Merging groups with "smart templates"

DEVONthink Automation
1

Hi,

I’m experimenting with a “journaled” set of groups, and found the Dated Hierarchy smart template a good fit.

However, I find that repeated invocations of this create a new top-level group each time.

i.e. if I ran it once and got a structure like 2022 => 08 => 10 yesterday, running it again today creates a duplicate 2022 top-level group within my database, with a 2022 => 08 => 11 structure.

Btw smart templates are cool! (yet another surprisingly useful feature of DT3 I’m discovering after a few years of using the product)

I only recently found how to open them up and add placeholders in the names there, and was looking forward to try out a modification (I want the full date instead of the date-of-month as the inner group), but ran into this duplicate top-level group issue.

Is there a way to control whether or not it merges with existing groups vs creating new ones? (fwiw, I would naively expect the former to be the default)

Much thanks,
Agam

2

It’s actually a simple template (.dtTemplate), not a smart one (.templatescript, .templatescriptd) based on scripts and therefore the desired folders/files are just imported.

By the way, such hierarchies can be also created via the File smart rule & batch processing action.

3

They are powerful and very useful indeed! :slight_smile:

4

Hmm, just to make sure: is there currently any way – short of writing some custom AppleScript, which I haven’t dipped my toes into yet – of creating a new empty group within a dated hierarchy?

(afaik the File smart-rule can only act on where a particular document goes, right? or can it also create a new empty group?)

5

Something like Script: Create custom date register?

6

Yes, of course it can. See…