Surprising search behaviour (Smart Groups/Group of Residence)

DEVONthink
1

Following setup:

Group 2020, containing

  • Smart Group a (searching /Data/a, 01.01.2020 to 31.12.2020)
  • Smart Group b (searching /Data/b, 01.01.2020 to 31.12.2020)
  • Smart Group c (searching /Data/c, 01.01.2020 to 31.12.2020)

Smart Group b contains a document which features the word “iPad” in its title.
In the sidebar I highlight Group 2020, and then enter “iPad scope:selection” in the Search bar; no results are found; if, however, instead of selecting Group 2020 I select Smart Group b in the sidebar, the item with “iPad” in its title will be found. (Obviously it is also found if I select /Data or /Data/b in the sidebar).

I would expect the search to turn up the files contained in the smart groups when the scope of the search is the group in which the smart group resides. Is the fact that it doesn’t a bug, a limitation of smart groups or simply expected behaviour?

2

It’s the expected behaviour currently, smart groups inside groups don’t matter.

3

Thanks for your feedback, Criss :slight_smile: Based on my own use of DT, I find that to be quite a significant limitation to the use of smart groups; I would ask you to reconsider whether smart groups residing in a group should not better be included in a search of that group.

My use case:

I save documents relevant to my tax declaration to a tax group or one of its subgroups (think income, expenses etc.). I then use a group for each year (so think 2018, 2019, 2020), each of which contains smart groups covering the subgroups of the tax group (so again, income, expenses etc.). The smart groups are limited by creation date of the document and therefore show documents pertaining to the year the smart group is contained in. The advantage of this setup is that the AI will reliably suggest where to put the document (e.g. tax group/expenses or tax group/income); previously I used subgroups in each year group (so 2018/income, 2018/expenses, 2019/income an so on), and the AI simply had no idea which of these subgroups to suggest for filing documents.

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4

You could explicitly select the smart groups in the sidebar and then search in them.

5

Off and on, smart-smart groups (not a typo or a stutter :stuck_out_tongue: ) have been discussed for a long time. As Criss mentioned they are not supported.

6

That only works when I only select a single smart group; selecting multiple smart groups leads to no search results, so that’s not really a viable workaround. As such my request still stands :wink:

7

And now, my friend, the time has come to repent and rectify previous erroneous behaviour :smiley:

8

I do enough repenting! :flushed::roll_eyes::slightly_smiling_face:

The request - as always - is noted… with no promises… again, as always :wink:

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