What to do when tasks show up in the incorrect views?

[Andrew Hwang]

Hi, I'm a long-time lurker.  Thank you to all the extremely helpful power users here (ex. Dwight, Stephane, Christophe, Elizabeth Linsdsay, Lisa S, etc.).  There is no way I would have figured out this software if not for many hours poring over your posts!

I've noticed that quite commonly (at least for me), I will have tasks that don't show up in the View they are supposed to, or *do* show up a view they're not supposed to.  My questions are:

• What's the best way to handle this when this happens? It's happened multiple times to me already.  Do you just delete the task and re-create?
• Is there a way to prevent this? The reason MLO's Views were so appealing to me was that I could forget about tasks that aren't relevant to my current situation, and trust that when I wanted to see them, I could, just by navigating to the relevant View.  But if my Views are incomplete, then that defeats the purpose, I still need to maintain a separate, *trusted* task list.

It's really frustrating because I just spent over a hundred dollars on the desktop client, mobile client, and cloud sync, as well as many hours setting up my rules and views, and yet the views / reports seem to be quite glitchy.

Thank you!

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Examples

For instance, I have a View for all my tasks that are starred and in the context "Errands" (and the context "Errands" in turn includes all the stores that I go to).  That View is grouped by context (with each context corresponding to a store).  But there is one task that, despite being correctly tagged and starred will not show up in the list.  I've checked the properties and they're all correct, and they all correspond exactly with the other tasks that DO show up on the list.

On the flip side, I have a View that only shows Starred Active Actions.  And yet, there is one task that shows up on this view that is not an active action.  When I check the task properties, it confirms that is it not an Active Action:

No other active action shows up on the list BUT this one.

[Dwight]

Hi, Andrew.
I'm not familiar with an issue where a task that meets all of the criteria for a view is excluded from the view, or where an inactive task will appear in an active tasks listing. I have never experienced it, and I do not recall anyone else reporting this (except during beta testing, while new features are not yet working correctly). So I have no hints for you about how to manage or live with this kind of event. I would prefer to consider it a problem and look for a way to cure it.

There are two possible explanations that occur to me, other users may come up with additional explanations. One possibility is that there is something about your tasks that you are missing when you check them, or there is some error in how your views are set up. The other is that your profile has gotten damaged and needs to be repaired.

Let's start with the first possibility, because that is the kind of thing that can often be resolved here in the forum. I would like to see the entire task properties for the inactive task that's appearing in your Starred Active Actions view. I would also like to see the view properties, with as much detail as possible but with particular attention to the "general" section. I see that you tried to attach an image to your post but it did not come through. Maybe you should try attaching image files rather than pasting inline images in the message text. It might be useful to get similar information about the properties of the errand tasks that don't appear and the view in which they are intended to appear.

It would be great if you could create a new, small profile on MLO/Windows with only a few tasks and views and have the problem visible there; you could send that whole profile in to the forum and that would make it really easy to do the detective work.

If we get to do this research and it shows that nothing is wrong and that there is no mistake in your task properties or view properties, then we need to look into the chance that your profile is damaged. I could offer some advice about creating a new blank profile and starting over, but I expect that you would get better advice from sup...@mylifeorganized.net.
-Dwight

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[Andrew Hwang]

Thanks so much Dwight!  I really appreciate you taking the time, you're seriously like an MLO guardian angel. 

I'm relieved to hear that this is a rare occurrence.  Sounds like the false-positive in my Starred Active Actions View might be an oversight on my part, although I believe the false-negative on my grocery list is a bug on MLO's side.  Because, that item now DOES show up on my shopping list view, even though I didn't make any changes to the task properties or to the view filters.  Yet for a full day I frustratingly couldn't get the task to show up on my phone.  Perhaps that problem is isolated to the mobile app, though.  

As you suggested, for the Starred Active Actions View, I've attached a small profile.  Since it only has a few tasks, it may be difficult to understand what I was trying to do with the filter, given that it lacks the bigger context of my outline.  So please allow me to give a brief explanation:

• The view is titled "Selected Actions."
  
  
• It's meant to show the active actions that I starred in my outline as well as the tasks I've completed in the last 3 days.  By starring them, I've "selecting" these actions to do ASAP.
  
  
• The one wrinkle is that, I don't want to let large lists, like lists of groceries, exercises, stretches, etc., clutter up my view.
• For those lists, even though I would still star / "select" individual items (ex. grocery items, exercises, etc.), I only want to see *one* item in my "Select Actions" view, the parent item. 
• So for instance, I would like to star all the things I need to get at the grocery store, but then on the "Selected Actions" view, I'd only one to see one entry, "Groceries."  
• Then when I'm at the grocery store, I'd click on a separate, "Groceries" view to see all of the starred / "selected" groceries.
• The way I implemented this was that, for all such lists, I made them subtasks of projects with the prefix "-" (ex. "-Groceries", "-Stretches" etc.).
• Then, in the advanced filter, I filtered out tasks whose project name started with "-".  And I included any project whose caption starts with "-" and is starred.
  
  
• So it appears that in my view, starred inactive actions are displayed.  But I don't understand why?

[Bon Carter]

Would simple grouping give you what you need?  Have the groups collapsed by default then when you want to go to another level, expand the group.

[Andrew Hwang]

Thank you Bon!  

Actually, my advanced filter is successful in accomplishing the aim of decluttering my list.  (The reason I did not opt for a simple grouping to accomplish it is because I'm already grouping my to-do list by flags denoting mental energy and time available--normal / "braindead" / "pocketwork."  So adding a second layer of grouping makes the view extremely cluttered.  Because then you end up with 3 * n groups, where n = number of "Top Level Parents" in your example.  So even if n is a small number, you end up with a *lot* of groups.  With my advanced filter, I only have 3 groups, but there is no clutter from errands lists / groceries lists / etc.)

My problem was that my advanced filter is NOT successful in filtering out inactive tasks.  And I can't understand why--my filter rules seem to be properly set up to filter out inactive tasks.

[Andrew Hwang]

Can somebody please help with why my filter rules are not working properly? I've attached the *.ml file above.  Thank you!

[Dwight]

Hi, Andrew. I am not 100% sure, but I'm guessing that you have fallen into the trap involving active status and future start dates. This has been discussed at length in this forum over the last decade and you can probably find the discussions by searching the forum.

Let me ask you one more question: is it possible that in every single case where an inactive task appears as an unwelcome entry in your view the task's reason for being inactive is that it has a future start date? If not, then something else is wrong, please let me know more about it.

If I have correctly guessed the issue, then here is how you fix it: Wherever you have coded (ActiveAction) replace it with ((ActiveAction) AND ((StartDateTime orOrBefore Now) OR (StartDateTime doesNotExist)))

ActiveAction ignores the start date in order to enable views like "active next seven days"

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[Andrew Hwang]

Thank you very much, I think that was the problem =).

I found that very misleading because the User Guide explicitly states on page 37 that Active Actions must not have a start date or have a start date that has already occurred:

Action Actions...

3) Tasks without a Start Date, or whose Start Date is today or in the past 

Nevertheless, seems like problem solved--thanks so much!

[Dwight Arthur]

Hi, Andrew, I understand that your problem is fixed. However, I need to make one more comment just to make this as clear as possible to future users who may be reading it:
Andrew is totally correct that "Active Actions must not have a start date or have a start date that has already occurred". This actual issue here is that the "ActiveAction" test in MLO's Advanced Filtering is misnamed. It should actually be called "IsOrWillBeActive" and there should be another test called "IsActive". The current test (ActiveAction, should be IsOrWillBeActive) tests for six of the seven conditions that could make a task inactive, it ignores the condition involving start date. This is necessary to enable views like "Active Next 7 days". The result of this is that anyone who actually wants to filter for tasks that are actually active right now as to code ((ActiveAction) AND ((StartDateTime orOrBefore Now) OR (StartDateTime doesNotExist))) in order to include the start date test along with the other six tests. If the current version of the test (ActiveAction) were renamed IsOrWillBeActive then there should be a new test IsActive that would include the date test. So far there is no indication that MLO will be changed in this way.
-Dwight

[Andrew Hwang]

Totally agree.  

At very least, there should be a notation of this in the User Guide.  In both sections that mention "Active Actions," 5.2.1 and 5.3.2, they indicate that future start dates are filtered out.  Those sections should have a notation that indicates that this is not the case of "ActiveAction" in the advanced filtering rules.

And there doesn't seem to be a place in the User Guide that explains what ActiveAction actually is, so I'm not sure how the user is supposed to figure this out?

I was extremely committed to adopting MLO, and spent many hours going through the User Guide and forums.  I really, really wanted to like MLO.  But this oversight was incredibly frustrating, wasted a lot of my time, and has left a really bad taste in my mouth.  To the point where I've switched to another task management application--even though I already purchased MLO license, cloud sync, and Android app.  

I hope the developers fix this, because I'd love for MLO to succeed, and I feel things like this are a turn-off for users.

[Dwight Arthur]

On Sunday, May 29, 2016 at 4:23:23 PM UTC-4, Andrew Hwang wrote:

I was extremely committed to adopting MLO, and spent many hours going through the User Guide and forums.  I really, really wanted to like MLO.  But this oversight was incredibly frustrating, wasted a lot of my time, and has left a really bad taste in my mouth.  To the point where I've switched to another task management application--even though I already purchased MLO license, cloud sync, and Android app.  

 
Andrew, I understand and I hope that you find success with your other task manager. You impress me as the kind of person who wants to find a tool with a lot of power and then use all of that power. People like that from time to time leave MLO because of various issues but many of them come back after finding that other tools may be easier to use and better documented but just do not have the power to do the job as well as MLO. So I hope that I will see you back here again.

One last hint, you mentioned spending "many hours" - if you have some time to spend you might want to apply for inclusion in the beta test team. The requirement is that you use (and test) new versions of the software and report on your results; in return you get more attention from the developers and have a better opportunity to influence decisions such as documentation. Timing would be good, Andrey has announced a major upgrade to MLO for Windows.

[Andrew Hwang]

Thank you for the advice Dwight!  

Yes, I've seen you write that before about power users eventually returning to MLO (I've read hundreds of your posts, I consider them an extra chapter in the User Guide =P).  And I believe you--I tried a lot of task managers before committing to MLO, and MLO was the only one that could do most of the things I wanted...even if I couldn't actually get it to do those things, or make the process efficient enough =P.

I will keep your suggestions in mind if I return.  In theory, I would like to.  But in practice, for the past couple weeks, whenever I've looked at MLO, I've been flooded with negative feelings, stemming from my frustration with the poor / incomplete documentation of things like "Advanced Filtering," and the many, many hours of wasted productivity.  So I think I'll at very least need a long break where I actually get tasks done, rather than try ineffectually to manage them =P.

Thanks for your help, best wishes!