How I use Maine InfoPro

I use Maine InfoPro2 to understand and keep track of information about people and organizations involved in medicine, business, art, publishing, poetry, dance, and other areas of interest to my business or my personal life and to schedule and track different types of events and keep event specific notes about work commitments, projects, sales contacts, training, volunteer work, local group events, etc.

I also use InfoPro2 to organize information about my creative work, my early paintings and sculpture, my more recent digital art, poems, web applications, websites, game designs and products, software programs, code, and SQL, and to plan and define collections of these creative assets and to gain quick access to information and related files for any asset when I need it.

Fast double click access from one thing to another

A single double click and I can jump from
♦  a person on a related person list
♦  an organization on a related organization list
♦  an asset on a related asset list
♦  a person or organization on a distribution list
♦  or a person, organization, asset, or list in a scheduled event

to details about a specific
♦  person
♦  organization
♦  asset
♦  or distribution list

and from there, for people and organizations, the detail tab shows me
♦  contact and other detail info.
(tel., email, web links, licenses, files and images, and notes)
and for assets the detail tab shows me
♦  detail info.
(current location, web links, provenance, history, files and images, and notes)

and for organizations, people, and assets the top set of tabs shows me
♦  related organizations
♦  related people
♦  related assets
♦  owned and “scheduled for” events
and for orgnizations and people
♦  degrees, credentials, credits and certificates.
and for assets
♦  custom attributes

A simple double click on a web link takes me to the website, video, Facebook page, or web page and a simple double click on an email starts a new email to that email address. A double click on a related file, brings up that file in its default application.

Scheduling

From any organization or person screen, I can schedule or check events, look up details and make calls and keep notes about the call – everything I need to keep things moving forward in any area of my life is right where I need it.

Understanding a new business or organization

One of the beauties of Maine InfoPro2 is that I can define new names for an organization’s relationships to people or other organizations whenever I need them. When I “map” an organization and the organization’s people, parent organizations, subsidiaries, etc., I can easily use the terms the organization I’m describing uses for these relationships on its own website. A little cut and paste and I have the information in Maine InfoPro2 where I can easily find it and use it whenever I wish.

More about assets

After I added assets and relationships for assets, I tested the application by organizing information about my photographs, poems, digital images, and other artwork, created a collection for the first set of poems I’m thinking about publishing . . . and then I decided that what people managing information about their creative assets really needed was to be able to connect any asset to any image or file.

So I added the ability to do that and got it working the way I wanted it to work. Now I can create custom folders for different kinds of files and use InfoPro2 to find a file and put a copy of the file in one of those directories, and then, in the asset’s Related Files and Images tab, I select the file, add a caption and description if I want to, and bam it’s hooked up. Double click and I’m looking at a PDF of one of my poems or photos, or contemplating a digital image which may have some promise . . . Here I am, a database expert who had never organized information about my creative work. Not anymore!

And I’ve found it useful to add information about all kinds of assets: the web domain names I own or manage for my customers; database designs and database applications (the Maine InfoPro2 application is now an asset which I manage in Maine InfoPro2); websites I’ve created and manage or have created applications for; game products and game designs, valuable programs, code, and SQL I want to be able to easily find and run or bring up in my editor; my equipment; links to useful online references; even a budget.

Distribution lists and automated email

And using Microsoft Office® to automate a mailing is a snap – click, copy the list to an Excel® spreadsheet, specify that Excel® file as your information source in a Word® email document using Word’s automated mailing functionality . . . Easy and powerful. We use it to send out Maine QIP email updates.

. . . I wouldn’t want to ever have to go back to how I was not keeping track of everything and everybody before we built this information tool.

Bill


Information Matters!

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