Best Dates user guide

Best Dates is a useful utility helping you to organize and view anniversaries, special dates, birthdays in a handy way. This application has a built-in reminder which will remind you about an anniversary and offer to write an SMS/EMail or to call the person who has a birthday. It also has the ability to synchronize with contacts and calendar.

Dates view:

The main view shows a list of dates, sorted and filtered out according to selected options. You can make here any operations on the dates, such as:

Import/Export operations:

For synchronisation and back-up operations Best Dates has the following set of useful commands:

• Refresh calendar - refreshes the record to reflect whether it is present in the calendar;
• Import from/Export to CSV;
• Import from/Export to Contacts;
• Add/remove all to/from calendar;

Operations:

• New date;
• New from contacts - if the record is added with this command, then Send message and Call commands will be available for it;
• Edit date;
• Delete date;
• Edit groups;
• Find nearest date;
• Find by name;
• Find next;

Sort and filter:

• View by day - left/right arrows let you switch to previous/next day;
• View by week;
• View by month;
• View custom period - shows +N days, left/right arrows allow to decrease/increase the shown period by 10 days;
• View all;
• Sort by date/name/days left;

Icons and indicators:

Buttons states:

Dates:

Every record has the following information about a date:

• Name;
• Group;
• Date;
• Yearly;
• Photo;
• Calendar reminder - when this option is turned on, your record will be visible in Calendar application;
• Prefix text - text in front of First and Last names in Calendar record;
• Reminder time - time of calendar event (anniversary);
• Calendar alarm - the same as alarm field in calendar record;
• Days before;
• Alarm time;

Groups:

Best Dates lets you manage dates groups. The following information can be specified for a group:

• Name;
• Group icon;
• Show age on/off;
• Show zodiac;
• Reminder - if this option is set to "on", the dates in this group will be handled by the inbuilt reminder;

Options:

• Show future age;
• Compact view;
• Zoom in/out;
• General settings - allows to specify look and feel settings, name format and CSV separator;
• Reminder settings - allows to setup reminder settings and template message;
• Calendar settings - default settings for a calendar entry;

Reminder:

When the time to remind comes, Best Dates shows you a reminder dialog. You can select the following commands in this dialog:

• Later - reminds again some minutes or hours later;
• Call a person;
• Send him/her SMS or EMail message;

In order for the Reminder to work, all you need to do is to activate the reminder in "Reminder settings". The Reminder will show up even if you close Best Dates and it will be started automatically on system start-up.