Saved views

A search you keep. Give a search a name and it becomes a smart folder in the sidebar — one click back to recent meeting notes, or to everything you have not finished, without having to remember how you asked for it.

Keeping one

Search for something, then give it a name under the box and press Save this view. It appears under Views in the sidebar, with a folder-and-magnifier icon: a folder that is a question rather than a place.

Opening it runs the search again. Nothing about the results is stored, which is the point — a view of "notes I changed this week" is a different list every week, and one of "everything about the ferry" grows as you write.

Dates that move

A saved view usually wants a moving date rather than a fixed one, so all six date operators — after:, before:, created-after:, created-before:, updated-after: and updated-before: — take a name as well as a date:

• today — today
• yesterday — the day before today
• this-week — the Monday this week began
• last-week — the Monday the week before began
• this-month — the first of this month
• last-month — the first of last month
• 7-days, 30-days, 90-days — that many days ago

The search page shows the same list with each name worked out for today, so you can see what you are asking for before you save it.

Each name means one day rather than a span, so the operator in front of it means exactly what it means with a date. after:last-week is therefore "since last week started" — this week included. For last week on its own, say after:last-week before:this-week. They are read in your timezone, not the workspace's: a search is one person asking about their own yesterday, and a view shared with a colleague abroad means their week rather than yours.

A name that is not one of those is just something to search for. after:lastweek looks for the words "after:lastweek", the same as any other text — nothing here turns a typo into an error message.

Sharing one

Share with the workspace offers a view to everybody here. It shares the question, never the answer: everyone who opens it sees only the notes they could already read, so the same view shows different results to different people. That is correct rather than a fault.

A shared view is marked shared in your sidebar, and stays its author's to rename, edit or withdraw. You can order it where you like among your own.

Changing and removing

Open a view and the search box holds its query; edit either the query or the name and press Update this view. The arrows beside each one in the sidebar move it up and down, and they are buttons rather than a drag so they work with a keyboard and on a touchscreen.

When a view stops finding things

A view that uses folder:Handbook looks the folder up by name every time it runs. If the folder has been renamed, the view will quietly find nothing — so the page says so, and suggests checking the name. The same sentence appears whether the folder was renamed, deleted, or simply is not one you can read; the page does not distinguish, because distinguishing would tell you about folders you cannot see.

What this does not do

• No sort setting. Results come back the way search always orders them: best match first when you gave words, most recently changed first when you only gave filters.
• No counts in the sidebar. A number beside each view would mean running every saved search on every page you open.
• Notes, not boards. A board's own filter is a different thing over different material — assignees and columns rather than text — and pretending the two are interchangeable would make both worse.
• Not reachable by a program. Your saved views are yours, and the API does not list or change them. The search language itself is the same everywhere, though — a program can run the same query string and gets the same answer, dates and all.
• Thirty saved views each, per workspace.