Exclude from Search

Feedback
1

I saw a few comments from the discussions about search being “slow”. I don’t have a lot of entries yet, so I can’t relate. However, I have a suggestion which is also related to my personal need,

Aside from using Agenda for meeting notes, I also use Agenda for personal journaling. When using the search function, it obviously incudes my personal journal entries in the search. However, for work, I wouldn’t want to include my personal journal entries as part of the search results.

Can we possibly have a feature where we can select which projects are included in the search? In other words, can we select certain projects to be excluded from the search?

I know we can choose entries from being excluded from “The Agenda”, which can be excluded from search results by only searching for entries in The Agenda, but I want to be able to have entries not on the agenda, but still be included in the search.

Thank you!

2

Thanks for the feedback. Sounds like a good idea, and we’ll try to get this search improvements a bit down the track.

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3

I would suggest taking a look at calendar groups in Fantastical. That’s how this feature should work in my opinion: Assigning projects to „contexts” or „environments” and easily switching between them. Only projects that are part of the selected context should be visible and searchable.

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4

Sounds like am interesting approach. I guess maybe it would be best to assign such contexts at the category level, right?

6

Yes, i think category level may work best and should also be straightforward from a usability perspective.

8

… and to make this feature even more useful (or more premium ;-), you should also allow us to assign differents calendars to such contexts.

So by switching to a context, agenda will display only relevant categories and only relevant calendars in the side bar. This is even more important considering the use case @xineizer described when starting the topic.

9

+1 on this feature. My use case is having projects for multiple clients. Sometimes I want to quickly and easily limit things to one client’s projects and then either perform a text search or just see what’s on the agenda across that set of projects.

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10

I agree there’s value in having some other way of defining boundaries. I’m not sure how it would be implemented necessarily. But I broadly have work and personal stuff, and inside those I have different divisions as well (personal: home, family, me, volunteer; work: company, client A, client B) etc.

So sometimes I want to see all of my personal stuff, distinct from work stuff. And sometimes I want to see only client B stuff. There may be multiple projects or even sub-categories in any of these divisions.

Right now it’s possible to get those views on Mac by command-clicking multiple projects, but that’s inefficient considering that I usually want the same sets of categories / projects to look at.

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11

Also this seems related… this brings me back to the idea of multiple agendas (which I believe @mekentosj has said no to, because it would complicate things too much).

Anyway, a problem that I’m running into with current OTA implementation is that I logically divide my work into personal stuff and job stuff. So basically I have a personal agenda for the day, and a job agenda for the day. They’re different, and not related in any way.

How I approach this now is to have one note for personal, and one for job, and add them both OTA. I collapse whichever one I’m not working with at the moment. But I have lots of other notes I want to flag OTA, and I’d prefer to keep them active, but it’s not effective for me to have a bunch of personal and job stuff flagged OTA at the same time.

I believe @drewmccormack has mentioned flagging things OTA “for the week”, and that’s something I really dislike with a single OTA.

What I’d personally love to be able to do is have multiple agendas, one for each domain and one for different timelines. So first I’d create a Personal agenda for the week, and then flag some particular items for today. Same with Job agenda.

I currently do this by having individual notes for day and week, and putting items in those notes, and linking to other projects / notes as necessary. Which I think we’ve discussed elsewhere.

Anyway, I really like the concept of flagging things OTA, but for my purposes it’s too coarse. I absolutely think in terms of having separate agendas for Personal and Job, and at different timelines (month, week, day).

Maybe that’s useful to you guys in terms of thinking through how some of us would like to divvy up the information stored in Agenda.

12

Useful feedback. Have you thought of just using tags? Eg. “#OTA-Work” etc. On the Agenda is really just a flag. You can make your own versions of it with tags and other searches.

We have had a search overhaul in mind for quite a while, and it would give more control over results. Perhaps we can consider limiting domain, eg, “only notes that are in category Work”. That would presumably help.

Two completely separate Agendas? I can see your use case, but would almost say it is a problem that should be solved by having two different accounts on our Mac, using different iCloud accounts etc. In one, you have your work apps and email, and in the other your personal stuff. Maybe that is overkill.

13

Yeah that’s reasonable. Since they don’t change that quickly, keyboard shortcuts aren’t as necessary. Though I believe one of you has floated the idea of adding keyboard shortcuts for adding tags.

I’ve considered that. I do like to have my personal iCloud available at least for calendar events, so I can see those when making scheduling decisions. Which I think I can do.

My main concern is how to split up these different Agenda configurations. Most likely I would leave my work stuff on my work computer only and never have any syncing. The thing is, they’re already syned. So I don’t want to disable sync on my work laptop, delete work stuff from personal device, delete personal stuff from work device… then at some point re-enable sync on my work machine, and have everything disappear!

So is there a safe way to sort of “disconnect” them, so that even if I were to go on my work machine and re-enable “sync with icloud”, that it wouldn’t blow stuff away?

14

If they aren’t connected to the same iCloud account, they should not sync. So if you are already using different iCloud accounts, or no account, it should be OK.

Assuming they are using the same iCloud account, you could do something like this:

  1. Backup your data just in case (see below)
  2. On your work computer, turn off the sync in Agenda
  3. Remove any home data from Agenda on your work computer
  4. Remove any work data from your home computer

The two should no longer be syncing, so you devices will sync only with the home Mac.

Here is how to make a manual backup on macOS:

  1. Click on Finder, and choose Go > Go to Folder
  2. Enter ~/Library/Group Containers
  3. Find WRBK2Z2EG7.group.com.momenta.agenda.macos
  4. Select it and choose Edit > Copy
  5. Go to your backup location, select the folder, and choose Edit > Paste
15

Thanks!