GTD sorting question

[janrif]

If I have a filter that includes a range of upcoming appointments amongst other items & I sort up on the appointment column, the items with no appointments went to the bottom, giving priority, i.e. top of list to no appts. If I sorted down appts them came to the top in reverse order, i.e. last appt first, etc.

I also found this true for priority.

Now maybe I'm missing something but it seems to me if I am sorting up on Appt, all apts should come to the top in descending order, i.e. appts closest to today first, etc.

Does this confuse anyone else? Maybe I'm doing something wrong or am mis-interpreting what sort is supposed to do here.

Thank you.

[quant]

Whatever sort you do, it's either date sorting or value or alphabetical sorting (irrespective of the attribute name) ... with it's comparison operator and predefined behaviour for undefined values. For date, you can see that undefined date is less that any defined date. Similar for values, any number is bigger that the undefined one ...

With this in mind, you can understand what results you get and can accommodate your searches accordingly (for example excluding those where this column is not defined, logically it's not an appointment you should see in the seach), or set some default values. For example, you could set in your template default appointment date to 1/1/2100, so that those with 'unset' value would go to the end ...

[janrif]

Originally posted by quant
Whatever sort you do, it's either date sorting or value or alphabetical sorting (irrespective of the attribute name) ... with it's comparison operator and predefined behaviour for undefined values. For date, you can see that undefined date is less that any defined date. Similar for values, any number is bigger that the undefined one ...[snip]

Right. I just fiind this kind of counter-intuitive at some level, i.e. that no appointment or no priority is considered anything. I realize zero is less than one but to be useful, if a user is sorting on appointment, it seems to me that the sort should begin with appointments, put them in order & put everything else at the bottom of the list. But, hey, that's just me. Thanks for your post.

[quant]

Originally posted by janrif
Right. I just fiind this kind of counter-intuitive at some level, i.e. that no appointment or no priority is considered anything. I realize zero is less than one but to be useful, if a user is sorting on appointment, it seems to me that the sort should begin with appointments, put them in order & put everything else at the bottom of the list. But, hey, that's just me. Thanks for your post.

don't you find more counter-intuitive the fact that appointment has no appointment date?

[janrif]

Originally posted by quant
don't you find more counter-intuitive the fact that appointment has no appointment date?

I guess not. Not when it comes to sorting. ;-) Try creating a search of appt >= today & priority = urgent or important (or 1 & 2) & is not completed. See if what what you come up with makes sense visually. To me, those not assigned to appt or urgent/important take preferance.

[quant]

Originally posted by janrif
I guess not. Not when it comes to sorting. ;-) Try creating a search of appt >= today & priority = urgent or important (or 1 & 2) & is not completed. See if what what you come up with makes sense visually. To me, those not assigned to appt or urgent/important take preferance.

I dont use GTD, I have my own system ...
Sorry, I probably dont understand sth. If you do appt>=today and all other things in search are AND, how can you get in the result items that have no 'appt' set? I guess you did sth wrong in your search, and when you do OR for priority attribute, you didnt indent it properly.

Can you post a screenshot where I can see a search and some results?

[janrif]

Originally posted by quant
[snip]Can you post a screenshot where I can see a search and some results?

See zipped bmp

[quant]

ok, I see

1. so you are using OR, not AND as you wrote here:
"Try creating a search of appt >= today & priority = urgent or important (or 1 & 2) & is not completed"

2. you are mixing Events with Tasks in the "Upcoming EVENTS" search. I suppose Tasks have their own "Upcoming TASK" search. If you really want to have them in one search, maybe you could change your "appointment" attribute and call it just "Date" (it's clear that it is an appointment date from the fact that you are in Appointment template item). You'd use it also in Tasks instead of Due Date. This could be then used in both Appointment and Task template where it would have obvious meanings "Appointment Date" and "Due Date" respectively. Just an idea ...

[janrif]

Originally posted by quant
ok, I see [snip]If you really want to have them in one search, maybe you could change your "appointment" attribute and call it just "Date" (it's clear that it is an appointment date from the fact that you are in Appointment template item). You'd use it also in Tasks instead of Due Date. This could be then used in both Appointment and Task template where it would have obvious meanings "Appointment Date" and "Due Date" respectively. Just an idea ...

I think our approaches may be different. For example, I use have a contact form that includes Begin Date/Time for a reminder as well as Appointment. I actually don't need to include reminder as that can be done in attributes quite easily.

This may be due to the fact that I don't really don't understand the most efficient way to use UR's many talents.

I think you are suggesting that I am mixing apples & oranges which may, in fact, be the case. I have to think about this.