Yes, for me too now. When grouping the list by context, deadline and project.(or box, when looking at a project) the tasks in each group appear in some totally random order.

The sub-sorting by priority is VERY useful. I hope you can bring it back asap. This is very difficult to live without.

Why are mine still sorting w/ priority att he top! Yikes, I'm a little nervous about the how thing now........

PS - Hi Folke nice to see you here to bad Proximo isn't around.

I have noticed that the iPhone app still works as before .-)
but the web app does not work like it did before :-(

Hi avolosik - good to see you. Proximo moved to zendone.

@gilbertl @Folke @avolosik

Hi,

On web version,we make some change when maintenance. The order on web will be different from it on apps. The apps still work as before.

Different Boxes and different "group by" will make the list have different sorting. In Today,when you group by Context,the task list will sorting by 1.Start time,2.Priority,3.Deadline,4.Update time. In Next,you can manually sort tasks.

If you want to know the order logic,please tell me where the list is and how you group it.

@wendy_only

What is the intended sorting order for the Next list grouped by Deadline?

It used to be very good. I have very few tasks with deadlines, so essentially this was like a priority sorted list which sometimes had a couple of "ultimatums" or agreed deadlines at the very top. Very good.

If I can now adjust the sorting of the Next list manually it is a very neat addition (for fine tuning purposes), but it is not a good replacement for the priority sub-grouping we had before.

The way I see it, manual ordering is particularly useful for real projects and goals, where there is a "natural flow" - where some things must be done early on and other things only later or towards the end. But for long "consolidated" main lists like Next it is too much work to always have to place tasks into order. Automatic sorting is necessary, and if the automatic sorting can be manually fine tuned then it is even more perfect, but not necessary. (Maybe on a very short list like Today you could consider offering semi-manual or even fully manual sorting as an option.)

@Folke

In the Next,tasks are all sorted manually no matter what "group by" you selected.

Thank you for your suggestion. We will consider it seriously.

@wendy_only

I am glad that you will reconsider this decision seriously.

The automatic sub-sorting by priority in Next (and Someday, Waiting, and the context lists) was the one of the three reasons why I moved over to Doit. It was a very, very practical feature. (The two other reasons I moved to Doit was the clear, nice colors of the priorities, and the extra Goal level above projects.)

Does anyone really have the time to sort the Next list manually? Or a good reason? Why would they? I once did it like that with another app that did not have priorities, but soon gave it up and chose one of the automatic modes because of all the work and the constant worry that I would forget to adjust the position of my tasks and thereby overlook them.

Luckily, though, Doit has clear priority colors, so it is quite easy to see if tasks are misplaced, but still - it means extra work for very little benefit. The only benefit I can see is that I can put similar tasks next to each other, which is nice, but not worth all the work and worry.

Anyway, I promise I will give this a try. I have now sorted all my tasks into priority groups manually.

I noticed a very nice improvement while playing with this. I noticed that new tasks now seem to land on top of the list instead of at the bottom :-) This is very, very good :-) It is such a hassle to have to scroll all the way to the bottom to see new tasks. If they are misplaced or incorrect in some other way, it is so much easier to spot them if they sit at the top :-) Thank you for this :-)

@Folke

Hi,

Thank you for your feedback telling us your feeling about manually sorting. We will look into this issue and make Doit.im better.

Thank you for your support.

Best regards,
Doit.im Team

@wendy_only

Maybe I was half wrong. The new way actually is not too bad. I could almost live with it :-)

At first it came as a shock to see everything in a random-looking order, but after I sorted everything manually into priority groups it is actually workable. If I see the new or modified tasks at the top, and if they have the wrong color I just drag them down. And it does have a certain value to be able to place similar tasks near each other.

But I do have some suggestions:

A. If you keep the new feature, then there are some minor annoyances that I belive shouuld be fixed for a good impression:

- Please make sure that the last task added always lands at the very top (in all relevant views). As it is now they usually land among the first, but in a random, unpredictable way.

- Please make sure that the rest of the list is not corrupted when you add a task. As it is now:
--- a list can temporarily revert to some totally random order until you refresh (what is that "random" order anyway? Why is it there at all?)
--- even after refreshing some tasks in the old manual order may have changed places (but is is usually quite stable)

- Please do the same with Waiting and Someday for consistency (confusing to have two philosophies)

B. If you decide to make more creative changes to make Doit unique and even better than it was before:

Please consider adding something like a user preference option between:
- "semi-manual: automatically move new tasks to the correct priority section (top)" (this would be the default option)
- "fully manual": allow full manual sorting regardless of priority" (this is what you have launched now; also powerful)

This would give people the full convenience that Doit offered before with the new ability to also rearrange tasks within its priority section, which was not possible before. And it would even allow fully manual sorting (the new way) as an option. Very unique and powerful!.

I can't say for sure, but previously there has been an option that allowed to define sorting, hasn't it? At least I know for sure that from very beginning I started using dot.im I had my tasks within all projects sorted by priority which was perfectly fine for me. But now tasks within projects are sorted by date and I have no way to change it! It is absolutelly incovenient to me personnaly!

Please consider getting back sorting by priority or even better adding control that would allow sorting tasks within projects by different properties so every user can choose the way that is most convenient to his/her daily workflow and so everyone is happy.

Thanks!

P.S. Why productivity services tend to experiement with productivity options without asking its users!? Guys, its your core functionality! It's what we're paying for! I pay for coming to doit.im at least dozens times a day and focus on my tasks. I for sure not for seeing changed or removed features and options I've been used to.

Let me put a short story here. I've used Producteev service once before. And I was absolutelly happy with that! It was free and easy to use, with lots of useful features. And recommended this service to everyone! I simply loved that!.... Until the team have decided to completely overhaul UI and user experience and by this... completely kill the product for me and for many more users as I may say from reading hundreds of complaints on their support forum after that.
I tried to understand their decision. I tried to wait before they manage to get back at least some of the functioanlity they changed or removed... but a couple weeks after I could not wait any longer, my productivity was more important to me than Producteev's designers ideas and willingness to express themselved. I've left this free service and prefered to use paid account at doit.im as it seemed to provide one of the best combination of options I've been used to.

Please do NOT repeat mistakes of other services. Remember about your users' goals and intentions. We're here to be PRODUCTIVE each and every minute! And such experiments with UI may cost us time and event usettle some of us, as instead of working on our tasks we spend time here finding out why something has been changed or removed.

Of course the service can't stay unchanged for months and years. But I'm sure that for productivity service every such change should be considered especially carefully, rigorously weighted and ideally initiatead and supported by many users.

Thank you for your efforts and great product. Please keep it great and PRODUCTIVE!

@artoix

Hi,

We offer "Group by" option in specific project viewing page previously. We will consider it seriously to get back sorting by priority or offer an option for you to choose what you need.

Thank you for your support.

Best regards,
Doit.im Team

I am not very sure at all that the Project feature needs MANY different sorting options, but I think it is vital that whatever options are offered they should allow for TWO entirely different use cases, which have very different requirements - PROJECT and FOLDER. The current Project feature is used even by the same persons (by me, too) for both of these purposes, and different people use different workarounds to make it work. And this causes confusion when features are modified.

A PROJECT (both in GTD and among professionals of all kinds) is a "big task" that will be finished and checked off one day. Its tasks usually have strong dependencies; some need to be done at the start of the project, some thereafter; some later on, some at the end. Sometimes the tasks follow exactly one after the other like a neat string of pearls, but usually more than one action is possible to get done etc at any one time, and should be listed on the main lists (Next, Waiting etc), whereas the majority of tasks usually cannot be done yet by anybody and cannot be calendared or tickled either. These tasks that cannot be done now should not be kept on the main lists (Next, Waiting etc). In "paper GTD" they are hidden among the "project support" material, totally outside of the main lists, but here in Doit we want to keep them in the app, of course (but hidden, of course, visible only within the project itself.)

A FOLDER (in GTD and generally) is a general storage bucket, and is useful for many things. Some of the typical GTD uses would be checklists, Agendas or other groupings of tasks. I use some Projects as FOLDERS for grouping single actions by AoR. (According to David Allen, most people need 15-20 AoRs, but I have only defined 10 as of today.). Unlike in a PROJECT, the tasks in a FOLDER have no hard interdependencies. They do all have something in common, for sure, that's we we want them together, but they have no intrinsic sequence order that makes some of them impossible until some preceding actions have been done.

The sorting options for Doit's Projects are very good for being used as a FOLDER. Among the previous set of options, it seems that "Priority-within-Box" was the most popular, and this was also the one I personally used. The new sorting order, "Manual-within-Box" also works very well once you have recovered from the initial shock and have manually sorted your actions by priority. It takes a litlle bit of adjustment when new tasks are discover, but this is no major problem, and you have the advantage of being able to adjust the position of the tasks even within the priority band, which was not possible before. I suppose the most elegant option for FOLDER use would be "Manual-within-Priority-within-Box"), which would be equally automatic as the old system, but with the added capability to fine-tune the tasks within each Priority stratum.

But I am honestly not at all sure that all that many other sorting orders are required for using Projects as FOLDERS. (FOLDERS normally have very few tasks compared with the long consolidated main lists, e.g. Next, Waiting, Someday, where additional sorting orders may be more relevant, e.g. Context, Deadline etc.).

The trouble begins when we want to use the Project feature for our PROJECTS. In a PROJECT we would typically have only a few tasks currently active on the main lists (Next, Waiting etc), and it would usually not matter much how they are grouped, because there are so few of them. But the majority of the tasks, the ones that are to remain hidden from the main lists because they cannot be done yet, we would like to arrange in a sequential order which approximates the sequence in which they will need to get done - regardless of which list (Box) each task will eventually go to, e.g "Order machine (future Next)", followed by "Receive machine (future Waiting)", followed by "Test machine (future Next)", followed by "Return machine with complaint (future S/Maybe)". The reason for keeping them in this kind of order is twofold: 1) Much easier to review the project (find forgotten or unnecessary tasks etc) because it "flows" in a roughly realistic order, and 2) Makes automated progression possible.

The reason I am bringing this up here now (again) at this very busy stage, is that I think a proper solution for PROJECTS should be implemented one day, the sooner the better, and it would be a waste of time to create too many options for organizing FOLDERS in ways that really just serve as workarounds for PROJECTS. My suggestion is that an extra "box-like group" is inserted in the existing project feature, where the user can "hide" inactive tasks of all kinds and order them into a sequence. Automated progression can be added at a later stage..

Hi,
I have the same problem as above - my NEXT list is too long for manual sorting. I used to use priorities in WEB version to define which task I should start first, and sorting by priority was very helpful.

My proposal: please add, just next to "group by", second/third drop-down, named "order by (level 1)"/"order by (level 2).

Just like in SQL :-)

@kwojciechowski78


Hi,

Thank you for your feedback. We will consider it seriously.

Please do not forget, though, that the manual sorting is a very powerful capability - a solid step in the right direction for Doit. Other apps (e.g. Toodledo) have 3-level automatic sorting but no manual capability at all, and this is the cause for a lot of user complaints. So please be very careful not to make the sorting so automatic that it makes meaningful manual adjustment impossible.

Manual sorting is very useful:

a) for ordering short lists into an execution sequence. Examples of this would be Today and "real" PROJECTS.
b) for fine-tuning (increased readability) within groups of automatically grouped lists. This would be the case in the majority of lists.

Before the update I too was one of the people who really liked Doit's focus on priorities being used consistently throughout the app as an implicit second sorting order on all lists. But I can confess that I sometimes would have liked to rearrange my tasks within those priority groups. I think that would be a very nice addition, that would seem to make good use of the newly developed manual capability and provide the full previous automation at the same time.

As for the long Next list (or other longs lists) I would also like to say that all challenges are not best met by using advanced sorting. There is a point where other features could be far more effective for finding what you want. One such feature would be more powerful ad hoc quick filtering, that lets you find, with a minimum of clicks, exactly what you are looking for this time. The current Tag button filter is too limited. The saved advanced filters are too clumsy and clutter up your saved filter list with lots of seldom-used junk.

Only a few small changes are required to make the current quick filtering (Tag buttons) more useful, which would indirectly also reduce the pressure on developing highly advanced automatic sorting:

1) NOT filtering (alt-click). Possibly also OR filtering (shift-click). (AND filtering already exists; ctrl-click)
2) inheritable Tags for Goals, Projects and Contexts, which would allow you to quickly hide or select entire such groups of tasks using the Tag button bar.

@wendy_only: I am sorry to be pushing for additional features at this very busy time, but what I am trying to do is help Doit and other users to see it all in a perspective and not blow the sorting aspects totally out of proportion.

Also, everybody, even with the now fully manual sorting, once you have taken twenty minutes to rearrange your tasks manually by priority (as I did), it is quite manageable to keep them that way manually. Whenever you see a new task that breaks the color pattern you just drag it into position. I am not saying this is perfect, but it lets you go on and be productive even right now. There is no reason to be scared.