Sortable List Cards

[foxhoundv]

It would be nice to have a feature where from the list options you can sort the cards alphabetically or numerically. Even if you move a card from one list to another, it sorts it either when a new card is created or if a card gets moved into that list.

[stefan-niedermann]

What's the use case? Cards have a quiet "short" lifecycle. They are moving from one column to the next and eventually get closed - How does your workflow work that it might be useful to sort cards by title? Do you have any naming convention? I can see a use case for lists with long term item (like a todo list, a shopping list or a note book), but i would like to know how you are working 🙂.

[foxhoundv]

So for management we like to keep track of what jobs are still open, and some jobs have less of a priority. If we put them onto different lists but still maintain some kind of hierarchy instead of having to search through them it would be easier to find. Using Due Dates in the card title like "2020-07-09" would allow us to sort them based on date precedence. For different lists, the Sales Order number would give us another sorting option "SO00125" for example.

[stefan-niedermann]

Have you thought about using tags and filter for then?

[foxhoundv]

I can do a filter by Date, but there is one problem with that as well. It doesn't keep those settings. As soon as I leave the board, it clears the filter. Having the option to keep certain filters would be helpful.

[foxhoundv]

Still sorting would be helpful because if you have 15 items in one list and they are due at different times, you won't see them listed based on precedence. You would still have to manually move the up or down to get them displayed chronologically. Maybe a Sort option for chronological order that can be saved?

[lodi-g]

I think the chronological sort would be a great feature to Deck. I am free this week to work on it, provided some guidance because I've never contributed to Nextcloud projects.

[juliusknorr]

For general development setup checkout our docs in https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/latest/developer_manual/getting_started/devenv.html or have a look at https://github.com/juliushaertl/nextcloud-docker-dev for a docker based setup. You basically need a running installation of the server repo and then clone the deck app into the apps folder. The deck app requires some build steps that are described in the README. Feel free to reach out with any further questions.

Regarding the feature, I see that this might be useful. However there would be some open questions that should be clarified before actually starting an implementation to make sure that this becomes something mergable:

• How would dragging cards behave? We usually set the order to how the cards are being dragged, but with custom sorting, we cannot really know where to put the card then. It could of course always end up at the end of the stack in that case.
• Should the sorting be stored on a per board or per user/per board level?
• UI wise I would put it next to the filter view, but we should probably hide it in the new 3-dots menu to not clutter the default interface with yet another button in the top bar. Otherwise we could also put this right within the filter menu.
• What sorting option should be available: Custom order, creation date, modification date i assume, anything else?

[juliusknorr]

cc @nextcloud/designers

[dhrunia]

Sorting by creation date would be very helpful. I use deck to organize my lab experiments (they have an implicit order). I see that newly created cards got to the bottom of that list, however when I drag and drop it would stay in the dropped location. The problem I have with this is that I often have to look at the cards that are in Done list, without sorting it's difficult to understand which experiments followed which. Either their should be an option to move a card between lists so that they automatically go to the bottom of the move target list or the lists should have sorting option.

[foxhoundv]

@juliushaertl

How would dragging cards behave? We usually set the order to how the cards are being dragged, but with custom sorting, we cannot really know where to put the card then. It could of course always end up at the end of the stack in that case.

The Sorting should over-ride dragging and dropping, once the user drops the card it should then be forced into the sorted settings.

Should the sorting be stored on a per board or per user/per board level?

This probably should be a setting controlled by the owner of the board. I can see where both cases are useful. In my line of work, me being the admin I don't want others to change sorting because some boards will be shown on a public monitor for workers.

UI wise I would put it next to the filter view, but we should probably hide it in the new 3-dots menu to not clutter the default interface with yet another button in the top bar. Otherwise we could also put this right within the filter menu.

I don't think at the top is good either, but either in the board details or the filter.

What sorting option should be available: Custom order, creation date, modification date i assume, anything else?

Those are good and probably an alphabetical order / reverse alphabetical as well.

[pmallot]

Sorting by due date would be very useful to us.

[dartcafe]

Sorting clashes with the usage of Kanban boards which are sorted manually.

If sorting would be introduced, this feature needs a toggle. I would not want to let the cards be sorted by number alphabetically or something else, because in our use case the order represents the priority (comparable to a backlog).

I would say if you need sorting, you probaly have too many items on your board.

IMHO it would be more useful to introduce lanes, so the cards in a column can be separated by attributes, like the assigned user or due date (i.e. tomorrow, day after tomorrow, this week, next week, later).

[putt1ck]

Sorting clashes with the usage of Kanban boards which are sorted manually.

If sorting would be introduced, this feature needs a toggle. I would not want to let the cards be sorted by number alphabetically or something else, because in our use case the order represents the priority (comparable to a backlog).

I would say if you need sorting, you probaly have too many items on your board.

Not everyone uses Deck exclusively for Kanban or equivalent. So auto/manual sort makes sense because it allows people to use Deck flexibly; but having the option to sort makes it more flexible than not having the option to sort, whether or not it is useful to you.

[dartcafe]

It is absolutely ok to use it the way which satisfies your needs. But the features should not have the affect, that the app moves away from it's main purpose. This is just my point.

I can imagine, that sorting by an attribute could be an action, which supports manual sorting of a column. This way the sorting just changes the absolute sort order at the moment, the sorting is done. This could make a feature toggle obsolete.

If the sorting should be a permanent view option, it has to be developed as a per column and user setting. Otherwise collaboration could get hard, if a user changes the sort view while other users are working with the board at the same time as well.

[MenacingMight]

I have a series of cards inputed and would like the tackle them by the nearest due date. I know you can look at the up coming cards for that, but it would be nice to be able to sort the a list inside a board.

[31337-4554551n]

Also showing an interest in this and signing up for notifications.

I use this in my personal nextcloud for a variety of things. Often as a shopping list shared with the family. We have a need and have list. With descriptions of items, pictures, stores they're available in. We are always manually dragging cards around in order to keep the lists alphabetical so items can be found and duplicates aren't created. Not really an intended use case, I'm sure.

But this is a very popular app and people use it in a lot of different ways.

I would like to thank all the developers for their hard effort that's made my life so much better, and would love to humbly requests an alphabetised list option.

As mentioned earlier, this need not clash with other people's use cases, and can be a point in time sort-no different to a regular user manually dragging the cards around, except at the press of a button.

[sdcaulley]

I have a use case......I use tags heavily on my boards for different subgroups. Being able to sort by tag would be helpful for me.

[marcoambrosini]

I can do a filter by Date, but there is one problem with that as well. It doesn't keep those settings. As soon as I leave the board, it clears the filter. Having the option to keep certain filters would be helpful.

Wouldn't this suffice for most use-cases? Persistent filters that is?