Item Attribute Handling Enhancements

[maynard]

Some thoughts.

Enhancment: Dynamic item renaming based on parameterized attributes

I find that I'm constantly doing a manual renaming of items to the same values that I just entered into the attribute fields. It would be very cool to be able parameterize "Item Title" so the title is built dynamically from a predfined parameter template (definable on a per template or even per item basis). A template string might look like [Name] - [Access Count] - [Date Accessed] where the values in brackets would be replaced by their corrresponding attribute values at item instantiation time. To conserve resources this could be a one-shot process that is run manually by the user in the Item Attributes pane (e.g. an "Update Params" button or something or other). Also... since we're parameterizing, why not extend this capability to allatributes so any attribute can be defined in terms of any other (date values could be processed, money and number results could be calculated and formatted) Oh crap... this is starting to sound like Excel.

Enhancment: Global search and replace fo item names and attributes.

Another thought. I've been using Total Commander (http://www.ghisler.com/) for years as an Explorer replacement in Windows. The program rocks. Its batch file renaming capabilities are some of the best I've ever used. In addition to parameterized naming (as I described above) it also supports full RegEx capability which has saved my butt many a time. Search & replace configurations can be saved as templates for re-use. So I'm thinking that global search and replace of ANY item attribute values would be very very cool using a front end capability similar to TC. Replacements could traverse selected tree branches or selected results from a UR search.

Sorry if I'm spewing in stream-of-counsciousness mode. Once I get going I don't shut up. ;-)

Maynard

[ashwken]

I'm surprized that this suggestion has not generated any comments.

As I work more with UR I'm finding the need for just what is described here - Item Titles named from Item Attribute values - and I'm finding that I'm aslo duplicating activity, typing the same values into a custom field that I've just used as an Item Title.

I've been using UR to track Real Estate leads: a Folder for a Lead Name, child folders for an event, these child folders are named

yyyy-mm-dd - Action Type

where Action Type is some method of communication or action, underneath this event folder I store emails from Outlook and other types of files that pertinent.

Currently I've got two custom attributes for Date of Action and Action Type, essentially the two values I use to name the child folder - I'm not clear what advantage there is to having these custom attributes, except that it seemed that they might be advantagous for sorting or searching in the future.

Anyway, just some thoughts...


Later,
KenA