Add "Search Profiles" to the search box

DEVONthink Feedback
1

I’m posting this in a new thread because I didn’t see anything similar other than a 2004 thread that took a tack toward smartgroups. Here, I’m proposing what I will call “Search Profiles.” These would amount to a set of criteria that could be quickly retrieved to apply to a search term in the search box. Here’s what I mean…

How about adding “search profiles” to the drop down list in the search bar (in the toolbar). In the drop down list there would be an option to “Create Search Profile.” Type in a profile title. Hit OK. Now the profile title is checked in the drop down list. THEN, any options you check (Content, In Selection, etc.) would remain checked anytime you click on that profile title. If you change the options while the profile title is checked, the changes remain.

You could also have a keyboard shortcut field when in the panel where you create a search profile. Then the user could type a keyboard shortcut when creating the profile that allows the user to change the search bar to a particular profile with just a keystroke.

You could then potentially bring all those SmartGroup options into the drop down list without overburdening the user, since the user could set profiles to manage those options.

All that said, I agree (from a separate thread) that there should be a “Groups” option that would just find groups. And that there should be a groups search box in the See Also/Classify “popout” panel. And maybe including 2 buttons, one for move, one for replicate.

In the meantime, I assigned a ƒ (option f) to the end of every group. ƒ and a word will return just groups with that word. Admittedly, it was a quite a project to add a ƒ to the end of my 1200 groups!

Just some ideas for making an awesome product a little (hopefully) better yet.

2

I always use the full Search window (Tools > Search), for a number of reasons.

This window retains a selectable list of a number of previously made searches.

In an upcoming version, it will also allow filter of results to list only groups.

3

Wonderful news about the filter listing only groups.

I realize a list of search terms is retained in the full Search window, but to my knowledge the search options are not retained. If I’m mistaken, my apologies.

BTW, I do realize, of course, that SmartGroups can be tweaked and then saved, and I have done that. But the point is to find stuff quickly and efficiently, and editing a smartgroup every time I do a search, which is literally tens if not hundreds of times a day, is not.

4

See the new “Advanced” button near the bottom of the left column in the full Search window. This allows one to add additional metadata criteria, including tags, to the search query. For example, setting “Kind is Group” will restrict search results to groups.

After use, the “Reset” button returns this feature to the null state.

I understand the point you are making that saving a list of query terms is not the same as saving the full search criteria set (which now becomes more complex, potentially, with the addition of that “Advanced” button). I don’t know how many headaches that would cause Christian. :slight_smile:

Are others interested in such a feature?