Auto linking

[craigm]

Many PIMs (e.g. Ecco, Zoot, MDE Infohandler) support autocategorisation of items. In the context of Ultra Recall, this I guess translates to "Auto Linking". Unless I am missing something, this does not seem to be possible in UR.

What I want is to be able to assign a rule to an Info Item that automatically assigns other Items that satisfy it as children. This feature dramatically reduces the hassle of categorising items.

This is, in my view, particularly important in UR given the rather limited and cumbersome mechanisms available for Linking items in UR. (e.g. UR does not appear to allow linking from the search window etc.). Overall I am very impressed by UR, but given that I expect to be working with thousands of text Items assigned to hundreds of 'category' Items, this weakness is stopping me migrating to UR.

[lsebba]

I agree 100%.

One can use searches to autocategorize. For example, by adding a word to the item notes section, or defining an attribute, one can mimic the "rules" that one can create with Zoot. However, there is one key difference. In Zoot, one does not have to have an item assigned to a "primary" folder. With UR the item has to be assigned to a folder. I use search folders extensively in UR, and have been satisfied with this as a proxy for the rules.

However, I am constantly in fear that I may permanently delete an item inadvertently if I confuse the primary folder with a search folder, and remove it from that folder. If there were a way to avoid this, it would be most helpful.

[craigm]

That's very helpful and gets around some of my problems.

However, it doesn't solve all my problems. The key difference between autocategorisation (auto-linking) and your using saved searches is that with autocategorisation for you can choose to assign childen to an item either manually or by automatic search, but with saved searches you can't manually asing an item to a search folder. As you suggest you can add a search term to every item that you want to add to the search folder, but this rather undermines the cloning/linking functionality of UR. I suspect, using your model I'll end up not using the Data Explorer architecture much and end up creating a parallel architecture of saved searches.

I'll play around some more to see whether this is what happens. But my guess is that I would still like to see UR with autocategorisation. Perhaps what I am looking for is the option to configure a saved search as part of an ordinary item template. This would then mean that I would need to see both a Child Items and a Search Results window for that item - or ideally a single window in which the two were seperable using columns.

[lsebba]

I think we are both saying the same thing. I believe one can assign an item to a saved search folder as a child (for example, by drag and dropping), but that does not really solve the problem

The ideal solution, it seems to me, would be to have the option of having the output of a saved search be assigned to that folder as logically linked items. That way, one is not merely seeing the result of the search, but the item is logically linked as well

[kinook]

I can think of a few questions regarding auto-linking search results to Search Info Items, to include:
1) Should the search be updated every time Info Items are updated (ie, added, removed or modified), or only when Searches are manually executed, or?? The first option could easily make the application unresponsive with a large database (especially with complex Saved Searches), but the second option could be misleading...
2) If linking only when a search is executed, should it link partial results (ie, even link when a executed is cancelled before completing), or only auto-link when search execution is completed?
3) How to indicate whether the results actually match the search criteria or are manually linked to the Saved Search?
4) What happens when an Info Item that is linked only to the Search and no longer meets the search criteria? Delete it to the Recycle Bin, just keep it linked, or relink it to some type of "Unmatched" Info Item, or??

I don't ask these questions to say that auto-linking will never be implemented, but rather to identify the complexities and determine how it can reasonably be added to Ultra Recall.

[lsebba]

good questions. I don't know the answwers, of course, but I would say:

#1. Perhaps only update the search if the saved search is opened?
#3. At present one can manually add/link an item to a saved search. It appears as a child item, but does not appear in the search result pane. Could this be an option, that the results would be added as children. And would an attribute be able to indicate if it is manuially added or the outcome of the search?
#4. This gets to my point in an earlier part of the thread. If it is the result of a search, it has to be in another folder currently, right? Therefore, by removing it from the saved search, it HAS to still be in the database somewhere other than the recycle bin. I think it would add power to be able to have an item in the database, but not necessarily be assigned to a folder. That way, I would feel more confident in using searches more extensively to manage data, without fearing that I might accidently delete an item.(Zoot is able to do this, I think).

[kevina]

#4: currently search results are linked to another Info Item, but if Search results are actually linked to Search Info Items, then this link could become the only link, which brings up the question.

Currently deleting a Info Item from the search results will prompt you if you want to permanently delete all instances of the Info Item, choosing yes will result in the Item(s) being permanently deleted from the database.

[craigm]

One (lazy) answer to Kevina/Kinook's questions is to go and have a look at how the PIMs that use autocategorisation (Ecco/Zoot/MDE Info base) implement it. In my experience of using these programmes their autcategorisation methods work rather well - which implies they have found effective answers. (When I am feeling less lazy) I'll try to have a look and answer the questions.