Custom metadata and smart groups

DEVONthink
1

I’ve been doing a bunch of work that leverages some custom metadata fields and I have been using ‘set’ type and ‘Single-line text’ fields.

  • Is there a way to specify a default value ?
  • Is it possible to create a smart group that selects items if a particular metadata fields has no value selected ?

I have not been able to figure out how to meet either of these objectives.

2

This is not possible currently but the second possibility is already planned for future releases.

3

In what context, like when you create a new document?

4

To be complete from my imagining in this. Yes, if I had decided on a ‘nothing’ value e.g. ‘unknown’, I could have done so - respectively. My use case is converging on unassigned/blank. And to @cgrunenberg’s points. A default is not in the offing but , sooner, querying after an empty value. That’s already quite some power.

There may yet be some craft to be learned under current constraints :+1:

5

Technically, you could create a simple smart rule or use batch processing to assign a default value to custom metadata, e.g.,…

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This would change the custom metadata Status to N/A on any selected item on an ad-hoc basis.

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