Advanced filters: Goal vs Goal Master?

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Andrei

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Sep 16, 2014, 2:50:22 PM9/16/14
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Hi,

What is the difference between the Goal and the Goal Master filters?
They can be found in the Advanced Filters.

Thank you
Best regards
Andrew

Dwight Arthur

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Sep 17, 2014, 10:25:43 AM9/17/14
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Hi, Andrei.
If you select an item (task/folder/project) that has subtasks, and set a goal for the selected item, goal will be set for the task alone and goalmaster will be set for the selected task and all (I think) of its subtasks.
-Dwight
Mlo betazoid on Android sgn2

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Andrei

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Sep 17, 2014, 2:35:04 PM9/17/14
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Hello Dwight
Thank you for pointing me into the right direction.

By default, the child tasks are inheriting the Goal from its parent.
If we want the view to show only the Parent task, then we may use Goal Master.
(filtering by Goal will return the parent + the child).

Best regards
Andrew

среда, 17 сентября 2014 г., 17:25:43 UTC+3 пользователь Dwight Arthur написал:

Dwight Arthur

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Sep 19, 2014, 10:08:04 PM9/19/14
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Hi, Andrew.
Are you certain?

I created a new blank profile and added three tasks, each of which has three second-level subtasks, and each of them contains three third-level subtasks.  I marked one second-level tasks as goal:week. The display showed four tasks marked with red "!" - the second level task I had set for goal, and the three third-level tasks that are subtasks of the goal task. However it is not true that the three third level tasks inherited the goal from their second level parent. The three third level tasks despite their red "!" show in task properties as goal:none. My conclusion is that the goal itself is not inherited but that the red "!" is set for tasks that have a weekly goal or tasks that live in a hierarchy below a task with weekly goal (with no intermediary tasks with goals other than none and week)..

In further testing I created a new subtask under the goal task. Like the three other subtasks it shows the red "!" but the task properties showed goal:none.

For the other part, I agree with you that I said it backwards. The Goalmaster filter will pass only those tasks that are actually set to the specified goal, with no consideration of inheritance. The Goal filter on the other hand, will pass any task that has the specified goal setting, as well as the entire branch of subtasks under that task, but excluding any subtask that has a different goal set (other than goal:none) and excluding any branch of subtasks under the excluded task.

Eberhard

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Sep 20, 2014, 4:41:45 AM9/20/14
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Hi Andrew,

things look to me as follows ...

ONLY the weekly goal seems to get inherited to sbtask, but neither monthly goal nor yearly goal.

But it's NOT ONLY the red "!" that is inherited, but also the goal itself.

I'm creating a task and a subtask and I'm marking the (parent) task as weekly goal.

I'm getting the red "!" for both taks (parent and sub-task) but only for the parent task you'll find "weekly goal" in properties pane properly activated (not for the sub-task).

However ... define a simple rule for auto-formatting (goal=week) and have an icon be set for all tasks that apply to that auto-formatting rule ... you'll get both tasks (parent and sub-task) be iconized (means to me ... both task are "internally marked" as weekly goals).

According to me all this is not correctly implemented.

(a) I do not like the fact at all, that subtasks are automatically marked as weekly goals once their parent is a weekly goal.

(b) It's at least confusing to having sub-tasks automatically marked as weekly goals while the relevant button in properties pane indecates that gould = none.

Eberhard

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Dwight Arthur

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Sep 20, 2014, 8:46:58 AM9/20/14
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Hi, Eberhard. I partly agree with you.

Thanks for pointing out that weekly goals behave different from other goals. For weekly goals, the GOAL and GOALMASTER filters behave differently (GOALMASTER passes only tasks with goal:week where GOAL includes the whole branch below each task with goal:week) (Note: subtasks with goal:month or goal:year and their descendants are excluded) For all goals other than week, GOAL and GOALMASTER function the same, showing only the actual tasks whose goal property matched the filter. The fact that the filters work differently for one setting of the goal property but the same for others seems unreasonable and would appear to be something that should be fixed.

 

The behavior of the red “!” is consistent with the GOAL filter for weekly goals. In fact the autoformat rule for weekly goal, weekly goal hidden, and any goal completed all use the GOAL filter, which is why the icons governed by these rules show inheritance behaviours. Here is a test case which illustrates the illogic of this implementation: create two root level tasks, one with goal:week and the other with goal:month. Create a hierarchy of tasks below each of these two root level tasks or any complexity and depth you desire, but with all tasks in both branches set for goal:none. Select one task at the bottom of each branch and complete it. The task with the weekly goal ancestor gets a green check, the one with the monthly goal ancestor does not get a green check. Does anyone think that’s reasonable? I don’t.

 

You can eliminate the inheritance of explanation points and check marks by editing these three autoformat rules to use the GOALMASTER filter instead of GOAL. You can mark tasks with weekly and yearly goals with an icon by creating similar autoformat rules but you cannot make these icons be inherited. The whole autoformat facility is a remarkably powerful tool allowing each user to make the tool match to his or her personal working methods, but the availability of inherited icons for weekly goals but not monthly or yearly is not customizable.

 

But I disagree with you, Eberhard, that the weekly goal is actually inherited. As you noted, when you look at the task properties the parent’s goal does not show. By contrast, if a task inherits a parent’s dates or context, it’s clearly there in the properties. Also, the GOALMASTER filter will pass a task set up with goal:week but will not pass a task which is behaving as a weekly goal because of its parent. The fact that GOALMASTER behaves differently in these two cases suggests that the two cases are not the same, and that the subtask has not actually inherited the goal. It’s just that the GOAL filter and anything that uses it look at each task’s properties as well as it’s ancestor task properties. However, I recognize that the difference between this concept and “inheritance” is arcane and semantic, so if you want to call it inheritance I willkeep quite about it from now on.

 

Regarding what should be done: It’s always tricky “fixing” something like this because somebody somewhere will have built something based on current behavior and fixing it will break that person’s stuff. I would recommend implementing two new filters “TaskHasGoal” and “BranchHasGoal” – the former would be identical to goalmaster and the latter would recognize inheritance of goals but it would work equally for weekly, monthly and yearly goals. Then the user guide could state that GOAL and GOALWEEKLY are deprecated, and the program could continue to process them but not offer them in any menus or dropdowns. Than would allow current users to continue using their views, etc but provide a clear, clean, consistent implementation for anyone building new views.

Andrei

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Sep 21, 2014, 5:38:03 PM9/21/14
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Hello Eberhard, Dwight
Thank you for your kind help !
I want to post a link to an old uservoice request here:
http://mlo.uservoice.com/forums/9235-general/suggestions/1114967-inheritance-on-all-goals-not-just-week-goals
Although i think that the suggestion mentioned by Dwight in the previous post (“TaskHasGoal” and “BranchHasGoal” filters) is better.
Best regards
Andrei B

суббота, 20 сентября 2014 г., 11:41:45 UTC+3 пользователь Eberhard написал:

John Tomson

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Dec 19, 2021, 3:54:45 PM12/19/21
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A.  Is goal and goal master fixed, ie its treated the same way for weekly goals and monthly goals?  

B.I want to implement Weekly goals, Bi weekly goals, and 12 week goals.  
I am considering using weekly goals, monthly goals as a bi weekly, and 12 week goals as the yearly goal.  This isn't ideal because the nomenclature is wrong, but I can deal with it.   Or i can make contexts.  
Any suggesions?
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