For those of us who are teachers using Agenda for anecdotal record keeping, it would be really helpful if you could show the number of notes within each category. Evernote does this so that when I see each student’s notebook, it tells me at a glance how many notes have been written. This would help a teacher see which students they’ve met with to confer and which students need a meeting. Thanks heaps!
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We don’t have that for categories, but we do for projects. You can right-click a project and see the stats, including how many notes it has. Don’t know if that is useful.
Hi Drew,
I don’t seem to get the number of notes (nor any stats for that matter) when I option-click a project. Am I missing something?
Right-click (or control-click) and the context menu includes a grayed-out line showing number of notes:
How ‘bout an option to show the item count next to the folder name, such as:
My Folder (2)
Another Folder (12)
Last Folder (1)
I realize we can right-click to get the info, but it’s as not glance-able as showing the count in the folder list itself to review where I’ve added things 
We do have something glanceable that gives a rough idea of “fullness”. If you look at the icon of a project, it has some lines. The fuller a project, the more lines. Then, if you need to know exactly how many notes there are, use the stats.
Putting a number next to every single project clutters the interface quite a bit, and is not something you generally need that often. We try to keep the UI uncluttered as much as possible.
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Thanks Pat.
Hi Drew, yes these two ‘fullness indicating’ features are great, and a very helpful way of giving a sense of project fullness at a glance
I am now exploring using Agenda to keep notes on therapy sessions. I know this use was probably not in the original set of use cases, but after using databases for years, I suddenly realised this week that, actually, I would prefer to use Agenda as it is much more frendly to write on, include various other media and to read back at a later date. And it might just work! Agenda doesn’t have that rigid database feel. It is already built to follow the progress of a’ project’ over time, and its integrated with calendar.
What is missing for this now is
- Counting number of notes (sessions) for a particular period (count what has been searched or filtered). This is required sometimes for reporting.
- Saving a search for partiular project (rather than just as smart overview)
- Adding up certain fields or tags up within notes (hours/money)
- Encryption (I know you are looking in to this).
Thank you, Alex, Marcello and Charles for all the great work you are putting in to Agenda to make it such a versatile, useful and usable tool.
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Thanks for the feedback. I can’t promise all those things, but some are certainly in our sights (eg the search saving and encryption). Ultimately we do have to draw the line somewhere, otherwise it would become an ugly Frankenstein monster of an app.
Hi Drew,
Thanks for getting back. I appreciate that we would not like Agenda to be ugly and cumbersome. It is far from that at the moment anyway. I know one person wrote about this asking what Agenda is for, but I disagree with them. I like apps that are thoughtfully crafted to be more than one-trick ponies with a definite use case. It saves me the trouble of having to develop an app for myself.
(also for @mekentosj) The joy of Agenda is that it implements certain principles in a beautifuly simple way. Those principles (or functionality) can then be applied to several use cases without any use-specific design or implementation. That way, Agenda has no single specific use, but simply, quietly and gorgeously covers several that can be discovered as the need arises. To do this well is a great art.
I think Agenda was, from the beginning, designed on the priniciple plane and intended to cover many use cases where the importance of documenting something over time was important. The initial versions had the openness but were not yet developed enough to be more than superficially useful. Now it has become more robust, defined and intergated with itself and with the operating system, it is becoming more useful and reliable.
Agenda is almost ready to be used for the use case I suggested, that is basic or personal psychotherapy notes. I am sure you can see that these kind of notes will ideally tell a story over time, and that the flow may need to inform the immediate furture, so this use case is confluent with Agenda’s principle. I am not talking about a practice management system with diagnistic codes, appointment booking and billing, but for the personal notes of a therapist it would be ideal. All it needs to round it off are some user definable summary functions, and some more focussed and differentiated searches.
Once again, thanks for all that you do.
ps. I enjoyed Papers when that was going, and now also have Studies.
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Thanks for the feedback and encouragement! We really appreciate it.