Automated Actions

[igoldsmid]

Off the wall thought... Omea Pro, and Zoot Software have functions similar to UR's saved searches - in Omea called Views, and in Zoot, are properties of folders (folders are the topics of the tree outline which items belong to either virtually or 'for real'). However, both these products go further in providing for automated actions that will be taken on items that satisfy search criteria. There's many possibilities for actions - and Stephen Diamond may have some well developed views here, not merely because, if I remember correctly he is, or was a long term user of Zoot, or at least a participant in Outliners.com where many of the other participants there were serious 'zooters'.

A very simple example is I create a saved search, let's say which filters for one custom attribute value. I actually want any item that satisfies this criteria to be flagged red, and thus its item font made red (ideally bold with font size increased - but that represents another feature request)... You can imagine that as the search criteria increase in complexity, and the number of actions that we might optionally want to be taken on items that meet the search criteria - actions that are the same in every case... productivity would benefit greatly from what I am calling "automated actions"...

Does this make sense? Does anyone kind of agree in some way, or have a different way of describing or clarifying the notion?

Thanks fellow UR fans - and Kevin for being a good listener and who has proven to be so good at extracting the best ideas from all the commentary at this forum,

IJG

[craigm]

Just a small note to say that my suggestion about Auto Linking is a subset of this suggestion about Auto Actions (http://www.kinook.com/Forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1552).

The more I use UR, the more I am frustrated that I can't create rules for ordinary folders/items and can only do so for special 'search items'.

(P.S. Kinook have asked some questions about how to implement this - see link above - that I still haven't responded to - someone else might like to have a go).

[lsebba]

I totally agree with the above posts. I have been a long time user of Zoot, and have become frustrated with its limitations, in particular the lack of RTF. UR has a great interface, the templates are great, and the ability to store documents and use RTF all have made it worth the switch (I think....)

However, I constantly find myself wishing that it did this like Zoot, or had that feature of Zoot. If I were to import an item into Zoot, and then decide to process it a few ways, such as assign to folders, create reminders, etc, I could do that in a fraction of the time I can do it in UR. The ability to have actions would be a huge improvement for UR in terms of processing the information.