Version 5.5.0b Update

Palm Pilot Instructions

Access Rights and Security:  You may set the access rights for each staff member to either one of the following three options:  1.  No Rights.  2.  One way sync.  3.  Two way sync.  By default, all users have No Rights.  You may change a user's rights by clicking Tools, System, Configure Group Defaults.  Double click on the group (ie: Administrator, Default Level, etc) and then click Calendar Security.  Next, in the window on the right, click the Palm Pilot dropdown and select either No Rights, One Way Sync or Two Way Sync.

One Way Sync Rights: The advantage of this option is that users cannot update the calendar in A1Law by making changes in their Palm Pilot.  If you have a large office where only the calendar clerk is authorized to make changes or additions to the calendar then this may be the choice of preference for your staff members.  You may decide to give most or all of your staff members One Way Sync Access rights.  However, you may mix it so that some users have one way rights while others have two way sync rights.

Two Way Sync Rights:  This option allows users to make changes to appointments or add additional appointments  in their Palm Pilot and those changes are then updated into the A1Law calendar when they perform a Hot Sync.  The advantage of this option is that users don't have to contact the office to add or make changes to appointments.  The disadvantage is that no "one" person can maintain very tight control over the entire office calendar.

Instructions:

In order to utilize the Palm Pilot integration with A1Law (or any other program for that matter), you must register the control   You may only use one program to integrate the calendar with your Palm Pilot.  You cannot use two different programs that integrate with the Palm Pilot.  In other words, you cannot use Microsoft Outlook's calendar with the Palm Pilot and A1Law's calendar with the Palm Pilot.  Similarly, you cannot use the calendar that came with your Palm Pilot software and Microsoft Outlook's calendar.  You must choose one calendar program to utilize with your Palm Pilot.

This means that if you decide to use One Way Sync access for a user, then they cannot ever edit or add new calendar appointments in their Palm Pilot since there will be no way to "upload" that information into A1Law.  They must have Two Way Sync access rights to do that.

Registering the Palm Control

This only needs to be done one time on every workstation that has the ability to sync with the Palm Pilot.  After granting access rights, click Tools, Palm Pilot Interface.  Next, click Configuration and then click Proceed.  Next, where it says Palm Pilot Path/Folder, A1Law may have already entered a default path and folder for you if it exists (ie:  c:\program files\palm).  It's advisable to select the same folder where your Palm Pilot files reside but it may not be required.  If you are not sure what to enter or cannot find the Palm Pilot folder you may click the button with the three dots on it to search for you palm directory in the program files folder or you may just enter c:\lawlocal\ which may work just fine.

If you are granting One Way Sync access rights then there is nothing more you need to enter at the Configuration section.  You only need to click the Register Palm Control button and it must say Succeeded.  If you are granting two way access rights, you may enter other defaults in this section so that you do not need to enter these options every time you do a sync.  But, one option for both one way and two way syncing that may be useful are the Start and End date defaults.  For example, suppose when you do a Hot Sync, you always want your calendar only and you want it from today through one week from today and you don't want to always have to enter the starting and ending dates and your initials (to export only your calendar).  At the Palm Pilot Configuration, click the Palm Pilot Info tab and enter the following:   Starting Days from Today (enter zero for today).  Ending Days from today (enter 6 which would be 6 days from today and today which is 7 days or one week).  Enter your initials in the Attorney handling or Attorney Assigned.  Click the Save button.

One Way Sync Instructions:

Click Tools, Palm Pilot Interface.  Perform a sync with A1Law and the Palm Pilot will be selected.  Click the proceed button.  Enter your Starting and Ending dates.  You may of course enter these defaults in Configuration so that you don't have to always enter starting dates, ending dates, your initials, etc.  You may enter a calendar number to export so that follow ups or statutes or other calendars are not exported into your Palm Pilot.  Leave it blank to export all calendars.  For example, if you enter:  1,2  then only calendars 1 and 2 will be exported into your Palm Pilot where 1 corresponds to the first calendar in the dropdown and 2 corresponds to the second.

Once you have specified the export criteria such as starting and ending dates, click the Proceed button.  A1Law will then tell you how many appointments will be exported and tells you to press the Hot Sync button the export the events into your Palm Pilot.

Warning:  Every time you do an export and press the Hot Sync button, all of the calendar appointments in your palm pilot will be deleted.  This is because if you exported the most recent week of information every day then you would start to have a lot of duplicate appointments in your Palm Pilot.  In other words, if you export this Friday's appointment today and again tomorrow and again the following day then it would be duplicated in your Palm Pilot three times unless you manually delete all the appointments in your Palm Pilot.  Therefore, all appointments are automatically deleted in the Palm Pilot when performing the Hot Sync.  However, other information in other Palm Pilot programs such as the notepad, etc are not affected.  Therefore, when granting One Way Sync access rights, the Palm Pilot should be used for Viewing Purposes Only.

When testing this for the first time, start with a simple calendar export such as today only or today and tomorrow so that you don't have to wait too long for the export to finish.  All palm pilot interfaces may operate at different speeds.

How Do I View The Client, Defendant, Attorney
Handling Attorney Assigned, Venue, Judge, Status, etc

All of this information is stored in the NOTES of each calendar entry in the Palm Pilot in a very organized and logical fashion.

Two Way Sync Instructions

If you choose two way sync access rights you must always use the same sign on user name in A1Law when syncing with your Palm Pilot.  In other words, if you sign on A1Law with your initials as ABC and perform a Hot Sync, you must always sign on as ABC when doing another Hot Sync when using your Palm Pilot so that A1Law can compare when the same appointment has been changed in both A1Law and your Palm Pilot.  Although this is unlikely, it could happen.  You might change the date and time to meet a client and five minutes later the client may call the office realizing they can't make that appointment and the appointment will then be changed in the calendar in A1Law as well.

If you have an appointment that has changed in both the Palm calendar and A1Law's calendar you may set up your sync options so that either one of the following three options are selected:  1.  The changed appointment in the Palm Pilot automatically overwrites the appointment in A1Law.  2.  The appointment in A1Law is kept and the changes for that Palm appointment are discarded.  3.  Always Prompt Me (default choice) is where A1Law will display both appointments as well as the appointment before any changes were made in A1Law and asks you which appointment you would like to keep.

Just like One Way Syncing, from the main Palm Pilot window select Perform a Sync with A1Law and the Palm Pilot and then enter your criteria including the starting date, ending date, attorney handling, attorney assigned, etc.  These options may be saved at the Configuration.

Most of the criteria is self explanatory and you may also place the mouse cursor over the criteria for "tips."  However, the following explanations are in order for the following:

Default Initials:  If you add appointments in your Palm Pilot but you do not specify the attorney handling or attorney assigned, A1Law will use the Default Initials otherwise the appointment will just be imported into A1Law as "unassigned" where the attorney handling and attorney assigned are left blank.

Allow Editing or Deleting added calendar events in the palm before adding them in the A1Law calendar:  checking this box allows you to edit or delete appointments that you added in the Palm Pilot that will be imported into the A1Law calendar during the Hot Sync.  Usually this option will most likely be left unchecked.

Viewing and Editing Appointments in the Palm Pilot: You will find a lot of information in the Notes for each entry in the Palm Pilot calendar.  Do not change the EventID.  You may decide to change the case number, calendar or client but it is extremely unlikely that you would ever want to do that for any calendar entry.  Changing the calendar (ie: from calendar 1 to calendar 3) would move the entry from one calendar in A1Law such as Appearances to another calendar such as Follow Ups / Diary dates).  All normal notes should go on the line or lines following the ___Notes Follows ___

Codes Feature

The CODES feature may only be used when adding new appointments in the Palm Pilot.  The CODES feature is not necessary when editing appointments that were exported into the Palm Pilot via a Hot Sync because those appointments are already properly formatted in the notes section for that appointment.  When adding new appointments in your Palm Pilot, A1Law will automatically export them into Calendar #1 in A1Law unless you specify otherwise.  Do not confuse this with editing appointments already in the Palm Pilot.  One may select all details such as the calendar number, case number, attorney handling, assigned, venue, judge, etc. when adding a new appointment in the Palm Pilot.

The codes features allows you to quickly and easily specify other fields when adding appointments in the calendar.  One would most likely find it very difficult to remember the special notes format that you would see when viewing calendar notes.  Therefore when adding new appointments you may use the following "shorthand" where CODES must be the first word in the notes and the only word on the first line.  You may then use the CODE notation when adding new appointments in the Palm Pilot.  The notation must be entered in the Notes section for a calendar event and CODES must be on the first line and the only word on that line in the notes.  Here is an example of the CODES shorthand notation:

CODES
#354
C1
FJon
LDoe
DABC Company
JSMITH
SOPEN
VLAO
AHABC
AADEF
NOTES
These are my notes for this calendar event
and that is all for now

Explanation: Notice that the first word in the notes on the first line is "CODES"  Next, notice the first letter acts as an abbreviation of what is to follow except for the attorney handling and attorney assigned with the first two letters AH and AA act as the abbreviation.  You do not need to use all of the abbreviations.  You may use only what you need.  The following abbreviations may be used:  # = Case Number, C = Calendar Number, F = First Name, L = Last Name, D = Defendant, J = Judge, S = Status, V = Venue, AH = Attorney Handling, AA = Attorney Assigned, NOTES = notes but the notes must follow on the next line.

Note:  In A1Law, you may click Help, About.  If your Local directory is not the default of c:\lawlocal then you will need to either reinstall the client (setupwrk.exe or a1setup.exe) to point to the c:\lawlocal or you will need to create or change the c:\windows\A1Settings.ini file as follows (where c:\lawlocal replaced by the local directory):

Tempdir=c:\lawlocal\temp
Palmdir=c:\lawlocal