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Combining Smart Lists in searches

paul.sinclair says:
I would love to be able to combine smart searches with others in a search. For example if I have a smart search of items with a time estimate of less than 15 minutes and a tag for @home having shorthand search such as smartlist:short and @home
Posted at 8:48pm on August 30, 2007
Launched
emily (Remember The Milk) says:
You can now use Smart Lists in searches; please see our blog post.
Posted 16 years ago
johnfoland says:
A reiteration : Allow smart lists to become search parameters themselves, so that lengthy queries that you had already saved as smart lists could then be reduced and combined to form even more complex queries.

For example :

I have a smartlist "t40" that looks like this- timeEstimate:">21 minutes" AND timeEstimate:"

With the proposed feature, I could create a query that looks something like this- sList:t40 AND tag:ordi

That would give me all tasks taking between 21 and 40 minutes (approximately) and that I would need to accomplish at the computer.

If that's the idea you're suggesting, Paul, I put my vote in as well!
Posted 16 years ago
johnfoland says:
Ooops, the first query above should have read-
timeEstimate:">20 minutes" AND timeEstimate:"<41 minutes"
Posted 16 years ago
paul.sinclair says:
jkalvin, that was exactly what I meant.
Posted 16 years ago
jjeudymd says:
Whoops! Just posted the same request before seeing this
Posted 16 years ago
ranbarton Power Poster says:
This would be useful in so many ways.
Posted 16 years ago
erik says:
If you can combine this with "hidden" smartlists (these would be smartlists that do not show up on the main list of tabs), then I truly think you have a brilliantly extensible framework.

I can define whatever simple smartlists that I think are useful and then build up complex smartlists from the simple ones.

For example: I define an "urgent" smartlist that is *my* definition of urgent which happens to be:
dueBefore:today OR list:urgent OR priority:1

combined with a tagged smartlist called "calls" that is a simple one:
tag:calls

Both of these smartlists are what I would consider simple ones and would NOT be displayed on my main layout of tabs. For that, I would create a smartlist called "Urgent Calls" that would be:
smartlist:calls AND smartlist:urgent

This is a simple example, but the nice thing is this: let's say I come up with a new list that is urgent too (my imagination is running low here, so let's call this new list "urgent2"). Now, I would only have to go into the "Urgent" smartlist and add the new criteria like this:
blah blah blah OR list:urgent2

And now ALL dependent smartlists would be instantly updated!! As it stands now, I am very hesitant to make changes like this because I have to update _ALL_ smartlists that would be affected by the small change. This is a very error prone proposition.

Well I think I have written about 4 paragraphs too much, but I feel very passionately about the searching/smartlists and their potential. I also like this kind of approach because it does not dictate to users exactly how to use it--the possibilities are very open.


Posted 16 years ago
bzpilman says:
Now Bob's gonna love your coder approach to smartlists.

I love it too.
Posted 16 years ago
jhedlund says:
Wow, I was just looking for this feature and on a whim tried using the smart lists in the "list:" search argument and it appears to be working!

Just in case someone stumbles upon this post.

So perhaps the only issue is hiding certain lists. (I'm sure GreaseMonkey could come into play here as a workaround).


Posted 15 years ago
(closed account) says:
I love it.
Posted 15 years ago
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