S
SJAB
Categories are great... until you want to use them for multiple orthogonal
classifications at once! What I mean is, to take an example...
Suppose you're using a "GTD"-style approach to managaing your Tasks, and
therefore want to categorise each task within two separate "sets" of
Categories - by context (@Home, @office, etc) and by project (or area of
focus, etc). You may also have some other specific categories beyond those
two dimensions as well.
It's easy to set up whatever Categories desired, and suitable naming schemes
can easily be used to allow for useful filters to be easily applied: e.g. all
context Categories may start with "@" while that character is never used in a
project Category, and so on - thus a filter of "Category includes '@'" will
show only those Tasks that've been assigned to a context.
The problem comes, however, when you then want a view grouped by one of the
"sets" of Categories (i.e. one 'dimension'). To view "all tasks grouped by
context" you set the view to Group By Category, and to filter for '@' being
included in the Categories field... but of course what that actually produces
is is a view with a group for every context AND every project AND any other
category that includes a Task that's got a context assigned.
What you really want is a view that only shows groups for the context
categories, without the extra 10's of groups that (even making the effort to
keep those ones collapsed) just get in the way an cause confusion!
There doesn't seem to be any way of achieving this, except to use/add a
custom field for any dimension you want to categorise by except the first -
but such fields are harder to setup and use (e.g. drag-n-drop behaves
differently to Categories in the UI), do not appear on the default form, are
not accessible on a synced Windows Mobile device, etc.
If anyone knows a straightforward way to achieve this, I'd be very grateful
- but otherwise I'm desperately hoping Microsoft will add an additional
Filter feature to the Group By element of defining Views. All the code/UI
could be re-used from the existing Filter (of items) function, but would
instead filter the set of values of the field being grouped by, to control
the display/non-display of groups.
I see this as being a relatively simple addition to functionality that would
be extremely useful whenever someone wants to categorise tasks, or any other
Outlook objects, according to more than one independent classifications. What
do others think? Have you encountered the same problem and how have you
tackled it?
-Steve
----------------
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suggestions with the most votes. To vote for this suggestion, click the "I
Agree" button in the message pane. If you do not see the button, follow this
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click "I Agree" in the message pane.
http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...cbb0f9066&dg=microsoft.public.outlook.general
classifications at once! What I mean is, to take an example...
Suppose you're using a "GTD"-style approach to managaing your Tasks, and
therefore want to categorise each task within two separate "sets" of
Categories - by context (@Home, @office, etc) and by project (or area of
focus, etc). You may also have some other specific categories beyond those
two dimensions as well.
It's easy to set up whatever Categories desired, and suitable naming schemes
can easily be used to allow for useful filters to be easily applied: e.g. all
context Categories may start with "@" while that character is never used in a
project Category, and so on - thus a filter of "Category includes '@'" will
show only those Tasks that've been assigned to a context.
The problem comes, however, when you then want a view grouped by one of the
"sets" of Categories (i.e. one 'dimension'). To view "all tasks grouped by
context" you set the view to Group By Category, and to filter for '@' being
included in the Categories field... but of course what that actually produces
is is a view with a group for every context AND every project AND any other
category that includes a Task that's got a context assigned.
What you really want is a view that only shows groups for the context
categories, without the extra 10's of groups that (even making the effort to
keep those ones collapsed) just get in the way an cause confusion!
There doesn't seem to be any way of achieving this, except to use/add a
custom field for any dimension you want to categorise by except the first -
but such fields are harder to setup and use (e.g. drag-n-drop behaves
differently to Categories in the UI), do not appear on the default form, are
not accessible on a synced Windows Mobile device, etc.
If anyone knows a straightforward way to achieve this, I'd be very grateful
- but otherwise I'm desperately hoping Microsoft will add an additional
Filter feature to the Group By element of defining Views. All the code/UI
could be re-used from the existing Filter (of items) function, but would
instead filter the set of values of the field being grouped by, to control
the display/non-display of groups.
I see this as being a relatively simple addition to functionality that would
be extremely useful whenever someone wants to categorise tasks, or any other
Outlook objects, according to more than one independent classifications. What
do others think? Have you encountered the same problem and how have you
tackled it?
-Steve
----------------
This post is a suggestion for Microsoft, and Microsoft responds to the
suggestions with the most votes. To vote for this suggestion, click the "I
Agree" button in the message pane. If you do not see the button, follow this
link to open the suggestion in the Microsoft Web-based Newsreader and then
click "I Agree" in the message pane.
http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...cbb0f9066&dg=microsoft.public.outlook.general