Feature Request: another call to sync Smart Groups

I have read about the difficulties of syncing smart groups to DTTG and also the problem of syncing them back, but if something could be done by where I could at least view the messages in my smart groups on DTTG it would be very useful.

My need for this is as follows: I collect all my email into an All Mail folder (I wish this could be automated but I don’t quite know how to so do it manually every night) I have created a smart group in each of my client’s correspondence folder which looks for emails from within the All Mail folder for the client’s various email addresses. Any mail that relates to more than one client I replicate to the required folder.

If there is an easier way to get emails from clients into the required folders then I would be eager to hear about it, otherwise I am adding my name to the list to sync Smart Groups (at least partially) on DGTG.

I would also like to reiterate how useful Smart Groups in DTTG would be. I am regularly adding new content to my DT database. I much prefer reading this content in DTTG so I sync it over. But there is way too much (many GBs) to sync it all over so I just do the trailing couple months. Unfortunately this means I have to regularly replicate all the new stuff I want and delete all the old replicated stuff I no longer want. It would be soooo much easier to just have a Smart Group for This Quarter, for example.

I guess maybe some people want/need Smart Groups to be live-updating on the device, but I don’t think iPod smart playlists do, and I don’t think DTTG need to either (at least, at first … it would be great if they could).

Although it’s not possible now to Sync a smart group over to DT To Go, there’s another approach than might be useful.

In the Mobile Sync group of a database, create a new group and name it, e.g., Replicants of Today Smart Group.

Then open - as an example - the Today smart group, select All and Control-click. Replicate the selected items to the new ‘Replicants of Today Smart Group’ group. Now you can Sync that to your iPad. True, it’s not automatically updated like a smart group, but it can be used safely to send over the current contents of a smart group for reading on the iPad. In this case, it would allow one to read on the iPad all the contents added to that database Today.

You probably won’t want to keep that group forever, of course. As these are replicants, they can be safely deleted without affecting the other content of your database.

If you are using Apple Mail, you might find that Mail’s smartgroups offer more flexibility than DEVONthink’s so that you could collect your client mail into various Mail smartgroups and then select-click-drag the messages to your target groups in DEVONthink. Mail’s smartgroups also offer the possibility of including AppleScript actions to automate further - something that DEVONthink does not (yet) offer.

Unfortunately the “replicate smart group contents” approach isn’t practical for me because I have a couple dozen different groups that gets sync’ed and the content updates almost daily.

Granted. Of course the replication of items listed in a smart group to a folder in Mobile Sync is a kludge. It represents that smart group only at a moment in time.

A secondary kludge to update the first kludge at a later time would be to manually delete the replicants in the Mobile Sync group for that smart group, then replicate again the items listed in the smart group to that folder.

A kludge is a workaround to achieve an objective by using existing tools and procedures in the absence of a procedure or tool specifically designed for that purpose. It may involve a bit of manual effort and extra steps, but lets one achieve the objective.

Yes, kludges are less desirable than built-in procedures and features that accomplish an objective more easily. By all means, ask for new features that would make DEVONthink better. In the meantime, a kludge may let you get something done.

My predilection for kludges probably dates from doing lab research many years ago in 'bleeding edge areas, when budgets were low and even if one had the money, the equipment to do something wasn’t available for order off the shelf. So the equipment had to be put together from other stuff lying around in the lab, plus bits from the local hardware store and Radio Shack. Experimental science would have progressed much more slowly if researchers had to wait for new equipment that could be ordered. :slight_smile:

Please add my name to the requests for syncing Smart Groups. I have a database structured with lots of smart groups - the mobile app is useless to me without this ability.

+1 for Syncing smart-groups

and another +1.
Any update/info from the developers on this one?

Cheers.

another +1!
As a researcher, I’m using DTPO all day long, and have more than 2000 tags… It would be so comforting to find them all on my iPhone!
And I add –to help waiting for that major improvement– a want for a possibility not to search necessarily all the databases at the same time, but to chose on what folder to operate the search. Thanks in advance.