"Derived-Importance" computed field taking ancestors into account
I would really appreciate a new "derived importance" field that would be computed taking the importance of ancestor tasks / folders into account, as well as its own. It should be possible to add a filter rule based on this field (and also Computed-Score).
This idea is mainly to allow the importance of tasks in different branches and at different levels to be comparable in a meaningful way. The function should assign (configurable?) weight factors to ancestors, with top level tasks / folders weighted highest and descendant / leaf tasks weighted lowest.
Importance values of sibling tasks / folders should be treated as relative importance. Meg Fraser posted a nice idea to manage relative importance:
http://mlo.uservoice.com/forums/9235-general/suggestions/3257964-link-the-importance-level-of-each-task-to-its-posi
The existing MLO implementation allows a view with a filter rule based on importance to select a task of importance 150 in a folder of importance 5 over a task of importance 149 in a folder of importance 200.
Instead, with my suggested approach, a filter based on a minimum Derived-Importance value should select a lower importance task in a high importance folder / parent task over a higher importance task in a low importance folder / parent task. If the weight factors are assigned correctly, a task with a very high importance far down one branch of the hierarchy should be given a higher Derived-Importance than a low importance task that is in another branch of slightly less importance.
To be honest, I would like my suggested approach to be applied other fields too, such as urgency, etc. and to keep the Computed-Score field as a kind of general ranking field.
My current set-up involves three main views of importance intervals for active tasks: High Importance, Medium Importance and Low Importance. They are filtered on importance and take starred tasks into account. Sorting is based on descending Computed-Score. The views would be much more useful if they could take ancestors into account using a derived importance calculated field.
Thanks for all the great features so far!
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Ian commented
Derived-Importance should also consider dependencies. If a low importance task is blocking a high importance task (directly or indirectly) its Derived-Importance should be as high as the highest importance task it is blocking.
This is similar to the following, more general idea about Computed-Score:
http://mlo.uservoice.com/forums/9235-general/suggestions/7241670-take-dependencies-and-effort-max-time-into-accouI hope this is feasible.
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Ian commented
I found a comment from 2010 in the MLO Google Group partially related to this idea (advanced filtering). Things might have changed since then:
"Feature Request: Add Computed Score to Advance Filtering"
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mylifeorganized/G1ywSxm0V0I/AlmdPVjiR3gJcopied here for completeness:
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"The feature request is not trivial to implement in the current
architecture:
1) The computed score calculated only when todo list is created. The
algorithm should process all the tasks in a specific order. So it is
not possible to use it in AutoFormatting or Filter when any task can
be requested at any time.2) I do not understand how you can group tasks by computed score
priority which is a float number with big range.3) I can probably add computed score as a column (actually three
columns by priority, urgency, both) but it is not trivial to sync the
values for this columns at any time due to (1)A."