How do I use it? ◎ What's new ▸ Gallery ▸ Shortcuts ▸

"Unboxing"

• Setting up
• First glance

"How do I use it?"

• Searching for cards
  • Basics
  • No results
  • Too many results/no results
• Just working
  • Finish the current, pick the next
  • While working on a card
  • Uploading/converting a picture
• A bit of management
• Keyboard shortcut reference ▸

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Setting up

Free users: setting up with an own API token ▸

The setup otherwise should be self-explanatory - if not, please let us know ▸

First glance

This app is part of a larger productivity app, planned to integrate with Trello first.
It therefore may enable you to work more effectively with Trello in certain cases, following certain (not very restrictive, rather optional) processes.

The main dialogs are

• "Select Card", can be used for searching, listing, sorting, typo-fixing, comparing & consolidating etc. cards typically on a single board at a time, and
• "Active Card", which should be your browser-proof bookmark to the card you're working on, and should also help with keeping correlated information together.
  There's a New Card (NC) dialog, too, almost identical to the AC. You can keep numerous NC dialogs open if need be (currently unrestricted, might change), but only 2 SC and one AC dialog at most.

Unless you change the shortcuts, you can access these by

Alt+Ctrl+Shift+S - Select Card dialog (SC dialog)
Alt+Ctrl+Shift+A - Active Card dialog (AC dialog)

Alt+Ctrl+Shift+N - Another New Card dialog (NC dialog)

Also, it might be useful at times to know that there should be only one instance of the app running on your PC at any point in time.

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Searching for cards

• Basics
• Pick the board: You'll have to switch to the board the card is on.
  If need be, easiest is to use the selector on the SC dialog - you may need to unhide it, e.g. right-click some empty window area around the card list, and tick "Show board selector".
  In the active board combo, select the right board.
  I normally just try to search in the current workphase (list) first, so then it's enough to enter the search phrase.
• Enter the phrase: E.g. press Alt+F or click any editable area of the "Filter" edit. The search phrase can contain a number of words you think each card should (simultaneously) contain either in the title or the description.

• Example: searching a big board

• No results

• Not sure about the list? Change the list selection: If there isn't a hit, I either try to press Alt+A for a view that isn't constrained by work phase, or specifically go for a certain phase (e.g. Alt+D for those "Done", if on a 'standard' kanban board).

• Suspect a typo? Try fuzzy mode: Fuzzy filtering allows for loosely matching the keywords, i.e. for a typo per each searched word.
  E.g. you'll find each of projekt, proyect, and proejct if you look for project in this way.
  It's a bit slower and may not be a standard option in apps thus isn't the default. But to get fiddled and fiddling in the picture if you were looking for fiddle previously, it's one possible way to go.
  Press Alt+Z to toggle into/out of this mode!

• Too many results/no results

• Loosen the constraints: If there aren't any results, maybe remove some other constraints (e.g. try deleting some of the keywords). If this then doesn't narrow the results down enough, once you have too many hits, you may try as below:

• Try the recent filter: It can help a lot if you know you've worked on the card recently - just press Alt+R or tick the "recent" checkbox and find the matching cards listed from most recent to least recent. Note that this works off your locally stored history of active cards, i.e. can only know what happened on your PC since installation (currently).
• Try adding columns: You may change which columns are visible. Sorting by last activity can help even if the card didn't make it to be a seriously "active card". There's Members and Votes too should they seem to be of use. To sort by any of the fields in the grid just click the name of the field. (Keyboard accessible option for sorting to come ...!)

Just working

• Finish the current, pick the next
  The arrow keys: right → and down ↓ play a role here.

• Finish the current: I normally just open the AC dialog, have a final look - have I finished all the checklists needed? Then head for the SC dialog (press Alt+S). To actually finish the card, press Alt+Shift+Right→.

• Pick the next! Once in the SC dialog, I just select the next card (press Down↓ to select the topmost item) then press Enter to make the current card the active one - also to return to the AC dialog if I came that way. (You can always open it by default by Ctrl+Alt+Shift+A, or however you configured it, except if it is already on the screen.)
• Think and take notes? I might draft a few thoughts in the Description (press Alt+E to kick off with that). There you'll have the complete editor arsenal. I might have to google up a few tips, e.g. from StackOverflow. I may take some quick notes, by copy-pasting content (just select in the browser & copy, then in the editor either right click, and use the context menu to
  Paste > Convert to Markdown or if you know that it is your default, just press Ctrl+V or click Paste). If something unwanted happens, press Ctrl+Z.

• Create checklists Now that I've got my head around the card, I often unfold on what the description summarizes, in the form of small Todos. These are great reminders so that without re-reading the whole description every time I lose sight of what I wanted to do, I can get back on track. For this I press Alt+T for the 'todos' (called checklists in Trello), enter a name for the list, press Enter, and list out an initial resolution plan for the card in the form of todos.

• While working on a card

• Taking quick notes: If need be, I have a look at the Active Card dialog to remind myself what needs to be done (I don't always close it, so I can just Alt+Tab back, but if it does get closed, again Ctrl+Shift+Alt+A is the default key combo to reach for it).
  I can also take quick notes that can help with later understanding of what happened, typically in the description. Press Alt+E to edit the dEscription, and if you just have something to appEnd, press Ctrl+E.

• Prioritising todos inside lists: I might change my mind about what to do next. Prioritising todos (within a lists) is made easy via the keyboard, just select the item(s) you'd like to move up or down, and move them. How?
  • Select multiple adjacent todos: move the selection using Up↑/Down↓ to the first or last item, hold Shift and keep using Up↑/Down↓ to select the rest.
  • Move them: hold Shift+Control to grab them, and press Up↑/Down↓, Page Up/Page Down or Home/End to move the items.
  • Lost my way? If I change my mind and want to abandon changes? While still grabbing the items with Shift+Control, pressing Esc will reset the items location to the initial position and no change is made when released. No worries!
• Inserting a new todo: occasionally I just come up with todos while working.
  Alt+Plus will create an item right below the current Todo item (you'll be able to enter the name right away). You can also use
  Ctrl+Plus to create a todo ahead of everything below, and including the currently selected item. These goodies work in the Select Card dialog's card list too, however, they create cards over there.
• Deleting todo(s): select them just as in 2., and press Del. Warning: there is no "undo" for for checklists (yet) in the app!
• Moving todo(s) "far": e.g. around the time I finish working on the card, I might decide to move a few todos to a new card.
  • To move items to another checklist or even board/card, select them just as in 2., and press Ctrl+X (cut) to remove them and put them on the clipboard.
  • Then navigate where they should go in the app, and press Ctrl+V (paste). It is meant to move all details (checkedness, member, due date), but it might require more testing
  • if you want to see if everything arrives as you'd like before anything irreversible happens, just use the classic select (as before), but instead of cutting, Copy+C (copy) at the source, then Ctrl+V (paste) at the destination. See if the content is there, then delete the originals. You can of course create multiple copies of todos in this way quickly too.

Upload/convert an image

1. Activate the destination card first

   • You can use the Select Card dialog. (Press Alt+S from the Active Card dialog, or just use the menu)
   • If it's open in the browser, you can drag & drop the link from the address bar (grab the icon on the left hand side of the address) to the top of the Active Card dialog as well.
   • To open the Active Card dialog, you can e.g. use the tray icon (double click it on Windows or click it to open the menu), also shortcuts.

2. Now that the Active Card is whichever you need, to attach a picture to the card you're working on, you'll likely be able to

   • drag & drop or
   • copy & paste it from the application or window that it's in to the attachments grid
     If you open the image (e.g. in the Picture Viewer) copy & paste that, it should be typically (depending on where you copied from) be 'detached' from the storage format, and as a result attached in the default image format (WebP and PNG can be currently specified, see Settings/Editor).
   • there's also a file upload option (right click the attachments grid, click "attach") where you can use a dialog, also supporting multiple files in one go

In either case, you'll be prompted for the filename for each picture. If you change the extension, Focus|Project will try to convert to the corresponding format before attaching.

You can similarly convert between image formats when downloading as well via the filename.

A bit of management

... coming soon! Feel free to experiment in the meantime! :)

Up to find out more?

• the Gallery ▸ highlights app features in a visual way
• another practical aspect is the list of Shortcuts ▸
• the List of features ▸ page enumerates what's available more comprehensively

Like to explore? The simplest can be to try it! ▸