Of all suggestions in this forum, this is the single most important feature for me; far more valuable than anything else.

I know that there are more complete and complex filtering mechanisms that are possible, and some of them are quite good, but this extremely simple one solves many important practical problems, and is a very smart first step to implement.

If you could simply alt-click Tag1, then alt-click Tag2 etc, and thereby hide all those tasks from the list you are currently looking at (e.g. from the Next list), you would be able to:

- reduce tagging work by using "none of these tags" as a default, for example have a "High Energy" tag and a "Low Energy" tag but no "Medium Energy" tag for the vast majority of tasks. For example, If you are feeling a little bit dull one day you could simply filter for "NOT High Energy" (alt-click the High Energy tag) and thereby see only Low and "Medium" (not tagged). If you are feeling extremely dull you can filter for Low Energy (regular click) just like today.

- have as many "exceptional requirement" tags as you like, such as people tags, tool tags, location tags, energy tags, mood tags, timing tags, environment tags etc - without incurring unnecessary tagging work for the vast majority of tasks. Each such tag would typically only be applied to a minority of the tasks

- very accurately narrow down the choices of additional tasks to do by eliminating all those tasks that have requirements that cannot be met right now, e.g. NOT John (away), NOT errands (raining), NOT High energy (a little bit tired), NOT Quiet (it is a bit noisy here now) and so on.

- review whether your tagging is correct. For example, if you want to double-check whether you have really identified and tagged all "High Energy" tasks, you could simply filter for NOT High Energy and see if any of the remaining tasks also need this tag. Conversely, if you want to check whether some of the tasks have been accidentally tagged with High Energy you simply filter for High Energy (regular click) just like today.

@Folke

Hi,

Thank you for your feedback!

Now our filters are all about including. What you suggest is that you want Exclusion Filter. We have considered this feature,in many cases it is really useful. We will make a research on it. On web and other desktop version, we may do it by alt-clicking as you suggest. Other versions,e.g.on iPhone,we need time to consider how to make it.
If you have other ideas,please do not hesitate to contact me back.

Thank you for your support!

Best regards,
Doit.im Team

@wendy_only

I am glad to hear that you have already had this in mind and that you know how useful it would be!

Yes, in the desktop versions it is easy to make it even totally invisible (using alt-keys etc), but in the mobile versions it is more difficult to make it totally invisible (unless you use long-tap, swipes and similar gestures, which might be a bit odd if these are not used consistently in the app), but it could still be implemented in quite a discreet way.

1) One simple way of implementing it in the mobile versions - visibly, though - would be to have a toggle (switch) at the top of the tag list. The default (off) position of the toggle could to be the current filtering mode, and the optional toggle position could be the new filtering mode. The name of the toggle could be "Elimination" (or "Exclusion"). People who do not understand this would leave the switch off and have the "normal" type of filtering, just as today.

If the UI design requires you to have two names for the two filtering modes, then the simplest pair of words I can think of would be "Show" vs "Hide". A perhaps clearer, but longer, pair of words would be "Direct Choice" vs "Elimination".

2) One way of doing an explicit two-way implementation (with no default) in the mobile versions would be to totally replace the current "Filter" button (on the top right) with two buttons called "Show" and "Hide" respectively (or "Choose" vs "Eliminate" etc). This forces the user to choose one of the two modes.

I am sure you had already thought of these possibilities, but I also wanted to add that I think both of these implementations are sufficiently easy to understand and easy to use. And I also want to thank you for listening!

When checking more than one tag, both filtering modes will offer dramatic shortening of the list, but in totally "opposite" kinds of ways. With the current ("direct choice") mode, the app only shows those tasks that have ALL of the specified tags (Boolean: Tag1 AND Tag2 AND Tag3). With the new ("elimination") mode the app would show only those tasks that have NONE of the specified tags (Boolean: NOT(Tag1 OR Tag2 OR Tag3)). Both modes are very powerful and useful, but for entirely different types of situations and purposes - one mode cannot replace the other.

@Folke

Hi,

Thank you very much for your ideas. Our designer will consider it seriously as we are redesigning it now.

@wendy_only

I am very glad that you are already considering and designing this :-)

This quick filtering capability is very useful in the ongoing selection process several times every day, and is typically used differently each time. There is no need to save these filters or make them complex - quick and simple to use and only as powerful as they need to be for these frequent needs. A NOT filtering capability is the main necessary addition to be able to quickly exclude tasks with the wrong Tags.

The quick filter serves a totally different purpose than the advanced search (saved search), which is useful mainly for creating permanent custom lists (or for finding misplaced items etc), but which is way too troublesome to use for ordinary quick filtering of the list that you have right in front of you. I have used saved searches a lot in RTM and Toodledo. In those apps these saved (powerful) searches are absolutely necessary because those apps have no useful GTD lists built in. Doit, on the other hand, has an excellent GTD list setup already (left menu), so the need for saved searches is actually quite small (but can still be a nice extra feature, of course)

As for quick temporary filtering, a simple NOT filter (e.g. alt-click the Tag to hide those tasks) would be an immensely useful step forward. This is why I am so glad that your are considering this and working on the design. Could you please tell me what you have found out so far? Do you think it might be included in this winter's release?

A related matter, perhaps for later, not as dramatically important:
Many of us use Tags as additional and overlapping "contextual requirements", e.g. required energy (high/medium/low etc), required amount of time (long/medium/short etc), required persons to assist you in getting the task done etc. These "contextual factors" can overlap the usual physical contexts that you would normally use the Context feature for. For example, tasks can require High Energy (a Tag, probably) in any kind of physical context (e.g. @Home or @Errand etc). It would be very useful to somehow be able to "quick filter" for all kinds of such contextual factors in a convenient way regardless of whether they have been defined as Tags or as a Contexts, as also discussed to some extent in the closed thread http://help.doit.im/topics/2022. In other words, be able to exclude all Errands because it is raining now (Errand probably defined as a Context), and also exclude all tasks that require John because he is in a meeting now (John probably defined as a Tag) and so on. This would have been absolutely necessary - but luckily Doit has the "Group by Context" option which quite often can serve as a workaround for this kind of filtering (if we are prepared to sacrifice the sorting order we would have needed, e.g. by project or by deadline etc). As you said in the other thread, you will consider this also, and I am happy and thankful for that.

Hi,

Q: Could you please tell me what you have found out so far? Do you think it might be included in this winter's release?
A: I am sorry that there's not enough time to add this feature in the version which will be released in this winter as we have almost completed developing it.

Thank you for your support!

Best regards,
Doit.im Team

Dear all,

Does anyone have a status update on this issue? I'm currently evaluating doit.im, and this is one of the most important functionalities for me to decide on.

Kind regards,
Johan

@jvsoest
Hi,

Thank you for your feedback.

Sorry that I could not tell you the specific time. We will try our best to make it.

Best regards,
Doit.im Team