" in
the subject to ensure it gets to them.

Some manual workarounds off the top of my head:

- If you know when a meeting is supposed to end, you can continually add
timestamps (Alt-Shift-F) and manually track that time vs. the time when
the meeting is supposed to end.
- You can also use the clock in the Notification Area (aka the System
Tray) as a manual guide. I imagine that most people are watching the
clock during meetings anyway

Programming a solution? I'm not sure if it can be done. OneNote does
not have a fully exposed object model. It only has an import API. Maybe
writing an external timer program that floats on top of the current
application window that can set and display alarms would be a useful
workaround.

 

[Thomas R. Shannon]

Some manual workarounds off the top of my head:

- If you know when a meeting is supposed to end, you can continually
add timestamps (Alt-Shift-F) and manually track that time vs. the
time when the meeting is supposed to end.

It occurs to me that it might be nice to have a setting which automatically
timestamps new lines and/or headings/containers.

Tom S.

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

Actually, the "proper" way now is to post as suggestion - from Onenote's
help, select Communities link (it takes you to
http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...spx?lang=en&cr=US&dg=microsoft.public.onenote)
and post a new message identified as a suggestion for Microsoft.

As a favor to us poor folk using a newsclient, include text in the message
body that it's a suggestion. As long as the first post was made in the
communities interface, the full thread is picked up by the suggestion
filter, however, the "proper" way to vote on suggestions is using the
communities interface... and if we know it's a suggestion, we can go to the
web site and place a proper vote.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]
Author, Teach Yourself Outlook 2003 in 24 Hours
Coauthor, OneNote 2003 for Windows (Visual QuickStart Guide)
Author, Google and Other Search Engines (Visual QuickStart Guide)



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