Some newbie questions about Views

[John Smith]

Hi

I have some newbie questions about Views: 

A) View's Icons

Do the icons on the left of the View names necessarily MEAN anything?

I mean: if I am creating a View from scratch, how can I add one of those icons? Will they appear automatically if I am doing everything right?  I have tried to create some views from scratch (using Right-click on a view ==> "New view", but they do not seem to have any icon immediately to the left of each ones their name.

Am I correct in assuming that all a view is, is simply a glorified filter - albeit a rather sophisticated one - with sorting, and grouping etc. 

B) Does "Duplicating" create something completely different?
If instead of creaing a "New view", I "Duplicate" an exiting off-the-shelf View, is there any fundamental difference if I Duplicate view under "Outline" (e.g. "Projects" view or a "Goals" view)... compared to a view that I have created by Duplicating something under "To-Do" (e.g. "Active Actions") ?

C) Advanced Filter - "IsProject"
It appears that views created by Duplicating an Outline/Project view tend to have an Advanced filter - see Filter ==> Advanced, tick add Advanced, click "Setup..." -  and "(IsProject)" will be visible with a tick.

My problem is that the documentation does not help(!!) Help file does not find anything if I Search for "isproject" and likewise the PDF called "MyLifeOrganized User's Guide.pdf" does not contain that text either. Nightmare.

J

[Andrei Bacean]

Hi John
About views icons:
You can add a custom icon to the view.
The icon helps you to quickly see the difference between the available views.

About views:
Views in MLO are POWERFUL queries which give us a possibility to display the information from the tree (outline) in different ways. It's something amazing.

[Andrei Bacean]

About duplication of views.
Create a duplicated view and compare it to the initial one. I guess you'll find that they are similar.
I remember that some views may be "preprogrammed" by the MLO developer. And you may not have a possibility to edit them, but duplication may be ok.

[Andrei Bacean]

Isproject is a query condition which is applied to the tree.

Say you have the following tree:
Task 1
Task 2
Project 1
Project 2
Task 3

And you create a view with the filter isproject. That means that you "ask" the view to show you all tasks which are projects.

You'll get the following output
Project 1
Project 2

The filter conditions are intuitive.
For example the filter isfolder means "show me all tasks which are folders"
The filter hasubtasks means "show me all tasks which have subtasks"

Also you may combine two three and more conditions to create a very sophisticated filter.

Good luck studying filters.
Wish you to create some nice views which will help to manage your tasks effective. But don't forget to pay a lot of attention to the tree itself. The views are something very customizable and you may create dozen of views. But from my experience I can say that if you build a very simple and intuitive tree(outline) then you may need a very small amount of views to manage it.
Good luck John

[John Smith]

Andrie

Thank you - yes that's helpful.

Meanwhile can you help me with this problem.

I am trying to create a list of Next Actions - one per Project, but also sorted not each Action's own Importance, but sorted by the Importance of the *Project* to which each action belongs.

And also to be able to see and edit the Importance of the Project to which each Action belongs.

Background: It seems to me that it is the Importance (and Urgency) of the Project itself that is the most helpful think to keep an eye one. Whereas if you sorted by the Importance of an Action then that would disappear as soon as the Action is completed.

I have experimented at some length with "Next Actions by Project". And I have tried to use the filter setting:
Filter ==> General ==> Show Actions: Next Actions
However although this does create views that only show one Next Action project, and although the Projects are can be put into order of Project-level importance, you can not SEE (nor edit) the level of Importance on that screen. So that is useless to me(!) 

I have eventually concluded (after more time than is healthy!) that, very counter-intuitively, that "Next Actions by Project" is NOT the way to go.

The only thing that seems to work is to tick "Complete Subtasks in Order" on every single project [slightly irritating] and then create a View with:

Filter ==> General ==> Show Actions: Active
Filter ==> General ==> Show Hierarchy: Yes

Filter ==> Add Avanced ==> [un-ticked]
Filter ==> Group & Sort ==> Group by ==> (none)
Filter ==> Group & Sort ==> Sort... ==> Sort tasks by ==> Importance, Descending

This has the added benefit that I can quickly see what other Actions are queuing up for a Project by unticking (Complete subtasks in order) field (using the hotkey Alt/P). And if I wish to change the Next Action for another one, I can of course then very easily scroll down and move the one of the other actions up into the Next Action position (e.g. by using arrow keys and Shift/Alt/UpArrow etc). And do all this without my hands leaving the keyboard.

One problem:
For larger projects, using "Complete Subtasks in Order" becomes a problem because the whole of the rest of the tree below a project is reduced to a single next task! And I still suspect that Next Action would be better, it's just that I can not for the life of me work out how to use it in a way that works as I need!

J

[John Smith]

UPDATE:

I have discovered a serious problem with the View that I built as described above.  Which is that it is only showing Actions that are part of Projects. This means that Actions that have not (yet) been allocated a Project do not appear. And likewise when you tick the last Action off a project, the project disappears from view. Drat!! Back to square one...   >:^(

[John Smith]

UPDATE02: 

In the meantime I have discovered an other useful view - "Next Action by Context (by Computed-Score)"
The idea here is that you get to see: 

a) All your Contexts on a single page (i.e. the page is Grouped by Context)
b) Then within Context, you have your Next Actions (that are using that Context)
c) And your Next Actions are sorted by something useful (e.g. by Computer-Score)

For the record I set it up as follows:

Filter ==> General ==> Show Actions: Next Actions

Filter ==> General ==> Show Hierarchy: No

Filter ==> Add Avanced ==> [un-ticked]

Filter ==> Group & Sort ==> Group by ==> Context (group expanded)

Filter ==> Group & Sort ==> Sort... ==> Sort tasks by ==> Computed-Score, Descending

This is very useful as it means I dont need to set up one view for each of my Contexts.

I also get my Next Actions sorted intelligently within each Context (by Importance + Urgency i.e. Computed-Score)
Also I get to see which Actions are how important by making the Importance and Urgency columns visible.
And I can move them up an down the list if necessary simply but adjusting the Importance and/or Urgency in the right hand Properties pane.

Pretty useful.  :)

Nonetheless I would still prefer all my Actions to bear the Importance and Urgency of the underlying Project rather than value at the Action level. The reason is because as soon as they are ticked off the next Next Action will (probably)not have the correct Importance/ Urgency.

I mean normally (for me at least) it's the completion of the whole project that is important and which needs to hit a deadline, rather than individual actions themselves being Important/Urgent in their own right, (separately from that of the rest of the Project). Anyone with me on this?

J

[Dwight Arthur]

Try this:

First, turn off "subtasks in order" on all your projects - in my view this just complicates things.

Then, start with the All Tasks view. If you think you may have changed the All tasks view, create a new workspace and experiment in the new one for a while.

Change the filter as follows:

General>show actions>next actions

General>Show Hierarchy>Yes

General>Show Hierarchy>Config>Parents:yes(no filter)>Children:no>Highlight>no

General>Show Completed>No

Group&Sort>Group>none

Group&Sort>Sort>computed-score

Then right-click on the column headings to get a list of available fields. Uncheck any that are displayed but uninteresting, and check off Importance and Urgency.

Save the view and give it a nice name.

This may not be what you want - your needs seem to be quite complex. But this is a pretty simple view (no advanced filters) that shows only those tasks that are next actions for some project or folder, shows the project names as well, ranks the projects in order of their importance and urgency (not really - it's the computed score of the next action, but if subtasks all use the default importance and urgency it works out pretty much the same as using parent importance+urgency), projects do not disappear when they have no active subtasks, project importance and urgency are visible and editable, a task that is not in a project is still visible but only if it is the next action for a folder that it's in, if you postpone a task from this report (future start date) it falls off the list and is replaced by the next available task in the same project (if there is one). It was a little tricky figuring out how to do your "forced second next action" thing but here's what I came up with: Find the task you want to force as a next action. Just above it as a subproject and move the task into it. Maybe you want to move several tasks into the subproject so that when one finishes the next will take its place in the report.

If there are tasks you wanted in the report that are missing or that are showing on the report but should be hidden, please try to describe the precise test that will validate the conditions that determine why this task should be shown or hidden.

[John Smith]

> If you think you may have changed the All tasks view, create a new workspace and experiment in the new one for a while.

Confused - Do you mean create a new tab at the top of the page or start again with completely new data?

OK I have selected all items and unticked the "Complete subtasks in order"

I have also removed all Urgency & Importance settings by doing the following:

Tools> Options > To-do ordering options > "Reset all tasks to normal importance and urgency..."

I have then started with the "All Tasks" view and I have then followed your instructions, and saved a new view.

And what I now have on screen is:
Yes - one Next Action per project

Yes - I can see the Importance and Urgency of both Projects and Actions within the view

Yes - when I tick of all Actions for a project it does not disappear (although it does get a diagonal stripy background)

However: 

a) Whatever I do to the Importance & Urgency to either Projects and/or Actions does not change their sort order.

b) In fact I'm not at all sure what that Computed-Score sort order is doing. Whether I put it Ascending or Descending seems to make no difference to the sort order on the page. IN FACT if I remove the sort completely it is clear that all it is doing is turning my list of folders the other way up.

c) The truth is that I do not WANT my list of folders to appear in this screen.

d) Either way, even within a folder the projects are failing to be ranked in order of Importand and Urgency.

Oh dear, maybe I am doing something wrong. Do I need to start again with new data?

J

[John Smith]

OK, I have now tried again. This time using a completely blank set of test data created from scratch using:

File > New > "New Blank File" > "Create blank datafile with default contexts, flags etc."

I have entered a few Projects and put Actions inside them. I have also created one or two Actions that are not inside any Project. I have also created the folders (Work, Personal, Sport) and have distributed the Projects through them.

I have then gone through the step that you suggest Dwight and have created a new View based on the "All tasks" view.

One temporary problem was that I had forgotten to make projects into Projects (using Alt/J)! But I soon fixed that. 

The results are exactly the same as in my post immediately above. That is that *all* the sort seems to do is invert the list of folders.

Any thoughts?

J