How best to organize data now with new DTP features?

I now have a fair amount of data in DTP. I have it organized in about 20 or so Group folders and a number of smart Groups. Before the excellent new bookmarklets, I would save things into DTP with old bookmarklets as most of the data I have in DTP comes off the web. Then I would have to manually sort things from the InBox into the respective Group folders. This was/is very time consuming even with DTP’s excellent Move To feature. The new bookmarklets and Sorter eliminate this for the most part. However, this does make me wonder what good the Group folders are when there is such good search, smart group and soon tagging support in DTP. Does it make sense to keep data in the Group folder hierarchy? Or just throw the data into the root level of the database? I know it is helpful for things like book chapters or organizing certain topics, but I rarely dive into the folders I create, depending more heavily on search and smart folders to find what I need out of my data.

I know having multiple specialized databases is the way to go and I am working on breaking up my data this way. Many of my Group categories could be standalone databases on their own in which case I would have to create sub-groups to further filter and organize the data in each new database.

Do you find that creating a Group is really the way to go, sorting your data into these as you add it? Or is this just a waste of time and should one just use the excellent search and smart group features to find and organize data?

Thanks for ideas and suggestions. Just curious about other people’s take on this.

Groups improve both the AI and the search. And basically tags will be groups and vice versa.

E.g. as my scientific database contains around 1300 groups, all my files are already extensively tagged. Would I use tagging on its own, will I ever tag my files in the common sense? No. But tagging will help me to build the hierarchy.

Not to mention that I can explore the database without having to search, using my preferred organization.

Anyway, DEVONthink doesn’t force you to use groups, hierarchies, tags or smart groups. DEVONthink provides all the tools (or will soon, tagging isn’t fully implemented yet) and it’s up to the user and his/her needs to use one or all of the possibilities.

Thanks Christian. That’s what I needed to know. Needed to know if the Group hierarchy made a difference with the AI feature.

Looking forward to the tagging feature as well.

Keene