* TO Do Report

[rwcrooks]

I'm moving over from RM7 and have been super pleased with FH7, with 1 exception.
RM has a built-in TO Do List Report. It produces a relatively compact report of all TO DOs in the database. It puts about 7 TO Dos on a portrait page. AND, it is sorted by Last Name, First Name.

Is this even possible to do in FH7? I've been dinking around with writing a custom query to try to get something I can use, even if I have to import the results into MS ACCESS and massage it there. Using the Research Notes report, I get a 63 page report of my 120 notes, with a ton of wasted space, and it is not sorted.

If anyone has produced a report like this, I'd love to know how it was done. I know I have a whole lot to learn about queries, but I'd appreciate any advice.
Rich

[Mark1834]

Rich,

I think you are on the right lines. There is a big difference between the ToDo list in RM and how it is recreated in FH. In RM, the list items are fully structured, with each each field being a separate data item. FH doesn't support this granularity, and Research Notes are really just text notes with a couple of added frills. FH synthesis the structure in the Research Notes tab of the Records Window. You will need to recreate this with a query.

Right-click on one of the Records Window headings and select Configure Columns... Select one of the fields in the right hand list and click on Edit...

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The expression that I have highlighted in the screen grab is the magic that converts plain text into a distinct field, by taking the text between "Type:" and the end of the line as the field contents.

You need to create a custom query with similar fields. Click on the Query button at the top of the main FH menu and create a new custom query of type Research Note. The second screen grab shows a query with a single field, the note status. Repeat for each column of interest.

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Once you have this structured output, you can export it as a CSV file for import into an application such as Excel or even Word to process as you wish. You could probably also design your own custom FH report, but that is far more advanced (and I've not got to that page yet .

I think that is the best option, but we are a creative lot here. Let's see if somebody comes up with a better alternative...

[laz_gen]

How about a more simplistic approach.

Create a new custom fact called "To Do"
Add this fact to any individual that needs such an entry and add the details you want saved
Create a query to list all "To Do" facts and choose the columns you want such as ID, Name, To Do etc. and sort on your chosen column
The query output can be saved to a named list or output to csv, pdf etc.

[ColeValleyGirl]

How about a more simplistic approach.

Create a new custom fact called "To Do"
Add this fact to any individual that needs such an entry and add the details you want saved
Create a query to list all "To Do" facts and choose the columns you want such as ID, Name, To Do etc. and sort on your chosen column
The query output can be saved to a named list or output to csv, pdf etc.

I'm struggling to see how this is better than using Research Notes?

[Mark1834]

How would you populate the new custom attribute? The OP says he has 120 such notes, and I’m sure he doesn’t want to copy all the details one by one. My impression is that this would just duplicate the Research Notes, but in a less flexible format.

[davidf]

If anyone has produced a report like this, I'd love to know how it was done. I know I have a whole lot to learn about queries, but I'd appreciate any advice.
Rich

Beaten to it by many others! But here is essentially the same idea in a bit more detail!

Research Notes are a V7 Feature. Prior to that we did all sort of things in V6! Many of these were powered by Custom Queries etc. many of which are not being carried forward to V7 (so probably won't work in V7) (See Research Planner Version 2 in the Knowledge Base). (The Group Topic for that Item is possibly also worth considering)

Conceptually you can kludge one together reasonably easily - particularly if your "To Do" are Individual Related

1. Create a Custom Attribute "To do" Item. This will give you:
   • An ability to create a "To do" Headline in the attribute "Value" field
   • Hold details of the "To Do" place in Place field e.g. "Carlisle Record Office" or "Find My Past"
   • Possibly Hold an Archive Reference in the Location field e.g. "WO 95/2805/1" or "Silver War Badge Roll 1914-1920"
   • Hold a date for the task in the "Date" Field
   • Hold further details in the "Note" field structuring them as described by Mark (I item per line in format Key: Value eg. Status: Urgent
   • If you want to you can create a fact template for the note field (i.e. pre enter the Keys referred to above as prompts (e.g. "Status: "). To do that when creating a Fact use (V6) the Advanced Button in the Fact Definition Dialog then put your text in the Auto-create field (using Ctrl-Return for "new line"). (You can add this later via The Main Menu: Tools, Fact Types, (select), Edit)
2. Create a Custom Query based of the Fact Query Type Fact queries are a bit of a mind bender so look at some examples.
   • Using "=GetLabelledText" (as described by Mark) you can extract lines from the Note to be columns in your query. In the scheme I have described above the Data Reference (between the %..%) will be different from Mark's example - I think %FACT.NOTE2% will do the trick. (get back if it does not)
   • That query with a bit of juggling can be persuaded to serve up your To Do, line by line - which may be enough. If not, either export it as a CSV (in The Query Results, use (in V6) "Cog Wheel, Save Results Set as ..."), or look at using the query to drive a report (I have never looked into reports in detail, so if you want to know more, ask and someone else will contribute).
   • With a query output if you click on the Left Hand Column ("Individual"), the Individual's property box will open - (unfortunately not at the Fact Tab - you have to switch tabs) and from there you can access and edit the specific To Do.

Templating a to do list

Screenshot from 2022-06-21 11-03-33.png (13.26 KiB) Viewed 1688 times

That may be sufficient.

Some won't like the "odd ball" data like archive references in the Location Field, but I can live with that - I don't produce reports of "all locations".

[tatewise]

Rich, may we return to the fundamental Publish > Miscellaneous Reports > Research Notes report features.

It seems you have already found the option to select Multiple Research Notes.
After selecting the Research Notes required, and clicking > Add to Selection, they appear in the righthand Selected Research Notes list in the order they will appear in the Report.
Click on any column heading in that righthand pane to sort according to that column.
i.e. Click Selected Research Notes to sort by title, or click Record Id to sort by Rec Id.
Hold down the Alt key while clicking to reverse the sort order.
This technique applies to all FH multiple record Reports.

By default, each record starts on a new page, and is typical for all FH Reports.
To change that select the Report Options > Page Layout tab and clear Start records on new page bottom right.

What I am less sure about is how Last Name, First Name is applied to Research Notes unless they are part of the Title.
I cannot find an imported RM Project with Research Notes, so I've investigated the TMG Sample project, and its imported FH Research Notes often have a For Person: field or some other link to a person.
A Records Window column can be configured by right-click on any column header to list those people as follows.
Add an <Other...> item with Header: Person and Expression: %_RNOT.TEXT._LINK_I>NAME:SURNAME_FIRST%
That advanced Data Reference finds the first Individual link and extracts its name with surname first.
When selecting Research Records to report, that Person column can be used to sort by Last Name, First Name.
That should work with RM Research Notes if they contain similar person links.

[laz_gen]

I'm struggling to see how this is better than using Research Notes?

How would you populate the new custom attribute? The OP says he has 120 such notes, and I’m sure he doesn’t want to copy all the details one by one. My impression is that this would just duplicate the Research Notes, but in a less flexible format.

I have never used RM so have no idea what shape or form these existing To Do entries will be when imported into FH but as To Do things are usually about people I imagined they may end up as UDF's attached to individuals.

If that were the case a quick run of Mike's "Change any fact" plugin could convert them into a custom fact that could then be queried as normal.

The OP stated they weren't happy with Research Notes so I replied to that original posting. I didn't suggest it was better or worse than using Research Notes, just a simple alternative.

[rwcrooks]

I'm making progress.
Thanks to Mike for the solution to display the "For:" person. In the record it shows up blue (hyperlink), but your link operator works perfectly.

In my notes, the TITLE is the specific action I need to do, such as "Find in 1950 census". I have some text coming over following the "REFERENCE:" tag, such as "probably Bay City, MI - b. 1870 - wife: Amelia" which is additional info that will help me make sure I've found the right record.

The problem is that GETLABELLEDTEXT does not bring in anything in tables. The info following the REFERENCE tag appears to be in a table. It is multi-line with a couple of blank lines, then table headers, then the actual research hints.

I guess that I need to start going through the documentation to see if there is a function that can access that data.

I started programming in 1974 on the PLATO network then progressed through 8 or more languages and as many different systems, so hopefully I can find a solution.

The data set that I am working on has only 120 TO DO records, but it is a subset of my entire RM db, probably 500+ TO DOs. I guess that i could keep RM7 up and running to manage my TODOs, but that seems sort of stupid.

Rich

[kfunk_ia]

I am certainly glad that I am not the only one battling FH's ToDo/Research Notes facilities. Having come from RM7, I could print a person's ToDo list in a half dozen or so clicks. When selecting what to include, I could select a person/place/repo etc. and get all notes to print for that person or place. With FH, even though I am working on a specific person, I still have to go through and manually select the items that I want to print. I would get the whole list of research notes for everyone and have to select the specific ones (even though if I look at the person's Note tab and it shows those research notes for that person).

It was my experience that filtering on the person's name did not always pick up all of the attached notes and the ones that it didn't pickup were imported when the RM7 file was imported. Thanks to Mike's posting above, I was able to add the person's name to the available columns, so now I can at least sort all of them together by name. To get the FH entered notes, it involves me having to manually link the person to the note which seems to be a bit silly since the program already knows who is linked. I also need to work on linking places and repos to the notes but that is a task for another day.

My next goal is to try and work on the god-awful report that gets generated. There are at least 4 different fonts, in three or four sizes and it looks horrendous. I know that reports can be tweaked but for now it is more important to figure out how to get useful data out of the program.

Fortunately the query system is shaping up to be down right awesome and I still don't know all of the functions and stuff yet. The ability to drill way down into the data makes the program worth what I paid for it.

[tatewise]

Thanks to Mike's posting above, I was able to add the person's name to the available columns, so now I can at least sort all of them together by name. To get the FH entered notes, it involves me having to manually link the person to the note which seems to be a bit silly since the program already knows who is linked.

I agree it seems quite difficult to produce a report of Research Notes linked to chosen Individual, Family or Source records.
Maybe ask CP how that can be achieved via http://www.calico-pie.com/osticket/open.php.

My next goal is to try and work on the report that gets generated. There are at least 4 different fonts, in three or four sizes and it looks horrendous. I know that reports can be tweaked ...

I guess you are talking about the Research Notes report where the fonts, etc, are defined by the Research Note records.
They support the same word-processor formatting as other Notes and those font styles have been imported from RM.

In my notes, the TITLE is the specific action I need to do, such as "Find in 1950 census". I have some text coming over following the "REFERENCE:" tag, such as "probably Bay City, MI - b. 1870 - wife: Amelia" which is additional info that will help me make sure I've found the right record.
The problem is that GETLABELLEDTEXT does not bring in anything in tables. The info following the REFERENCE tag appears to be in a table. It is multi-line with a couple of blank lines, then table headers, then the actual research hints.

Rich, do you need to extract that REFERENCE: data to appear in a Records Window column alongside the For: person?
Although the Help says =GetLabelledText(...) does not work within a table, it does work for me!
So try =GetLabelledText(%_RNOT.TEXT%,"REFERENCE:")) and if a table row starts with REFERENCE: it should work.

[AdrianBruce]

... I agree it seems quite difficult to produce a report of Research Notes linked to chosen Individual, Family or Source records. ...

I've barely scratched the surface of Research Notes, not least because I still have loads of stuff in OneNote or Evernote that hasn't been carried over. But from my viewpoint, my primary need for a "report" would be by the location where the research might take place.

[tatewise]

Adrian, if you structure your Research Note records appropriately you can filter by location, etc.
It is easy to identify Research Notes linked to an Individual, Family, or Source record via their Property Box Notes tab, but it is not easy to then obtain a Report listing them.
These guys have imported hundreds of Research Notes from RM and experiencing problems with their data and find FH reports less convenient than in RM.

[AdrianBruce]

Adrian, if you structure your Research Note records appropriately you can filter by location, etc. ...

Indeed, that's what I have done - I have a label "Places:" to be entered into my handful of Research Notes, with the labelled text containing something quite specific or quite vague, as appropriate. I'd got as far as a query and have just, as a result of this thread, added "Places" as a column to my Records tab for Research Notes.

Looking at the state of my notes in OneNote etc, I suspect that my issue will be putting the research notes alongside things so that they get updated at the right time, as part of the work-flow. I'm not good at deal with notes if they are separate - as I find when I consult my freezer list in the supermarket and wonder whether the contents of the list match the contents of the freezer.