Web 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 multi-media 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 task 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 Web Client version of FCmobilelife. NOTE: It is assumed that you have already registered for an account. If you have not, then please go to

http://www.fcmobilelife.com/

to register for your FCmobilelife account and set up your account preferences.

Starting the Web Client

When you login to your account from the main screen of FCmobilelife, the web client is started up. You can login by simply entering your username and password from the main screen, or use the “Login” tab at the upper right of the screen to get to a separate login dialog.

Using the FCmobilelife Web Client

After you enter your login information, you will see the web client home screen. All interactions with the web client are done from its home screen. In some cases smaller screens will come up as you are in the process of creating or viewing an individual Action or performing other Tasks. The next section shows the home screen and explains the various areas of that screen. (Note that most of the screen elements also have mouse-over captions that describe their function.)

Tour of the Web Client home screen

The toolbar at the top of the screen contains a number of useful controls. The first four icons (from the left) are used to create a new Action: Task, Post, Schedule and Goal respectively. The last colored icon is used to add a new member to your team or to create a group of team members. The first white icon brings up the calendar busy search dialog. The second white icon shows a list of archived Actions and the third one refreshes the data (be aware that the data is automatically refreshed every two minutes). If you highlight an Action in a list (as shown below), then the white X icon appears and it can be used to delete that Action.

The small calendar and the controls around it are used to navigate to different dates, or to just see a small calendar for a different month. Your events are always shown on the large calendar to the right. If you click on “Today” you will bring up the current day’s Schedule.

The large calendar view shows holidays, all day events and meetings in a day, week or month format. Clicking on an event will bring up a detailed view of that event. In the month display, if there are more events for a day than will fit, a “+n more” shows at the bottom of the day. Click on the day header to bring up a view of all schedules for that day

Under the large calendar is a list of your Tasks (the ones you have sent or received) that are due on the day, week or month indicated. The date range shown changes automatically as you change the view in the calendar above.

The quadrant in the lower left of the screen is used to show various lists of Actions. The incoming list shows all your new and updated items. The other lists are used to see specific Action types (Tasks, Posts, etc) or to manage nicknames and groups in your team. You can sort any of these lists by any column by clicking on the column header.

Setting up your Team

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 so they can confirm that they are willing to be on your team.

If they accept:

• They get added to your team.
• You can send them items (Post, Tasks, etc.).
• You get added to their team automatically and they can send items to you.

If they decline (block):

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

To invite someone,

• From the web client, click the “Team” (purple) icon on the top menu bar and select “Find and Add a New Contact”.
• Enter full or partial name of the contact and click "Find". (Alternatively, you can search on an email address if you get too many hits from a common name). 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 to Team”. (Note, if you get more than one match from your search and cannot determine which contact you want, then you will have to repeat 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

Creating a group

Once you have some members on your team, you can create groups to make it easier to collaborate with several people at once. Again click on the “Team” (purple) icon on the top menu bar but now select “Create a new group”. You will see this dialog box:

Name the group by typing in a group name in the “Alias” text box. Select the group members by checking team members in your team list. After you create the group you can send Tasks or other Actions to all the members of that group by including the group name in the “To” list for the Action.

Creating a New Action (Task)

To create a new Action, you select the appropriate icon from the toolbar. If you select the Task icon (the red icon with a circle and a check mark), that will bring up the Task Create screen shown below. Each of the Action types uses a different color scheme, and while there are some differences, most of the controls are common to all Actions.

For new Tasks and Schedules, “Me” is the default recipient. If you mouse over the “For” text box and click, you will bring up a list of your team members. You can select one of more of these to be the recipients of this Action (you can remove yourself as a recipient as well). You can enter a due date for the Task using the small calendar control. Type a description of the Task into the “Text” box. Set your priority (A1 to C3) for the Task with the drop down list next to “Priority”.

You can attach an audio file and an image to the Task using the “Attach” buttons. With the web client, these buttons let you browse your PC for an audio file or a jpg image file to attach. When you add an attachment, it is indicated on the screen. In the example above, a jpg file has been attached. (Note that only jpg format image files are currently supported as attachments.)

When you are ready to send the Task to its recipients, select “Send” (“Close” will cancel the entire operation without sending anything).

Receiving a New Action (Schedule)

As long as you are logged in, the web client is continuously checking with the FCmobilelife server to see if you have new or updated Actions. The web client adds all such Actions to your Incoming list (the first tab in the lower left quadrant of the screen). For example, when you receive a new Action from someone else, it will first appear in your Incoming list. If you click on it, it will bring up the view screen for that Action. The example below is of a new incoming Schedule Action.

The “View” screen shows all the details about the Action such as who sent it, who received it, the date, time and duration etc. The area underneath the priority control shows the description of the Action. If there is an attachment, there will be an icon at the end of the description. Clicking on that will show you the attachment. For a Schedule Action, you need to respond with accept, decline or tentative using the pull down menu next to “Response”. In this case, Accept has already been selected and shows up next to “Response”. You can also add a text reply in the “Reply” text box. You can also add attachments to your reply (use the icons below the “Reply” text box to do this). The sender and all recipients will receive and be able to view your reply and attachments.

Viewing an existing Action (Post)

You can look at various lists of Actions by selecting the appropriate index tab in the lower left quadrant of the screen. If you highlight an Action in a list and click on it, you will bring up a screen showing the details of the Action (its current contents and status). For example, here is a Post with an audio attachment that was sent by Sophie to two recipients: Eric and Me. You can see that Eric has replied with a picture attachment. I have not yet read this Post but I now see the complete Action (the initial message and the reply from Eric). I have put the mouse over the message from Eric to see the complete text of this reply (note the … that indicate only part of the reply fits in the text box).

This has been a very brief introduction to FCmobilelife, but it should be enough to get you up and running. 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.