New to MLO Android, Inbox confusion

[Ed S]

Hello! So as I have said I'm new to MLO and primarily using the Android version. I am confused by the Inbox. As I understand it Inbox works as it would in GTD. Isn't it according to GTD once you process a task in Inbox, like for example assign a @context, it should be considered not in the Inbox anymore? Why does it remain there when I do this in MLO?

Another thing that confuses me: if I add a new task without any context in a view, for example "Active by context", sometimesn it gets added in Inbox, sometimes not?

I am VERY confused by this.

[Gary A. Christian]

As far as I know adding a context is just adding to the specifications of the task. To get the task out of the inbox I believe you have to move it to a project or task.

[John Hughes]

I agree. If a task is in the inbox, then you have to use move to get it out of the inbox. The inbox, to me, is a folder.

[Dwight Arthur]

Sorry, I sent this reply to John instead of Ed. Try again . . .

-Dwight

On 3/8/2020 10:27 PM, Dwight wrote:

I understand that once you have applied a context to a task you no longer want to see it in your inbox. That's easily taken care of. Just creat a new view with a different name (for example, Ed'sInbox) and define it as anything that's still in the inbox and does not yet have a context. (If it was for me, I would also want to exclude anything that's completed as well as any folder. You might want to exclude other things as well.

The advanced filter for this is

((TopLevelFolderName contains '<inbox>') AND (not(complete)) AND (not(IsFolder)) AND (Contexts is empty))

You can probably find a tutorial on how to use advanced filters. Any other questions, come back here.

Once this is set up, stop looking in the INBOX view and always use Ed'sInbox instead. As soon as anything in the inbox gets a context it will no longer appear in your view.

[Dwight]

The thing that controls context for a new task has nothing to do with what view you are in. Some task somewhere in your profile is currently selected. it's highlighted and the cursor currently points there. Your new task will be the child (or maybe sibling) of the selected task and, unless inherited contexts is inhibited, your new task will inherit the context of its parent. If you are using a view that shows all the tasks with context "@office" it's likely (but not necessarily true) that your selected task has context office and therefore the new task will have the context @office. But the context is not there because of the view, it's there because of the selected task. Does this make sense to you?

[Ed S]

Ok I have to admit that level of frustration with the app is almost through the roof now. I downloaded this app on Saturday, and I have used all night before and almost all of my Sunday trying to understand the app.

Several minutes after I posted my question here I determined that I will need to make custom views to achieve what I wanted, so I experimented with it. And since there was NO list and explanation of each rule used in advanced filtering whatsoever that I could find using Google, in the manual PDF, in the app's Youtube page, in the developer's blog, or in the pinned messages of this group, it took me an hour to realize that, no, the Context rule was not broken but rather it seemed that it used not an OR operator like I thought with each context but an AND operator.

And now your advanced filter showed me that a Toplevelfoldername rule could have fixed my problems.... How could I have known that? Where the HECK is this app's complete list and explanation of each of the rules of advanced filters so that I do not have do trial and error in understanding each of them?!

You know what, I'm going to sleep on this and hope I have gathered back enough patience tomorrow morning to have a go at this again. And someone PLEASE post the list.

[TS OGrady]

Dwight,

Dang your good.  

Thanks

TS

[Stéph]

Hello Ed, 

MLO has been designed with flexibility in mind, rather than ease of use. There are no predefined relationships between the different parameters assigned to an item and you can set up a system in which you use contexts, flags, due dates, folders, outline hierarchical structure, importance, text tag, project status, etc in whatever way you want. The advanced filters give you the opportunity to filter and sort what you're seeing by almost any criteria, potentially with different criteria to match an item and all its children. 

MLO's greatest strength is also its greatest flaw - So all this flexibility gives it a steep learning curve, makes a bit more time-consuming to set up how you want it, and results in you having to do more clicks on new items to get them to appear how you want in all your views.

 

It's likely that most of us started learning our way around with the Windows version of MLO. I imagine it's harder to find your way around the mobile versions. I feel for your frustration.

There is only an introductory page on Task Filtering in the help file on Windows. Dwight and I, among others, have provided help on Advanced Filter parameters in discussions on this Google Group forum. A few users have intended to publish some more guidance (and been encouraged to do so, by the small MLO development team), but it's hard to find the time to do that justice. I suggest searching for the "advanced filter" term in this forum, but also taking a look through the list of advanced parameters and trying them out. There's usually someone who will help you set up the view you're looking for. The way that the advanced filter logic is set up, it helps to have some background in forming logical expressions, managing data or coding, I guess.

Meanwhile, the In-box is just the folder that new tasks are added to. However, if you're in an outline view and you have a task selected, adding a new task will create it as a sibling or child of the currently selected task. I don't have the Android version of MLO, so I'm not exactly sure how the buttons work on those devices. In the iOS version, you'd have to be in the in-box view for a new task, or using the widget, to appear in the in-box. If you're set up to receive tasks by email, they'll appear in the in-box, too.

Good luck with setting up. I hope you manage to get MLO doing what you need.

Stéphane