Intellect and Time & Chaos feature a special section called Projects which is your own custom database to store whatever you find a use for! We call it Projects by default as this has been our most commonly asked for extension to our contact and time management features, but even the name of Projects is customizable by you!
Some users have customized this to be a Sales Opportunity tracker. Others have made this a wine cellar database. The point is without needing to learn and use a different program, you can create and use a custom database right here in our program. Plus, if you use our cloud service called ChaosHost, you can synchronize this data between your computers.
While Intellect and Time & Chaos definitely revolve around contacts and their history, it is also possible to link appointments, tasks, contacts and (for Intellect users) email to a Project to give you the big picture on what has been going on.
One of the videos in our Chaos University video series shows how this feature works. You can also keep reading below for details in text form.
(a note to upgraders: older versions of Time & Chaos or Intellect had a feature called Memos and Lists which had a much more basic version of what has become this projects section. If there were any data in this older section, as much of it as possible has been copied into this new Projects database)
How do you get started? Click on the Projects button at the lower left of the program. You'll be taken to a new screen where any existing project data would be shown.
Click on the New button on the toolbar and you'll be taken to the entry screen where you can start to create your custom database.
Every project must have a Project Name or a description, which is how it will be listed on the main screen. Like our other databases, Projects can have Groups, Categories and Notes.
Projects also have 16 custom fields plus a custom memo field and you get to decide what to label these and what function they will have. (These custom fields are similar to the custom fields available for Contacts). You can choose whether each field is a normal text field or whether it should have a drop-down list of specific choices. You can choose (by how you label the field) whether the values you enter can be just anything or be something more specific like a date or a number or currency. With number fields, you can even choose to have totals or averages calculated and displayed at the bottom of the list of projects. You make these choices by double-clicking on the spot to the left of each text box where the label goes and making your selections from the pop-up screen.
Once you have setup your custom fields, back on the main screen of the Projects section, you can right-click on the column headings and select which fields you wish to display. (This is a good time to turn on the columns for any of those numeric fields you asked to have totals or averages for.)
Did you decide to create a custom database for something other than Project tracking? If so, you can rename the Projects section to something more appropriate, if you wish.
Go to the Options button on the top toolbar, then go to Projects. You can choose a new Module name and Item name. Usually the Module name is a pluralization of the item name.
If you want to link appointments, tasks or email to a project, you can either create them from within the project OR do a simple drag and drop of an existing item back to the project.
To create a new linked item from within the project, go to the appropriate section and click the New button (like you would back on the main screen to create a new item).
If you need to drag and drop an existing item, you would double click on the project to open the entry screen, go the appropriate tab and move this screen to the side so you can still see the main screen of Intellect or Time & Chaos, too. Then find the appointment or task or email message and drag it to the Project entry screen to build a link.
This help article applies to Intellect 4 or newer, Time & Chaos 8 or newer