Project Groupings Are Back!
April 11th, 2007 / 40 CommentsObviously some of you are anxious for us to bring back the action groupings, and I am pleased to announce that Project groupings are now back in Vitalist. Now in the upper right hand corner of the page (next to the print button), you will have the option to group your actions by project.
We are also releasing some more features that everyone has been asking for:
- Persistant filters. Now your filters will be remembered when bouncing around different pages and edit actions.
- “No Project” and “No Context” filters. Now you can filters on actions without projects or contexts.
- Filters defaulted when adding a new action. Now when you are filtering a list, that filter will be defaulted as a selection when adding a new action.
We hope that you enjoy these new updates. We have been working hard to get these out to you as soon as possible. Contexts groupings will take a little longer to bring back, mainly because of the complexity of being able to have multiple contexts per action. As always, please direct any support related questions to support@vitalist.com.
Great work! The project filter is really nice, especially because now I can quickly tell which project needs a next action.
Don’t forget to update the mobile interface sometime soon!
That’s excellent. I have to confess I wasn’t sure what you meant about project grouping, but now I see it, it simplifies the weekly review no end.
I’m delighted that the filters are remembered, and the remembering of filters when adding new actions is very intuitive.
I would love if it recorded the sort order too!
Another change that would really strengthen the system (not sure if people requested it before) is if we could move to the next inbox item instead of always going back to the full list. This would really speed up processing the inbox. It would be similar to ’save and add another’ in the new action dialogue. ‘Save and move to next’ or something.
But keep up the great work. After months of bouncing around from one application to another for my GTD implementation I’m now with Vitalist for the long run!
I’m really enjoying the every single one of the new additions. You guys are so fast! The sort by projects is more helpful than I realized. Part of me wishes that projects with nothing in them didn’t show up in this view. I tried to delete them from the project list, but I can’t find a simple way to really see what projects have everything (actions/someday/waiting) completed without having to click to each screen a zillion times. Overall, these small changes are making the new Vitalist a really amazing GTD tool. Thanks again for all the hard work!
Guys thax again,
What would help me when viewing actions grouped by project, only show me the projects with actions, don’t show the projects with no current actions, please
I have to say I disagree, having the projects with no actions appear in this list helps me see what projects have no next actions. One of the most important things to do in the weekly review. This has been slow to track for me in the past. Now it’s so simple.
Excellent! Now, if only there was a way of printing the Action screen, grouped by project, *exactly as it appears* and without the notes etc., then that would be marvellous…
Thank you!
Great!
You are really listening to us! And act faster than lightning!
Thanks for your good work!
Great! Finally some overview
Great, thanks!
I really really miss the fantastic drag n drop moving of action though, please dont forget that fix…
Thanks
/Pelle
I have no idea how you guys/gals (Don’t know if there are any gals on the team but just to cover all the bases) do it. The updates are wonderful!
For the context issues, you can check out the outlook gtd to get an idea of how to poorly do it, though it might be the only way. It gets really confusing to see an action listed in two or three different places. Just to throw in a challenge; can there there be a sort by project *and* sort by context as well as a sort by project *or* sort by context.
Still missing the drag and drop. It makes life so much easier then the due dates though I forsee two problems. One is ordering itself. If you have 3 actions without a due date above an item with a due date of say today, which goes first? Second is it will slow the pages down! Web 2.0 stuff is great but it can be slower then java and people are going to scream! Can’t win them all I guess.
I’ll most certainly be signing up for the premium to show my support and appreciation. I see your support of me bright and clear now.
Am I the only one that is missing a time function next to the date?
Especially in the “waiting for”, I really miss the function to add a time limit to a waiting item.
(such as; waiting for John to deliver the project documentation before 11:00, becomes;
The project documentation - John - 11:00 - 04-12-2007)
Sweet !!
Stephen, I imagine you would be able to filter on the project you wanted and then sort on context. That should give you what you’re looking for if only for 1 project at a time.
This looks great guys. This was by far my most used view before. (Just the way my brain likes to work… I only work from contexts occasionally) The only thing I am really missing now is the ability to reorder the actions in the project by dragging and dropping them. Is this still on the list of things to be implemented? Priorities just don’t give me the sequential process ordering that I’m looking for.
Thanks for the great improvements!
One other small tweak might be to leave the project filters available when the sort by projects is enabled. If I’m working on a project with lots of sub-projects then I might want to focus in on the parent project using a filter while still being able to see the sub-project groupings. Not a complaint… just an idea that I think some may find useful.
Thank you!
Great feature!
Now if we can get group by Context that would be perfect. It is helpful for example when you are sitting in front of a phone you can look at your @phone items all at once.
I suspect being able to do this in the software may be complicated by the fact you can add more than one Context to an Action (a feature that I don’t like i might add). Funny thing is multiple Contexts was brought up at the GTD Roadmap Seminar in Boston a few weeks ago. DA Asked a woman how would she contact the person she needed to contact. Her response was Email or Phone, DA said “choose one”. Basically, He said to keep the next action simple. Anyway i digress.
I hope group by context will be available soon. Keep up the great work.
Great Job on the update….
I would like to see an option to skip those projects without actions.
also regarding the grouping by contexts… I’m afraid with the multiple tags we are going to see the same action all over the place, I was wondering if maybe we could have a view where it assumes the first listed context is the primary context, and a view grouping by primary context.
Thanks for your efforts.
Great Job.
I would like to see the titles to be Main Project > Subproject > Subproject. Currently it is Subproject
Thanks everyone for the feedback.
@Mark R. - You can see all of the @phone items by using the context filter. That filter is still available even in Project group mode.
@Mark L. - We will probably make that an option.
I love the groupings by project. And I love that it shows me projects even with no action items. That tells me that I need to add some actions.
I noticed your post says there is a “no projects” filter which I would love to use, but for some reason I can’t find it. Is it on the Actions page?
I’m looking forward to the Context groupings so I hope that’s possible. If it’s too hard I would gladly give up more than one context per action in order to get the groupings back.
I have one small request - a print link for the Reports list page like you have for the Actions page.
Thanks.
It would be very nice to be able to see all actions (actions, waiting for, etc.) that are associated with the projects in a comprehensive list, especially for the weekly review process.
I guess i was looking to Sort by Context so for example when you prind a report o rlook at your list through your google start pager or you mobile phone it is all in order. Is there a setting where i can do this?
Sorry about the typing it’s late in the afternoon
The Project Groupings is great! Thanks for bringing it back.
Of course, I now have another request. Please bring back the ‘Next Action’.
My most useful view is the project list, with a single ‘next Action’ for each project.
Thanks again.
For anyone who was interested in the Project Grouping and Next Action filter I described above, I have found a way to accomplish this.
Assign 1 Top Priority action in each project. Apply the Group By Project and Top Priority Filter. You will se the top action for each project in one view!
Thanks guys, great service.
I agree with Paul’s comment that it would be good to be able to still filter by project even when you are grouped by project. I have sub-projects organised under “work” and “home” parent projects, and I want to be able to review all my “work” projects only in the grouped view. Presently this isn’t possible.
I agree with Eamon regarding the “save and edit next” option for the inbox processing. It will make the processing twice as fast.
Thanks for a great app!
You know, I’ve been shifting back and forth between Nozbe and Vitalist trying to find the ideal tool to work with my projects.
It’s a wonder that you didn’t know project groupings would be so important. It was actually the one thing that was keeping me in the doubt about the tools.
i’ve made up my mind now. Vitalist is the tool of choice. 1 more user for you
Congratulations!
Toledo
Maybe I didn’t get something on the tool, but why does the field “project” vanishes on the quick add for Actions when we are grouping by projects? I think it would be great to look at all the projects and, on the quick add, add one action for a project that is missing.
I suppose it’s a temporary technical limitation. If that’s the case, that’s ok. We can wait
…else, am I missing something?
Oh yeah! Love me some of that project grouping!
thanks guys!
I agree with Charles (Posted on April 12th, 2007) about wanting to be able to filter by project even when you are grouped by project. I, too, have sub-projects organised under “work” and “home” parent projects, and want to be able to review all my “work” projects only in the grouped view. Presently this isn’t possible. Having this ability would sure be appreciated.
One more tweak item I found. When grouping by project, the Print command formats the actions, but includes the (P: xxxxx) project indication next to each action. This should probably be removed since they are already grouped by project. It would help with readability.
I just went to the “tour” at the top and it still shows the old version with actions broken down into contexts, projects or waiting. Is it ever going to get back to that same interface or just the new workaround?
Fingers crossed.
Well I just got done entering my life into vita list (30+ projects and about 300+ actions). One or two things I noticed today.
With the ability to sort by no context and no project, I, personally, don’t see a need for the inbox. Also, by adding things in the action page, I can avoid the extra step having to move the action to the action page by using add action.
I’m allowed to create contexts of less then 3 characters but if I use that short context, and then remove the context from an action, I get an error about contexts needing to be 3 or more characters.
The order of contexts on the action page is different then the order I added them. I was trying to order by a primary context, secondary and then a time context but they appear in alphabetical order.
Love the filters being defaulted. As a wish, it would be unreal if we could have a view that has the new action detailed form with the actions for that project below. When I wasn’t sure if I had added the action, I had to go to another screen. Could we get that detailed form on the double click by chance? I could avoid the huge affort in clicking on the pencil
Any chance the drag and drop will be returning? I don’t mind waiting or do I just need to get into the mindset of using dates to order my tasks.
Thanks again for a great project.
Drag & Drop for sorting would really be a killer feature, specially for those that don’t use due dates, like GTD recommends. David says: “Put all of your actions on a do as soon as you can list, and when you have to decide which one to do, follow your instincts/gut”.
A great way to follow those would be looking at the sort order I’ve already given in the past, without having to game the date system.
God bless your soul
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
Thank you very much. And then call me “a dork” for writing it - at least if you read Lorelle on Wordpress that’s what you would do because she says that you should never comment unless you are “advancing the conversation” and other less flattering things about comments. I, along with a number of other commenters, have now unsubscribed! That’s not something that I will be doing with Vitalist - and I’ll continue to say “thanks” and to sign off with my name.
Hazel
I tried sending an email to the support address listed in the help section but it bounced back. Here is the content of the email.
Hi…
I spend most of my Vitalist time in the Actions view with actions
grouped by Project. It would be very useful if it would be possible to
collapse the action list for a project. For example, some projects
have many open tasks and as a result, it is difficult to see the tasks
of other projects. A click on a button on the Project label or
something could hide/show the tasks for that project. If you are
working on tasks for a particular project you could collapse all of
the other project’s task lists.
I think this would be a valuable feature for most users.
Also, any insight into when we might see drag and drop ordering of
tasks available again?
Thanks!
would be great if there was an option to delete projects on this page - i have about 100 unused projects (completed) but if you go to the “my Projects” page (which seems to be the only place you can delete them) it doesn’t list whether there are active actions or not, so you can’t tell which ones to delete.
thanks!