Smartly Searching Basecamp Todo Lists and Items

We have been listening to customer requests for new features to our IntelliGantt for Basecamp product and are happy to announce the number one request is now available: searching. You may have noticed that the top right of the 'old' IntelliGantt for Basecamp tool was a bit sparse. This was by design. We knew there would be a popular feature everybody would need and so we reserved the top-right of the tool to house it. Now when you bring up IntelliGantt for Basecamp you will see FIND with a dropdown and a text box.

The textbox lets you type in anything. The searching is interactive so as you type, with each keystroke, IntelliGantt for Basecamp will work through the columns to find any matches. We support several types of columns: Display Names are text, of course. Start and Finish are dates. Done is 'true' or 'false' (for example, to see all of your finished tasks, try typing false into the textbox). Percent complete is a number. By default any text you type in will be checked across all these columns, which is why the dropdown initially displays 'All Columns'.

The end result is important here as well. When a Todo List or Todo Item is found we display it with context. For example, when a Todo Item is matched, we also include its containing Todo List. This helps if you have multiple Todo Items with the same name that are distinguished by their Todo List.

If you have a particular column in mind you would like to match, simply select the dropdown for your list of options. You can match on the Basecamp columns 'Done', 'Display Name' and 'Finish' plus the columns we add: 'Start', '% Complete' and 'Predecessors'. We didn't include 'Assignments' in the dropdown because IntelliGantt for Basecamp already includes the 'PEOPLE' filter, which makes it very easy to select all items assigned to one or more people.

IntelliGantt for Basecamp supports Date and Number columns by simply matching their display. Using the Month/Day/Year format, you would search for all items with June 11th in them by typing in 6/11 in the text field. However, if you are searching for a date, you will probably want to select exactly which column you'd like to match. For example, if you want to find all items that are due on June 11th, then select the 'Finish' column and type in 6/11.

If you wish to use the Day/Month/Year format, simply choose it as the 'Date Format' and then type in '11/6'. You can change the date format by clicking the cog picture on the left-side of the tool.

Searching SharePoint Task Lists

It's one thing to be able to view all your tasks in one spot, it's another to find the tasks most important to you. Given that SharePoint 2010 can now support millions of potential tasks at every level of a task hierarchy, a robust search solution is now critical to help users make sense of it all.

The IntelliGantt Web Part was designed with this exact scenario in mind. We just posted a new screencast highlighting the new 'Search' feature within the web part and, even after developing it, the coolness factor is at eleven!

Basically, it uses the one tried and true search metaphor the world has come to love-- a text box. OK, that in itself may seem underwhelming, but another design goal for the IntelliGantt Web Part was to make it as accessible as possible. Since everyone knows how to add keywords to a text box and search, it seemed like a natural.

Text based keywords, dates and date ranges are all supported. The date fields are parsed according to the locale on your system so folks in the US and folks in the EU both get their date formats exactly as they want them.

Searches are done using generated CAML queries so IntelliGantt never inundates the network with a huge volume of web services data just to iterate over all the SharePoint list items locally.

The coolest thing, though? After seeing the screencast, I think its the ability to 'splice' the search with a selected list view on the fly. For example, you can easily combine a 'My Tasks' view with a keyword value of 'In Progress', 'Behind' or a date range. This makes it easy for SharePoint users to create specific views for their needs, and a deviously clever way for users to add the extra bits they need to personalize things for them.

We're just begun with our search text box and look forward to adding more features and cleverness.