feature request: sync manual sort of todo list

[Talbot]

It would be really nice if you could synchronize a manual sort of the
todo list to the cloud. I spend the first part of each day manually
ordering my tasks for the day. However, if I move away from my
workstation to either my laptop or my iphone version of MLO, this
sorting is lost, giving me a very long list of actions to sort
through.

[Ron Stockfleth]

I would like this feature also. But for now, I "star" the tasks for the day, and manually sort them. The starred view maintains this manual sort order as I sync with the cloud and my desktop computer, netbook, iPad, and iPhone. Give the Starred view a try.

Ron

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[Lisa Stroyan]

At 12:26 PM 1/19/2011, you wrote:

I would like this feature also. But for now, I "star" the tasks for the day, and manually sort them. The starred view maintains this manual sort order as I sync with the cloud and my desktop computer, netbook, iPad, and iPhone. Give the Starred view a try.

I use recurring tasks quite a lot, so for me, unfortunately without a way to exclude future tasks (at least on Android beta) it makes it less useful.  Do you run into this and if so, do you have a good workaround?

Lisa

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[Ron Stockfleth]

Yes, I do run into this, which is why I would like to see this feature added in the near future. I do have a work-around for recurring tasks.

First, I do a quick review each day in which I plan the tasks, and roughly the order in which I hope to do them. Of course, as soon as the day starts things have a way of getting jumbled up. For the most part my daily recurring tasks fall into Morning, Mid-Day, Afternoon, Early Evening, and Late Evening routines. I have as little as 5 tasks to as many as 30+ tasks under these routines. For these type of daily recurring tasks, I have simply bookmarked them, and plow through them in the outline view as they are in the order that I want them to be. I don't even use the To Do view for these types of recurring tasks. If I "star" a non-daily recurring task for today's task list, when I complete it, I "un-star" it. Since I do a review each day, I may "re-star" it when it comes up on my radar again during my review. I wouldn't say that this is good work-around, simply a work-around.

I have adjusted how I use MLO desktop in order to accommodate the differences in feature sets between MLO Desktop and MLO Mobile devices. To me, the adjustment is well worth it to have my MLO tasks with me at all times on my mobile device, but I do look forward to each update of the mobile app that brings the feature set closer to MLO desktop.

Ron

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[Lisa Stroyan]

At 02:49 PM 1/19/2011, you wrote:

I have adjusted how I use MLO desktop in order to accommodate the differences in feature sets between MLO Desktop and MLO Mobile devices. To me, the adjustment is well worth it to have my MLO tasks with me at all times on my mobile device, but I do look forward to each update of the mobile app that brings the feature set closer to MLO desktop.

Thanks, Ron. I'm the same way.

I'll really like my done tasks (including my routine ones) to be out of my way, so I've created contexts that replace my flags, and I just use an active by context view right now.  Maybe I'll make my starred view into my non-routine tasks and go back and forth between the two.

[Weatherford]

+1

----- Ursprüngliche Nachricht -----
Von: Talbot
Gesendet: Wednesday, January 19, 2011 11:20 AM
An: MyLifeOrganized
Betreff: [MLO] feature request: sync manual sort of todo list

It would be really nice if you could synchronize a manual sort of the
todo list to the cloud. I spend the first part of each day manually
ordering my tasks for the day. However, if I move away from my
workstation to either my laptop or my iphone version of MLO, this
sorting is lost, giving me a very long list of actions to sort
through.

--

[Mark Levison]

Instead of +1, please vote for the request on mlo.uservoice.com

[J Smith]

+1

I have also given 2 votes on mlo.uservoice.com where it has received 28 votes.

What's going on on this issue? For anyone who uses manual sorting this is a pretty fundamental request (!)

This issue was first suggested on Google Groups back in 2011, and it is now about to be 2015!

Has anything been done about this issue yet?

J

P.S. Personally I use a combination of Importance & Urgency PLUS manual sorting. The problem with Importance and Urgency is that life moves too quickly to enter let alone change the priorities all the time. And so for me manual sorting + Alt/H is best for quick fire-stuff.  HOWEVER tasks & projects that have been around for a while need more serious thought applied to them...

I'd love to hear from other people how they are using manual sort and/or the other forms of marking up to control priority.

[Lisa Stroyan]

The Starred and Active Starred are both manually sorted and their order does sync to Android. I use Active Starred as my "work from" list, along with Goal settings.

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[John Smith]

Oh dear.  Well it's a start I suppose, but that means that you have to star something in order for any sort ordering to sync, yes?

So did MLO actively decide to not sync the main sort order?  If so I wonder why.

For anyone using the main sort in any serious way the status quo is somewhat disappointing.

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[Dwight Arthur]

Hi, John. What do you mean by "the main sort order"?
-Dwight
Mlo betazoid on Android sgn2

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[John Smith]

Dwight

I am away from my office PC and the fact that you are even asking this question makes me nervous of my ground(!) , but my firm impression was that in MLO on Windows if you have more than one View that does not have any sort order applied within the "Filter > Group & Sort" section, then if you move the sort order around 'manually' (e.g. by selecting a row [or more than one row] and then doing shift/alt/up-arrow or shift/alt/down-arrow), then the new sort order that you create in this 'manual' manner will be reflected in ALL the Views that you have to which you have not applied an automatic sort based on field content (using "Filter > Group & Sort"). This manually set up sort is what I am calling 'the main sort order'.

i.e. There appears to be a sort order that that can be manually adjusted, that ripples out to all views that do not have sorting in place.

i.e. It is NOT true to say that 'manual' sorting is at stored the individual View level. Instead there seems to be a single 'main' or 'master' sort order that the user can adjust task-by-task, and whatever that sort order is will be used in all other views that do not have any sorting set up. 

Personally I have started to use this manual sorting quite extensively and most of my views are sorted using the main/master manual sort. And the fact that the app does not seem to pay any attention to this sort order I find to be disappointing.

J   

 

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[Andrei Bacean]

Hi John
Excuse me, maybe I don't understand you, but as to me, the sorting in MLO is something that works as expected.

The custom views are QUERIES.
If you change the sort order in a query, that won't change it in the OUTLINE.
Instead if you create a view which will display the outline as is, then moving of tasks will be reflected in the OUTLINE too.

The STARRED view is a preconfigured view on Android and on Windows. This is the only view which syncs the manual sorting between different versions of MLO.
However, When you move the tasks in the STARRED view, they don't change their order in the outline. They are just reordering inside of the view.

Best regards
Andrei B

[John Smith]

Andrei B

1.Please define your terms.  How do you define "query"? 

2. In Windows MLO,  I have a number of what I am calling "Views" (ie I start with a View in the left hand column, I then change some of the filter settings, but not the Sort setting,  then save as a new name). And then when I manually change the sort order by moving  individual tasks around,  the default View for All Tasks (Left Hand column > Views > Outline >All tasks) is always changed accordingly. 

For example I have named my views as follows:

"All tasks & projects"

"All ACTIVE  tasks & projects"

"NEXT Actions of tasks & projects"

"Next Actions - NO hierarchy"

... The details don't matter but it gives so clue as to the range of what the different Views are that I have saved. 

OK so if I manually  move tasks around in "All Tasks" view,  then all the Views that I mention above are changed too. 

And...  wait!!  It now seems to be working - ie the sort order in Windows MLO All Tasks *is* being shown in the Android app Outline View... Er... mostly but not always.  This is great when it works (which now seems to be 95% of the time) 

But now I have a new problem. SOMETIMES I can manually move tasks around in Windows MLO but at other times,  even in the same View as before  I suddenly can't without getting  a message saying "this move operation is not allowed for this View"

And strangely if I get a problem moving things around in one view I may be able to move things around in a different View (other than All Tasks which also works).  And bizarrely, after I have done the move in a different View, suddenly I can move things around without that warning message in the original View! WTF? 

Can anyone tell me what is going on? 

J

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[Andrei Bacean]

Hi John

All your tasks are stored in a file on your pc (let's call it the "Database")

To see the tasks from that file we have to ask MLO the following "hey MLO, show me my tasks, in the order in which they are stored in the Database". We do not have to ask really, for this the developers of MLO have created the ALL TASKS button. We press it, and the MLO will ask (will send a query) to the database and will show to you all your tasks. The magic is, if you change the tasks order in the ALL TASKS view, MLO will send this changes to the database, and the sort of your tasks inside of the database will be changed accordingly.

Let's suppose you want to see the tasks with some contexts, in this case you'll have to create a query (view) which will show to you the tasks you need. But in this case, the sorting of tasks will not be send to the database. And the database structure (order off tasks will remain unchanged).

So, to conclude, the query is a request of information from a database.

Sorry for my poor English, hope the information is helpful

Best regards
Andrei B

[John Smith]

Hi Andrei B

Yes, on the disk will be the order in which the tasks were entered. And there will be some type of sorting in effect a sorting layer applied to the data to given you the sort order for the All Tasks button output.

And if you apply a context filter the sort order is not changed, yes? 

What I meant by what do you mean by a query was whether it had a specific meaning in MLO terms as opposed to something that looked similar but which nonetheless was NOT a query. Either way as far as I can see a MLO 'View' is something very similar to 'a query' or 'a report'. i.e. it is a request for data from the MLO database that can be filtered and grouped. It can also be sorted automatically - OR it can have a manual sort order to it. However as far as I can see there is only ONE manual sort order working on any database at a time, no?

[Lisa Stroyan]

The outline has a fixed order that can be used as a sort order. That transfers to Android. There is a separate concept called manual sort which is specific to each view allowing, for example, me to drag my morning tasks around without messing with the outline (fixed) order.

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[Dwight Arthur]

Hi, John.

 

Since I started writing this, there have been good answers to your question from Andrei B and Lisa. I agree with their posts but I think mine goes further, so I’m posting it. I should really edit it to remove the parts the prior posts have already addressed but I’m out of time for this, so I’m sending it with my apologies. Here are several issues that I cannot address, perhaps others can. Look at the end of this post for places where I say “I don’t know”. Thanks.

 

In one of my first posts to you I mentioned the importance of understanding the difference between the order tasks are in when you look at the outliner, versus the order tasks are in when you look at a view that takes a filtered subset of your tasks and sorts them.

 

Your database of tasks is arranged in a tree structure. When you look at the “all tasks” view you see all of your tasks in their outline positions. This does not necessarily have anything to do with the locations of the tasks on disk. Neither is it a sort that has been applied to the tasks. It’s an outline and every task has its place in the outline.

 

The outline is synched across all of your platforms. When you move a task from one position to another in the outline, this is synched and affects the task’s position on all of your other platforms. Try this experiment. Be sure your desktop and mobile are fully synched (I usually do this by synching one to the cloud, then synching the other to the cloud, the synching the first one a second time. Now, disconnect your desktop from the Internet (turn off all wired and wireless connections.) On the desktop, pick a task and move it to a different place on the outline. Now, on the mobile, pick the same task (still in its original position) and move it to a new place different from its original place and also different from where you put it on the desktop. This will create a synch conflict. Synch conflict resolution works well on desktop but not mobile (yet) so we need to sync the mobile first. Sync the mobile to the cloud, making sure that the desktop is still disconnected from the internet. When the mobile sync is done, connect the desktop to the internet and sync to the cloud. You should get a “resolve sync conflict” popup. Find the task that you voved and click on the three dots in the Details column. You will see a Task Difference popup showing the task as it exists on local and remote. If this has all worked, you will see a difference in the coded value used to track the task’s location in the outline.

 

If you are looking at a view that is showing everything in its outline position, you are free to drag any task anywhere at any time, and the change will be permanent across all platforms. I am not 100% sure of this but I think that you are seeing the outline if hierarchical view is enabled and sort is [none] with the manual sort checkbox unchecked.

 

Many useful views are flat views (ie have hierarchy turned off) and some field named in the sort area. These views are known to people who used MLOv3 as to-do views. In these views, the order of the tasks has nothing to do with the position of each task in the outline. If you drag a task to a different position, it is now no longer where it should be according to the selected sort, which is a problem to be solved. Two possible solutions: (1) put the task back where the sort wants it to be, and tell you to stop trying to move it, or (b) decide that you didn’t really want the specified sort, you wanted to be able to move stuff around yourself, so check the “manual sort” box, ignore the other sort parameters, and let you put the tasks wherever you want. Sometimes when you move tasks in a flat view you get a popup asking you if you want to go to manual sort, other times it just quietly turns on manual sort. I’m not sure what determines which will happen.

 

When a view has a manual sort, you can move the tasks around and when you come back you will find them still in the same order. I hardly ever use manual sort so I don’t know whether or not the revised order persists only in one workspace or whether it will appear when you open the same view in a different workspace. I also don’t know whether or not saving a view will help. I do know that if you have several workspaces and each workspace contains a different manually sorted view, you can sort each workspace differently and they will all persist separately. In other words, it is not true that there is only one manual sort, there can be many.

 

I have read several people saying that the manual sort in the active starred view gets synched to mobile, so it must be true. I know that there are other views that use manual sort on the desktop, do any of them also exist on mobile and if so, does the manual sort sync for them as well? I don’t know. Even more interesting, on the current IOS release you can export a view from desktop and import it on your iPhone or iPad. If you create a new manually sorted view on desktop and export it for import on ios, will the sort order for this new view get synched? Again I don’t know.

 

-Dwight

[John Smith]

Hi All

Let me try another tack and state where I am and how I am trying to use MLO. 

I am finding that entering individual Importance and Urgency for individual tasks seems to take too long... so I am trying to store the what I will call 'priority' (which roughly speaking I am using to mean a conflation of both Importance and Urgency) by manually moving tasks around within the "Outline > All Tasks" view in MLO Windows.

If I move stuff around in MLO Windows, yes the resulting order appears in MLO Android.

So far so good.

I have also discovered that if I create a view based on Outline > All Tasks but first having changed the filter to be Filter > General > Next Actions, before saving the View in question, not only will this View match the current manually created sort order in  Outline > All Tasks, but also I am able to move tasks up and down the page (i.e. changing the order on the page) and have this new order appear whenever I go back to Outline > All Tasks. (And unsurprisingly this new order will appear in MLO Android both things are synced.)

This is good too, because it means I can freely change the 'priority' of tasks simply by manually changing the sort order when I am in Filter > General > Next Actions.

What seems odd though is that if I create a View using Filter > General > Active (instead of Next Actions), then MLO will not let me move stuff around without the popup appearing. In fact that's not quite true because I can move stuff around within a project, it's just that MLO wont let me move stuff around in the root directory without the warning message.

Any thoughts?

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[Dwight Arthur]

Hi, John.

It’s hard for me to give advice here.

 

Everybody needs to find a way of organizing their tasks that fits their own lives and issues and ways of approaching their tasks – everyone is different and nobody’s way of managing tasks is “wrong” if it works. So I do not want to get into telling you that what you are trying to do is wrong.

 

On the other hand, I can’t follow your choices here. The ability to set up one’s life work of tasks and projects in an outline represents a powerful and flexible way to get your arms around your stuff – to really understand what the big pieces are and how they fit together, what is really important, what makes you busy versus what makes you accomplished. Everybody makes their own choice about how that outline should be structured, and making that choice well is extremely empowering. You are choosing to use it to represent a single simple concept, priority. What makes this more difficult to follow is that there’s already a dedicated field, importance, that tracks this well. This field is manageable with a single mouseclick or about three key-chords, which seems pretty simple and accessible to me. You say that it’s timeconsuming, maybe because what you need is a list of next actions sorted by parent project priority, which I believe is very doable using computed score, but I understand that computed score can get tricky.

 

Anyhow, assuming that your choices to this point are right for you and that the question is how to avoid the warning popup when you manually reorder tasks. Following your description I edited All Tasks to show Filter>General>NextActions and was able to manually reorder projects. I then changed it to Filter>General>Active and I was still able to manually reorder projects. 

 

Two guesses about what might be happening to you:

1. The view based on Active Actions you are getting the warning has some other settings that block reordering. Look carefully at all the view properties for All Actions versus the problematic view to see what else is different. Pay particular attention to the SORT section but look at them all. Or, go back to all actions and modify it, one setting at a time, testing manual reordering of projects after each change, until you find the setting that stops manual reordering.

 

2. When you are dragging individual tasks around, one of the results is that a task that gets dragged outside of the project of which it’s a part is no longer a part of the project and may become a stand-alone task or a part of a different project. MLO might want to prevent you from doing that to your tasks without realizing it while thinking that you are just revising priorities.

-Dwight

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[Richard C]

I use manual sorting almost almost exclusively in the Windows desktop version.     I don't use the Android version - and this was one of the reasons that I decided not to go down that route when I last looked (a good while ago).   I hadn't realised that this was still the case and so the apparent lack of the ability to transfer manual sort orders (in flat views) to the Android would be a major obstacle to me starting to use that version.   Is this also true of the iOS version?

I use the Star function to flag up items that I need to decide about prioritising - I set the star to indicate that I need to look at this task and unset once I have placed it in the To Do list (or assigned it a Start Date) and so the fact that the two starred views synch the sort order does not' work for me at the moment.

As i dont' follow the forums very closely at the moment,  I am not sure what the status of this request is.  Has Andrey indicated whether it is something that he will address?

If not, then this would be a significant obstacle to me starting to use the mobile version?

PS:  I have made several attempts to try and use the scoring mechanism for sorting To Do but as others have indicated,  I hhave found it too cumbersome.

Richard

[Richard C]

I haven't been following this discussion closely so I am not sure whether this answers your question, John but I am 99% certain that To Do views (ie those where the Show Hierarchy is set to No) each have their own manual sort order.   ie if you manually change the sort order the tasks in one view, it does not change in the other To Do views

Hierarchical views do all share the same manual sort order.   ie you if you move an item in one hierarchical view,  it moves in all the other hierarchical views.

I have never use anything other other than Manual sorting in the hierarchical view so I can't say what happens if you apply a sort there.

Richard

Lisa

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