Sometimes it's a puzzle to figure out the best way to use IQ to organize your info. (And one important thing to remember is that you're not tied to any one method - you can often employ multiple methods without them conflicting with each other.)
I use IQ to maintain inventories of some of my possessions, especially computer-related stuff. I started this a long time ago, long before the Tags feature was implemented in its current form.
I created a hierarchy of yes/no fields (parent fields and child fields) to keep track of my computer items. Just as an example, here are the fields used for flash memory cards:
Computers and Electronics > Hardware Items > Storage Devices > Flash Memory Cards > MicroSD
The field "Flash Memory Cards" has other yes/no child fields besides "MicroSD", including CompactFlash, MemoryStick, and SD.
If I check the field "MicroSD" card for an item, I would like it if IQ would automatically check the fields Computers and Electronics, Hardware items, Storage Devices, and Flash Memory Cards. I can set up auto-assigns manually, but ideally I wouldn't have to do that. It would be great if IQ had an option to check a yes/no parent field if, for the selected item, any child or "descendant" yes/no field is checked. As it is I am manually checking the parent fields to achieve the desired result, but that is error-prone.
But now we have Tags that do have this sort of inheritance, so I could switch these items from the use of Y/N fields to tags. Not sure what, if anything, I might lose by going that way.
There is yet another way for me to proceed that has some advantages, though it somewhat duplicates the hierarchy of fields. I have created a field "FlashMemCardType". This field is set either to the text values CF, MS, SD, or MicroSD for each item as appropriate. When I do it this way, I can have a single grid of all my flash memory cards. I can sort or filter it by the FlashMemCardType field. Could I sort or filter a Flash Memory Cards grid using the subfields or subtags CF, MS, SD, MicroSD? I don't think that's currently a possibility.
Any thoughts on the best way to proceed for this kind of use? Have any you addressed such questions, and if so, how have you proceeded? Obviously this can be the kind of question that frequently occurs for IQ users.
Comments
[quote=jimspoon]There is yet another way for me to proceed that has some advantages, though it somewhat duplicates the hierarchy of fields. I have created a field "FlashMemCardType". This field is set either to the text values CF, MS, SD, or MicroSD for each item as appropriate. When I do it this way, I can have a single grid of all my flash memory cards. I can sort or filter it by the FlashMemCardType field. Could I sort or filter a Flash Memory Cards grid using the subfields or subtags CF, MS, SD, MicroSD? I don't think that's currently a possibility.[/quote]