Viira’s feature set has grown a lot over the last little while, and so has the need for a how-to manual to establish a set of effective and productive best practices. This is the first post in a series of many and is intended to help you jump-start your implementation of GTD on your BlackBerry and get the most out of Viira.

0. Get David Allen’s Getting Things Done

It goes without saying that Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity is an excellent and inspirational read. For those of you that don’t have a personal copy of the book I highly recommend you get one as the timeless principles inside are invaluable and make a great reference at all times.

1. Explore Viira’s Views

Viira offers 4 views: Projects View, Contexts View, Tasks View and Day View. Quickly explore each one and familiarize yourself with the capabilities that each view provides by examining what is available in the screen context menu. You can go from one view to another by pressing the context button (the one to the left of the trackball, with the BlackBerry logo on it) and clicking on the view you want to go to next.

2. Learn Viira’s Shortcuts

Viira offers a variety of shortcuts since version 1.0. The goal of the shortcuts is to make the basic operations faster, save you a few keystrokes and ultimately make Viira more intuitive to use.

Here is what you can do in Viira with shortcuts:

• ALT-N creates a new item. When in Tasks View, Day View or when viewing the tasks associated with a particular project or context, ALT-N creates a new task. In Projects View and Contexts View, ALT-N creates a new project or context, respectively.
• ALT-A creates a new appointment. Available in Tasks View, Day View and when viewing a project or context
• Enter or trackball click opens an item for viewing.
• Del, the delete button, triggers the deletion of an item (it always prompts you first to ask if you are sure about the deletion).
• Space toggles a task or appointment between complete and not complete

Each one of these operations is also available within the corresponding screen or view that you are in. As a reminder, the shortcuts are also displayed next to the list of available operations.

For a full list of available shortcuts, check out the Viira shortcuts page.

Viira Settings Screen

3. Set Your Startup View

Viira offers you the ability to customize which view gets loaded first when Viira is launched. Personally I like keeping a close eye on the appointments and tasks I have set to complete for the day ahead, so my Viira starts in Day View.

You can set the view that Viira starts in from the Options screen. Simply select “Options” from the context menu of any of the 4 views.

4. Set Up Your Projects and Contexts

Before going ahead and entering a lot of tasks and appointments, it is wise to first set up your projects and contexts, or at least enter enough of them to serve as a foundations on which to build the rest of your mobile GTD system.

5. You Are Ready!

Now that you have explored Viira’s capabilities and set up your initial projects and contexts, you are ready to go ahead and start using Viira. So go ahead, enter all those tasks that need to get completed into your new portable organizational system and start getting them done, one by one.

When Viira’s users talk, we listen. And lately some of you have been saying that the free trial’s limitations are a bit too restrictive to the point that it is hard to set up a proper implementation of GTD on a BlackBerry.

So starting with the latest version of the free trial (1.2.02) we have trippled the limit on the number of tasks in the free trial to 75 and doubled the the limit on projects and contexts to 10 each.

If you have already registered for the free trial, the latest update is available from our freshly-launched BlackBerry site. Just point your BlackBerry to http://www.kartamobile.com/bb, login using your username and password and grab the OTA download.

In our continuous effort to make more things possible on BlackBerry devices, we are proud to announce the availability of the Viira BlackBerry site www.kartamobile.com/bb. As we constantly improve Viira’s feature set and publish new updates we wanted to make getting the latest version easy - and doable right from your BlackBerry.

Through the mobile site you can download the latest version of Viira Over-The-Air (OTA): with a single click and straight onto your device. Just log in with the same username and password you entered when registering for the free trial, and you will be brought to a page with the OTA links available to you.

Buyers of the full version can also use the BlackBerry site to get updates of the full version of Viira. We have tried to keep the site’s design minimal and not overdo the graphics for those of you on limited data plans or sub-3G network connectivity.

Here are some screenshots of the mobile site taken from our BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220 with the help of this great screen capture tool for BlackBerries called CaptureIt.

Viira BlackBerry Site Login

Viira OTA Download Links

Viira BB Site - What Buyers See

So put www.kartamobile.com/bb in your BlackBerry’s bookmarks and stop by for an update once in a while!

We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of Viira 1.2. Since we released Viira 1.1 we heard many positive words (thank you all!) and received many great feature suggestions, so we decided to make many of them reality in the 1.2 release.

Here is what’s new in Viira 1.2:

• Alphabetically sorted projects and contexts. (Thanks Greg for making us see the light on this one!) In addition to the visual convenience of being able to quickly zero in on a project or context this feature has the added benefit of “clustering” projects and contexts with similar names together. For example, all my projects that start with “Viira”, e.g. “Viira Features”, “Viira Suggestions” etc. all appear one after the other.
• Quick search for projects/contexts. Just press the first letter of the project or context you are looking for and the project or context starting with this letter will be highlighted. Works both in Project View, Context View as well as in the drop-down combo boxes in the Task and Appointment edit screen. Makes finding the project or context you are looking for a whole lot quicker!
• Support for recurring appointments and events. All BlackBerry Calendar appointments and events with recurrence associated with them now appear in Day View and can be assigned a project or context, just like any task or appointment in Viira. More on Viira’s recurring appointments and how to best take advantage of them is coming up in a follow-on post.
• Backup/restore capabilities.  All of Viira’s data now gets automatically backed up and restored when the entire device is backed up and restored, thus giving a peace of mind to the many of you counting on Viira day-in and day-out to get things done. A post on how to backup/restore Viira’s data for those that haven’t done a device backup/restore before is coming soon. Backup/restore is available on the full version of Viira.
• Device migration support. Thinking of upgrading to a newer BlackBerry model but have a lot of Viira data on the older device? Buyers of the full version can now migrate their Viira data from one BlackBerry to another, ensuring data continuity between device upgrades. (more on this to follow in a separate device migration how-to).
• Support for latest BlackBerry models. Release 1.2 makes sure that Viira works and looks great on the BlackBerry Pearl 8220 and the BlackBerry Curve 8900.
• Auto-capitalization of first letter of project, context, task and appointment names. Just makes things look a whole lot nicer!

As always, release 1.2 comes as a free update to all buyers of the full version of Viira. Buyers can get the update by pointing their BlackBerries to the Viira mobile site at www.kartamobile.com/bb or by logging in to our main site and downloading the ZIPed installer from there.

A free trial of Viira 1.2 is available as well.