Relish Net

Productive Time Management for Workgroups and Individuals.

In a networked environment, Relish Net integrates the notion of people, places, and things with all the personal benefits of Relish. In addition to your own schedule, you have access to the schedules of others using Relish on your LAN. You also have access to the schedules of any places (such as conference rooms) and things (such as VCRs and projectors) that are scheduled using Relish Net.

Thus, you'll view your own information, someone else's, or many others together in a single integrated view. Search for free time. Easily schedule and reschedule both personal and group commitments; repeat events; print schedules; dial calls; run programs; prioritize to do's.

Desktop objects give quick and easy access to common and customizable views. Extensive drag-and-drop support (for scheduling, rescheduling, printing) provides more flexibility. Keyword searching. Expert system for times/dates. Refreshing is unobtrusively automatic. It's all dynamic in real time so everything you see or do is automatically current - including users who disconnect and reconnect from the LAN! Relish Net keeps functioning even without a server connection, updating workstations and server automatically when LAN access is restored.

Features and Benefits

 * Acts as your calendar, reminder, and personal planner
 * Allows events to be scheduled for any length of time (even multiple days), for nonspecific times ("in November 1999"), or not tied to any time or date
 * Let's you group items and phone info into self-defined categories (such as business, personal, etc.)
 * Provides extensive options to repeat recurring events automatically, including those that occur just every so often - such as every 3rd month
 * Dials calls from the integrated phone book
 * Let's you prioritize to do's
 * Automatically runs other programs and batch files as scheduled
 * Let's you view information in a wide variety of ways: for a day, week, month, any period of time, based on keyword searches, events that are past due, "floating" events (not specifically scheduled), to do list, and phone book
 * Gives full featured reminders and alarms at the appropriate times and for events that should have occurred while the PC was off
 * Provides immediate action options - such as revise and defer - with every reminder
 * Optionally shows keystroke-by-keystroke how Relish is interpreting your time and date entries
 * Is easy for the novice, with advanced features for the power user
 * Extensively supports drag-and-drop to quickly and easily schedule, reschedule, and print
 * Gives you quick access to specific information with Relish Buns - some are predefined and you can easily create your own
 * Includes a small month's calendar that can always remain on the desktop - providing access to any day's schedule by simply clicking on the date and the ability to add to and revise information right then and there
 * Offers thorough free time and search capabilities
 * Includes special type-to-search capability that finds what you want without using a search dialog
 * Provides quick access to the functions you use most via the customizable iconbar
 * Provides other time-saving shortcuts for both mouse and keyboard users
 * Optionally blocks keyboard interaction with Relish reminders
 * Saves automatically as information is entered
 * Uses OS/2 features of multi-tasking, flat memory, and Workplace Shell objects

Relish Net Has Additional Features and Benefits
 * Provides group, personal, and resource calendaring in real-time
 * Makes privacy an individual prerogative
 * Offers both local and remote password protection
 * Is fully functional with or without a server connection
 * Delivers totally automatic LAN reconciliation
 * Visually overlays schedules for multiple people, places, and things
 * Provides more ways to look at information, which means more possibilities for user-defined Buns
 * Offers access to your own schedule from any workstation
 * Allows you to act on another's behalf (subject to privacy restrictions)
 * Supports distribution of notes to others via both ad hoc and predefined lists
 * Includes tracking option so you can see the status of a scheduled event for everyone involved
 * Supports changing or cancelling of group events
 * Treats incoming schedule items much like the physical inbox on your desk - getting them acted on as they come in, letting them pile up, or accepting everything for you automatically
 * OS/2 Warp and OS/2 Warp Server certified; CUA compliant design; CID enabled

Relish Net Delivers the Promise
Relish Net was both the first Presentation Manager solution for LAN-based workgroup scheduling and the first to take advantage of the Workplace Shell's object technology. It provides transparent access to the schedules of others. Both the server and client components of Relish Net exploit OS/2 to the fullest.

Each calendar entry is simply a note with pertinent who, what, when, where, and why information. Each note (or collection of notes) is treated as an object that can be manipulated in various ways. One selects a note summary and uses drag-and-drop or menu options to perform actions on it. Additionally, one may change views or open multiple views to see different sets of notes or the same notes in a different way. Daily, Weekly, and Monthly schedules are standard views as are the To Do and Overdue lists.

Further, a query-by-example strategy provides for ad hoc views. For example, one can restrict the Monthly view to include just those meetings with Fred Jones. Additionally, each workgroup member can define any number of personal categories - typically for different activities or tasks - and assign individual notes to the various categories. Selecting a particular group of notes limits the current view to just that category, while all notes appear when no category has been selected.

And any view, including ones for multiple people, can be encapsulated as a desktop object (a "Bun") - just double-click on the object and the view is up-to-date and ready to use.

The Design Is Client-Server
To take full advantage of OS/2's multi-threading, multi-tasking environment, Relish uses a client-server architecture even in the single user versions. The basic concept is that clients are responsible for window management and the server is responsible for data management. Thus, the server manages the Relish database as a single shared resource. Whenever a note is added or revised, the server immediately becomes aware of the change, allowing clients to become immediately aware as well. The result is that a user looking at multiple views will see any changes made in one window reflected appropriately in the others.

Another client-server benefit is that there is no explicit "save" operation - notes are automatically saved when entered. Also, the server monitors all notes to be sure reminders are displayed at the appropriate times; hence, they appear even when Relish isn't open (as a window or icon) on the desktop.

Relish Net is based on the fundamental notion of "location transparency," a departure from the traditional file orientation. One does not open a file of appointments, for example, manipulate parts of the file, remember to save, and finally close it. Rather, Relish stores and manages the notes in a database that one need not know about or maintain. Thus to view another person's schedule, or place a note on it, one doesn't have to know where that information is stored. Acting on another's schedule, or multiple schedules together, is just a natural extension of the actions performed on one's own schedule.

The ultimate benefit of Relish Net's unique design is that it reliably delivers both personal and group scheduling in a single, consistent, easy to use product.

See What We Mean
Everything you can do with Relish, you can do with Relish Net. Take a look at some Relish screen shots and see for yourself.

RelishWeb is a handy add-on that creates HTML documents of your Relish Net information. You can use it to publish a corporate phone book, for example.

System Requirements

 * Relish Net requires OS/2 Warp Server or OS/2 2.1 or higher (including OS/2 Warp) with IBM LAN Server, IBM Peer Services with Warp Connect, LANtastic for OS/2, or Novell NetWare.
 * The system requirements on each workstation are the same as for OS/2 plus 2.5 Mbyte disk space.

Links

 * The Warped Site - Relish Review