Flat Dynalist view

[ovitch]

Hi,

I love Dynalist. The hierarchy is awesome, but sometimes you just need to have focus on the current tag in a flat structure. Someone created a workaround for workflowy and I think this feature could really enhance the experience.

The idea is to have a function that allows to show a certain #tag without its parent(s) - see picture below

if you filter you will still see the parents that lead you to that. With that function you would only see the list of items due for today - regardless of parents.

How do I get it in the feature request section? Am i the only one to find this interesting?

More details here for the use:

How I use Workflowy to get things done

Here for the existing:

Flat WorkFlowy Lists

[Erica]

Hi @ovitch,

I believe others are interested in this as well. See this card: https://trello.com/c/Xp5R5eNA/143-flattened-search-results-without-parents

[ovitch]

Thank you so much! This is very helpful.

How do I add my comments to this request as it differs a little?

Thanks!

PS: if anyone in the audience knows how to do this with a CSS modification, I would be very interested in a pm.

[Erica]

How do I add my comments to this request as it differs a little?

You mean the description of the Trello card?

I can edit it for you. Sorry the Trello is not open to edit, otherwise you can imagine it would be a total mess…

[ovitch]

Yes this make sense Erica! I wanted to add a comment that includes the picture above.

I think a picture sometimes summarize better the idea that a long description!

Do you think you could add it?

Thank you very much in advance!

[Erica]

Do you think you could add it?

Thank you very much in advance!

Added! Let me know if that’s the way you want it.

[ovitch]

Yes! Thank you so much Erica!

I just discovered Dynalist is a two women team! Thank you very much for this product, it is awesome!

happy to be a paid member! Keep up with the good work!

[Erica]

I just discovered Dynalist is a two women team! Thank you very much for this product, it is awesome!

Uhhh I wonder how did you discover @Shida is a girl… maybe his name is too feminine…

[Alex_Moss]

I think I’m looking for a similar function. My main file is to track all my various projects. Most of them don’t need attention on any given day, but then a few get very active. I want to keep the main project organization. And, I also want to filter for the hot items that need doing now. Tagging and filtering gives me a list of just those items, but no way to prioritize within that.

What I really need is a flat list of immediate priorities (based on tags), without the parent info (as described here). Then, I want to be able to reorganize those items in terms of my work for the day / week. So, it’s really a separate list of items I’m working on now, linked to my master project list.

Ideally, the flattened priority list would have 2 additional features:

1. I could mouse over any item to see the parent (as reminder), and
2. I could click on the parent info to get back to the full project list for that project, when needed.

I can cobble together some of this now, but can’t figure out how to have 2 separate lists: 1 for project details, organized by projects, and the 2nd with a subset of immediate action items, without parent info, and able to be manually rearranged on the fly, as well as linked back to the source.

Hope that’s clear. I think it’s close to what is being described, but a slight variation. Thanks!

[Kevin_Murray]

That sounds like a dream. First, it would be good to have something like the FlatFlowy view for a tag search. But I can’t see logically how it would be possible to manually re-order those without messing with their respective internal hierarchies, unless it was an autonomous view with its own sort.

In the short term, you can make a list with a shortcut to every project and order this.

[Erica]

That sounds like a dream. First, it would be good to have something like the FlatFlowy view for a tag search. But I can’t see logically how it would be possible to manually re-order those without messing with their respective internal hierarchies, unless it was an autonomous view with its own sort.

Thanks for pointing this out, @Kevin_Murray.

@Alex_Moss: this is the biggest concern I have for what you envisioned as well. After being flattened out, the flat item no longer reflect the actual hierarchy. Although it would be fine if you want to modify the content or add a color label, rearranging won’t work (Ctrl+Up/Down and drag and drop to move), simply because the entire picture isn’t visible.

For example, say you have the list:

• Parent 1
  • Test 1
• Something 2
• Test 3

Now say you search for “Test”. “Test 1” and “Test 3” gets matched. If you were to drag “Test 3” above “Test 1”, it’s not clear what should happen. Should “Test 3” be right above “Test 1”, or above “Parent 1”? The concern is that without the full hierarchy, rearranging in the partial picture can be misleading. This is the simplest example; things can quickly go wild if there are more levels and your search term matches multiple items in the same search chain.

[Alex_Moss]

Ya, that makes sense. Maybe you can see a better way to do what I’m trying to do, I’m sharing a bit more about my own use case to see what I’m wrestling with:

My work is project based, I have dozens of projects over the course of the year, different ones active at different times. The point is to have a short-list of action priorities, from a range of the active projects, and to have a view where I can sort the action priorities on the fly while leaving the main project organization alone. I enter data into the projects (or into a scratch outline, which I then put into the projects as time permits.) Point being: the info is organized by project; the workflow doesn’t follow that exactly.

For managing my workflow: now, I have a separate bullet up top for high priority work. Under that, I create links back to the active pieces of each project, each link points to the action items for each project. I can sort the links however I want, as I constantly juggle my workflow, complete tasks, bump other items around, etc. I use those links to go to the source info which is still organized by project. I think this is essentially what you suggested, @Kevin_Murray.

That’s a lot of back and forth (MUDA, as someone pointed out). I’m not working with the actual data in the workflow. Priority tags / filtering doesn’t work for this, I just get a messy context/parent intensive list that I can’t sort.

Analogy: think about a paper notebook system. I’d have a section for each project, where I’m constantly monitoring what needed. I want to look on the front page / first section, before the projects, and use that for all the stuff that’s hot, w/out the context info getting in the way. I’m going to constantly rewrite that high level priority list it in the order I want to do the tasks, not in the order of the underlying projects. I’d be happy to show you a screen share, but maybe this is clear enough.

Net net: @Kevin_Murray is right, I really do want “an autonomous view w/ its own sort,” the question is whether that’s possible.

Thanks for helping me think through the best way to handle w/in the confines of Dynalist.
Alex

[Kevin_Murray]

Yes, that said @Erica, there is still potential for a dashboard-like feature. Say you searched for a particular tag like #project. It would generate search results like FlatFlowy, where each item linked back to its original position. You could still manually order those in a separate space without necessarily messing with their original hierarchies.

Related to this would be an option to change tags in search results, and hide notes to make it easier to scan them.

(I wrote this before the @Alex_Moss post which does seem to suggest something similar.)

[Alex_Moss]

Ya, I think what @Kevin_Murray is describing is pretty much what I’m looking for. I understand the challenge w/ reorganizing the actual data when that same data appears in the priority list up top. I’m looking for a more efficient way to manage the tagged results or links to the underlying data than what I have now, which is labor intensive = waste of time. I really do need (ok, want) both views, the stable underlying project view, and the sortable priorities view.

Thanks for helping me think about it. The FlatFlowy concept seems appealing, I just looked at it, it solves 1/2 the problem, i.e. just the hot items w/out the context. It misses the need I have to be able to sort, even if only sorting links, i.e. if there were a more elegant way to create and manage those links. To be continued w/ further suggestions, I hope…

[Leonardo_Muzkiz_Ramo]

Im just reminding about this. could be added to the trello board?

[Erica]

Im just reminding about this. could be added to the trello board?

It’s this one, right? https://trello.com/c/Xp5R5eNA/143-flattened-search-results-without-parents

(Sorry for the late reply! )

[Erica]

Sneak peek: you can do this now! The view is read-only like in Search Everywhere, because the outliner structure is not preserved here.

[MatthieuPiquemal]

Nice feature.

Testing it, I noticed that some time the parents item information is missing.

Quick example to explain the rational :

a flat search on Frank leads to :

The results shows a lot of line with the same results, and the upstream items is very relevant to deliver information.

It should be easy to provide the parent path in the results. Either inline, or maybe a floating window when hovering on the items. Here is a mock-up with the two cases :

Personally I prefer the inline path because it delivers comprehensive information for every line in a single view and avoid having to hover line by line (Though it can easily be an setting option.

Ps: I suggest a short message displayed alongside the search result to indicate this is a flat one. It is obvious when the search was launched on the spot, but when bookmarked a reminder might be useful.

[Kevin_Murray]

Great to see. This combines nicely with the “in:title” search parameter. Any chance that there might be at least limited editing, such as changing tags? That would make a good workflow.

[MarcusM]

A promising start – thank you – but I agree with Matthieu that inline path information would make this flat search really useful.