This article was originally published on the TinyPlanet Software blog on December 17, 2008.
New Blog Series: Knapsack Tips
We’ve decided to start a series of blog entries containing tips and tricks to help our users get the most out of Knapsack. Our first tip below deals with reusing checklists by creating custom template trips.
Future items will include topics covering all aspects of trip planning and organizing with Knapsack. We’ll be sharing our own Knapsack habits plus some ideas we’ve received directly from our users. Of course, we’d love to hear from you. Let us know how you’re using Knapsack for your travels. Feel free to leave a comment here or send us an email directly.
Knapsack Tip #1: Reuse Checklists with Template Trips
As we’re preparing for our trip to Colorado this winter, we need to make sure we’ve packed everything. In this case, it’s a trip to visit family, exchange presents, work on our software, and snowboard. As you can imagine, that involves a lot of different items: warm clothes, presents, snowboarding gear, laptops, power supplies, etc. It would be tedious to re-enter every single item to pack in every new trip, so we use previously-created packing lists from a “template” trip to make this easier.
In this case, we’ll copy the existing “Snowboarding” and “Business Trip” packing lists from a template trip called “Packing Lists” into our new “Colorado 2008” trip. This is simple to accomplish and can save a lot of time when creating new trips.
- Create a new trip and name it “Packing Lists”
- Use the Checklist area in the itinerary view to create various packing lists for different types of trips
- When planning a new trip, open this Packing Lists trip, select the top-level item in the list you’d like to use in your new trip, and choose Edit > Copy
- Create and open your new trip file, click in the Checklists area of the itinerary, and choose Edit > Paste
Within a matter of seconds, we have a great start on our packing lists for Colorado. This same technique can be used for checklists other than packing lists: souvenirs to buy, postcards to send, etc. In fact, sharing content between trips isn’t limited to only checklists: activities can be copied and pasted between trips just as easily. Use your imagination to prepare some fun and useful templates or get started by simply borrowing from trips you’ve already taken.