Quick Start Guide - Your Assistant

On your mark, get set, go! In this tutorial we explain the basics for a harmonious and successful collaboration with your personal assistant.

If not everything runs smoothly at the beginning, please remember that all beginnings are difficult - for you as well as for your assistant.

If you have suggestions for improvements, we are always open and appreciate it.

What's this?

For a better understanding we start with a list of the most important terms and explanations from the mysterious world of quickies:

  • Quickie – a little all-rounder who can monitor and display information from a cloud or server application (email, calendar, project management, IT monitoring) - or what did you think?

    Quickie Icon – a freely selectable icon which is located on the assistant bar, able to display quickie notifications, opens the quickie pop-up when clicked.

    Quickie Popup – in the quickie popup the information of the quickie is displayed on one or more tabs, each of which is called a quicklet.

    Quicklets – a quicklet displays selected information of a quickie in a certain way (tabular or graphical). For the e-mail quickie, for example, there is an inbox quicklet and a mail folder quicklet that display the e-mails from the corresponding folder. With the help of rules, the display can also be restricted to e.g. e-mails from certain senders.

    Quickie Data – A collective term for the information monitored and displayed by a quicke (e.g. e-mails, calendar entries, news articles, tasks, error messages).

    Quickie Data Source – The quickie data source provides the information that is monitored and displayed by a quickie. Data sources can be cloud applications and server applications accessed via API or data that can be retrieved from a web server (e.g. news feeds).

Assistant Bar

The assistant bar is used for communication between you and your assistant. It is located at the top of your monitor by default.

  1. Your Quickies: in the left corner – like the chickens lined up on the bar – are your quickies. Each quickies is represented by a freely selectable symbol below which usually a short light strip is drawn, which is used by the quickie to gain attention in case it has anything to say.
  2. Your Assistant: in the right corner you will find your assistant, her eyes always on you, ready to take on new tasks from you. A small speech bubble appears next to her when she has something to tell you.

 

With just one glance, you can see the current state of your quickies — thanks to overlay symbols and light strips:

  1. Up and Running - no special incidents
  2. Green Light Strip - new messages with low priority available

    For example, a green light strip indicates that there are new entries in a newsfeed.
  3. Grey Colored - quickie is deactivated
  4. Red Exclamation Mark - errors occurred during the retrieval or processing of quickie data
  5. Yellow Exclamation Mark -warnings occurred when the quickie data was retrieved or processed

    For example, the publishing date is missing for a newsfeed entry or the image for a newsfeed entry cannot be loaded.
  6. Green Plus - logon information must be entered
  7. Red Minus - logon to quickie application failed
  8. Green Light Strip - new messages or information with low priority available
  9. Yellow Light Strip - new messages or information with higher priority available
  10. Red Light Strip - new messages or information with high priority available

Docking

Your assistant bar is docked to the top of the screen by default. You can move it to any edge of the screen or place it as a free window on the desktop:

  1. Drag & Drop – hover the mouse pointer over a free area on the assistant bar, press the mouse button and drag the assistant bar to the desired position while keeping the mouse button pressed.
  2. Assistant Bar (Context Menu) – open the context menu of the assistant bar and select from the "docking" menu to which screen border your assistant bar should be docked.
  3. Options (Assistant Bar) – open the Options dialog, open the Assistant Bar tab and select the screen and screen border to which your assistant bar should be docked.

Quickie Pop-Ups

In the quickie pop-ups, all the information for which the quickie is responsible is displayed in the way you want. Most quickies are connected to a cloud application or server application via a Web API. The information can be displayed on one or more quicklets (tabs).

  1. Title – here you can find the quickie name (for pinned quickies) and some buttons:

    Refresh – retrieve the current quickie data from the quickie data source and update the quickie popup.

    Pinning – pinning or unpinning the quickie pop-up from the desktop.

    Close – close quickie pop-up - unpinned quickie pop-ups close automatically when the mouse pointer is left.

  2. Quicklets Directory – Listing of all quicklets - if new notifications exist for a quicklet, this is indicated by a narrow light strip.

  3. Quicklet Area – the content of the currently selected quicklet is displayed here - for tabular data you can scroll with mouse and keyboard.

Assistant Pop-Up

In the assistant popup you will find the latest announcements and further information from your assistant:

  1. Title – next to the name of your assistant you will find the same buttons as in the quickie pop-up:

    Refresh – Retrieving the latest announcements from the Assistant Control Center (ACC) - e.g. release notes, error messages.

    Pinning – Pinning or unpinning the assistant pop-up from the desktop.

    Close – Close the assistant pop-up.

  2. Messages – chronological list of all messages and information:

    Release Notes

    Fault Messages

    Tips & Tricks

    Gossip from the tea kitchen

    Tutorials

  3. Footer – here are a few more buttons:

    Exit – Click here to send your assistant to the break or to finish work for the day.

    Options – Open the Options dialog box.

    First Aid Kit – Open the first aid kit, which makes it possible to listen to the single quickies with the stethoscope.

Options

In the Options dialog box you can update the settings for your assistant and you can view and update your personal settings:

You can open the Options dialog via the assistant pop-up or the context menu of the assistant bar.

  1. General: everything that has no place elsewhere
  2. Assistant Bar: where the hell is she going
  3. Notifications: pain in the neck or sleeping pill
  4. Browser: Chrome, Firefox, Edge or IE
  5. User Data: who are you?
  6. Privacy: oppen book or secretive person
  7. Update: would you care for automatic updates

First Aid Kit

The first-aid kit contains useful tools that can help you figure out why your quickies or your assistant don't work as you want.

  1. Console – here you can find useful information about what your quickies and your assistant are doing: starting, stopping, retrieving data, processing data, etc..
  2. Network – here you will find a log of all network activities: URLs, HTTP status codes, content lengths.

Read On

  • Tutorials
  • Your Assistant - the basic course for fruitful cooperation
  • Quickies - everything about the little all-rounders
  • Notifications - beep, beep, beep, I think you should take a look at this
  • Rules - decide yourself what is important for you and what is not