Messy Contact Tags
I just recently started to enter names of contacts in "Waiting for". Before I just wrote the name and used "someone" for all Waiting for Tasks.
Incredible how messy my Nirvana looks now. Now I see tags of all my contacts in the top bar. What's even worse, these tags are now mixed with my contexts. They should be clearly separated and otherwise it should be easier to manage the interface when there are many contacts.
2 Posted by MarcinGTD on 13 Jan, 2012 02:57 PM
I agree. I have same issue with names/waiting for "tags" cluttering my screen.
Not checking my "waiting fors" directly from "waiting for" tab because it is super messy. Instead, I am looking directly to each project. This is problematic when I have, althou rarely, a stand alone "waiting for" tied to no project
3 Posted by Proximo on 13 Jan, 2012 09:50 PM
I agree.
I want a little "People" icon that will open a simple dialog box for contacts visible in my active list.
An "@" icon for displaying context from the active list would also be great for those that have a HUGE amount of context/tags.
Having the option to toggle between icon and what can be docked to the top of the UI would be great.
I would probably keep my Context docked but my Contacts in an icon to keep my UI clean.
Support Staff 4 Posted by Elbert McLaughlin on 13 Jan, 2012 09:55 PM
Ad hoc survey: how many people regularly do compound filtering? e.g. ctrl-click to whittle down their lists to tasks that match BOTH the selected tags?
5 Posted by Proximo on 13 Jan, 2012 10:02 PM
I will have to be honest here and say that I don't do this much at all.
I do have task that involve others input but they are my responsibility. When I add the contact as a tag, the UI on top get's cluttered. I choose their name if I am going to visit them to see what I need to discuss with them. This is were the little people icon would come in handy but I don't normally select two context to filter my list.
I already filter by Area and then I just filter by context most of the time. The contacts showing up there is the only annoyance for me. :-)
Support Staff 6 Posted by Elbert McLaughlin on 13 Jan, 2012 10:14 PM
Right. I'm thinking we should put contacts under a menu, ala Time / Energy, as I think it's rare that you'd need to see the intersection between two Contacts.
Extreme Filter Example: time + effort + contact + area + tag + tag
2h •• David Nirvanahq Bugs Critical
7 Posted by dafyren on 13 Jan, 2012 10:37 PM
I agree Elbert.
I almost never use CTRL-click, and certainly not for contacts. Putting it in a menu like Time/energy sounds like a great option.
8 Posted by schollguin on 14 Jan, 2012 12:18 AM
Besides really complex compound filtering will be possible in the future with the SmartLists enhancement. ;-)
9 Posted by schollguin on 14 Jan, 2012 12:18 AM
Hmmm...that was supposed to come across as +1 (plus 1) ...some weird auto formatting i guess.
10 Posted by Folke on 15 Jan, 2012 02:53 PM
Probably there is something like a 20/80 rule: 20% of your contacts represent 80% of the tasks that have a contact.
To have the most frequent contacts docked and directly clickable is very practical (I use this a lot). It is very irritating to have to open lists and menus for things that you do often. But having a list becomes necessary if you enter every name as a Contact (rather than just write the persons name in the task description or notes, which is what I do for more temporary contacts). So:
A very elegant solution, that I believe would serve everybody's needs, would be to have a clickable list for contacts, and to be able to mark some contacts as "Favorites", which would make those names docked dynamically in the tag bar (like today).
If the same approach is then used for General tags and Areas as well, then an additional benefit would be that the tag bar as a whole would become naturally divided by these different icons (Area, General, Contact - each followed by their respective favorites) into distinguishable sections, which is something that people have requested in other threads.
EDIT: Oh, BTW, if and when smart lists or other 'complicated" filtering can be performed and saved, then maybe these saved filter settings, too, should be kept in an iconed list in the tag bar and be possible to mark as "Favorite" ('docked'). This will keep the UI consistent.
EDIT 2: Another thing you might want to consider is having a user preference setting for 'number of lines in tag bar' (say 1, 2 or 3). The default should be 1, like today, but some people (probably I for one) would opt for having more lines if I find that I need to sacrifice that space in order to have all my frequent things directly clickable. A second or third line obviously would steal some space and look more cluttered, but that is a choice the individual user must balance against his desire to be able to make one-click choices )
11 Posted by Mark S on 16 Jan, 2012 03:42 PM
I use CTRL + CLICK only for compound filtering of tasks with the @agenda context for a particular colleague.
I use tags to divide my Work projects up into sub-AOF categories (Sales, Marketing, Customers, Development, Prospecting) but again I rarely need to see 2 of these tags together.
Just as an aside, this is work-around because we don't have a way to show more than 1 AOF at any time (AOF filter needs to be a check list too).