Is there an option how to show all issues that are either assigned to me or that I'm mentioned in at the same time? Filtering by using the dropdown menu allows only to check for one of those and using is:open assignee:#me mentions:#me filters for all issues for which both constraints are true (basically & instead of |)
The first answer to this question from 8 years ago suggests it is not possible to use an "or" query. Does this still hold true?
What is the best alternative to filter for all issues that are relevant for me, ideally in the whole organization - third party tools?
The involves:user may be useful here:
Search by a user that's involved in an issue or pull request
You can use the involves qualifier to find issues that in some way involve a certain user. The involves qualifier is a logical OR between the author, assignee, mentions, and commenter qualifiers for a single user. In other words, this qualifier finds issues and pull requests that were either created by a certain user, assigned to that user, mention that user, or were commented on by that user.
Simply searching for the user's Github handle may be useful too.
Using a tool like gh (github cli) will allow you to lest and filter items too. A script can easily concatenate the results:
gh issue list --search "involves:#me is:open"
You can have it spit out json as well by adding --json, that way you can parse and further process the results as well.
I want to find all the GitHub issues that I commented on. I tried searching for commenter:mbigras type:issue like the Searching issues and pull requests GitHub article suggests. But that method returns fewer results than the public activity section of my profile.
See both attached images:
Search method
Doesn't display current results:
Profile method
Gets mixed up with other public activity:
Is there a way to get the full history of my comments on GitHub?
EDIT
author:mbigras type:issue gives wider results but still not the full history:
What I'm looking for is a way to quickly view all my comment/issue history in all issues.
EDIT
I emailed GitHub about this. Search doesn't match the public activity section because search indexes issues by creation date and not last active date.
How do you keep organized about which issues you've commented on?
Search for commenter:username in the main Github search box.
For example commenter:gavinandresen
To see recent activity, select Recently updated from Sort dropdown
You can also narrow the search: is:issue commenter:gavinandresen
I have also been very frustrated when I could not find an issue that I have commented on a while ago. I even did not remember the project it was in. I knew only the problem I was referring to.
Then, I went to the Notification settings on Github and saw there is an Include your own updates option that is unchecked by default.
Once you check it, Github will send you an e-mail notification about every comment or PR you make. They you probably want to add an appropriate label and filter for emails so Github messages do not clutter an inbox.
My life has changed since then. Now, every time I want to find something I have written on Github, I just search for it in the e-mail notifications.
You can view all the issues on Github you have commented on by going to https://github.com/notifications/subscriptions and selecting Reason as Comment.
This will show all the issues that you've commented on.
You can also filter the issues by selecting other reason such as Assign, Author, Manual, Mention, etc. but you can select only one reason at a time. Also, you can filter the issues by repository by selecting the concerned repository from dropdown after clicking Repository
Search All GitHub using the search term is:issue author:#me
You can also check the following links.
For all your subscriptions
https://github.com/notifications/subscriptions
For all your issues
https://github.com/issues
For all your pull requests
https://github.com/pulls
In case someone is interested to know how to find these links, go to github's resi api documentation. The URL's are not explicitly described there. However, look for the page names bellow REFERENCE.
If you lowercase the relevant word (for example Issues become issues, Pulls become pulls) and put that after https://github.com/, you most probably will find what you are looking for.
This might be a little late, but there's also another way to find what issues/PRs you have participated in. This method also brings in a lot more things you might be interested in too!
When you are on the website main page, on github.com, use the keyboard shortcuts as described here to open your pull requests or issues. The shortcut for these is in particular [g, i] for issues and [g, p] for pull requests (I remember g by go, but whatever works for you.)
After you go to the page directed by these shortcuts you are greeted by an entire screen of goodies you can use! The search bar can be edited and the buttons can be used to make your experience fast!
Type involves:<your username> in the search box on the GitHub's main page. This will find all the issues that you commented on, was assigned to or mentioned in.
For example, if your username on GitHub is unclebob, the search query should look like:
involves:unclebob
Or if you're logged in to GitHub, then simply:
involves:#me
Note the difference between involves and similar search qualifiers - author and commenter:
author will find only the issues that were started by you; if you comment on the issue that was started by someone else, author query won't return it in the search results.
E.g., compare involves:unclebob and author:unclebob type:issue.
commenter will find only those issues where you commented second or later (creator of the first comment in an issue is considered its author and not a commenter); if you start an issue and then never comment on it, the commenter query won't return it in the search results.
E.g., compare involves:unclebob and commenter:unclebob.
In other words, when it comes to searching comments, author and commenter return only a subset of involves' results. So I recommend using involves not to miss anything.
Also, since Github is on the web, any HTTP search engine works, eg Google, Bing, etc. This works to the extent of your search engine's quality and the uniqueness of the writer name.
(Indeed, I actually do this all the time when I need to find any previously written web (engine)-accessible publication, including those on StackExchange. Names I use are 1 in probably an infinity, so Google often works better than forum search options.)
(Sample Google link.)
If you want to search for multiple users in a single search, use it like in the global search bar without the OR logical conjugation:
commenter:FantomX1 commenter:FantomX1-github
since the similar google way approach with 'OR' would not work
commenter:FantomX1 OR commenter:FantomX1-github
I am looking for a way to identify quoted text in emails. The goal is to add something along the lines of Gmails "show quoted text" feature to my web app which involves a mail handler bot.
There are similar questions on stackoverflow, but they are asking for an algorithm. I could implement this if I have to, but I would greatly prefer a tried and true solution.
Requirements:
1) Support both HTML and plain text emails
2) Operates on the full thread (that is, it has the original text to compare the quoted text against; no need to guess)
3) Handles common quote-related additions such as "On May 10th, 2008 at 6:35 PM Brandon wrote:"
A python library would be super magically awesome ideal, but I don't expect to get that lucky. A simple command line tool which can do this would pretty close to ideal, but I don't expect to that that lucky either. I'd gladly settle on a well known good implementation from an open source mail client which would be reasonably possible to extract into a tool.
Does anyone have a suggestion what my best bet would be?
I'm kind of surprised that there is no such thing as an "email handler bot construction kit".
Just following up on an email I received regarding this question.
Sup has a pretty easy to understand/extract/translate bit of logic for accomplishing this. I ported the relevant functions to Python and tweaked it for my purposes.
Sup is terminal-based mail client written in Ruby: http://sup.rubyforge.org/
Google has a patent for their method:
http://www.google.co.uk/patents/US7222299
Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.
Closed 8 years ago.
Locked. This question and its answers are locked because the question is off-topic but has historical significance. It is not currently accepting new answers or interactions.
Every software development professional (and especially project managers) has to deal with a never ending stream of e-mails. What is the best way of organising them in MS Outlook?
Obviously some fancy issue tracking tools give more flexibility but I am interested in plain vanilla approach that can be deployed within most organisations.
P.S. Finding e-mails is generally the least of the problems that needs to be addressed. Search nowdays is pretty good.
Within my main inbox I have 3 sub folers: Do, Done, Defer and 3 macros to move the selected folder into the relevent folder. (alt-1 moves the selected mail to done and then selects the next mail). Each day I quickly filter my inbox into the three folders. I can process several hundred mails in 20 mins or so.
Do, something I expect to process today.
Done, something I don't care about/have read and understood, I dont expect to refer back to these today.
Defer, something I will do something about but not today.
At the end of processing I expect my inbox to be empty.
At the end of the day all mail items in Do move to Defer (I dont want to keep things in
Done overnight).
At the start of the day all items in Defer are filtered using the rules above, I dont want to leave things in Defer for more then a day or 2. If stuff hangs around for too long I will add it to my diary to process later.
At the end of the day all mail in Done is copied into an archive folder based on the month/year. Done is just a parking place for things to be archived.
I use a tool to index my archive, I actually use X1 but google desktop is an excellent alternative.
I filter out any important facts i would like to refer back to in outlook notes.
I filter out any tasks I would like to recal into omni focus (http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnifocus/) the best GTD I have found.
I DO NOT EVER use my inbox as a todo list or a mechanism for recording subtle facts I want to recall later. I know a lot of people do but IMHO its just a bad way to be.
(cross posted to LJ).
EDIT.
Oh per a post above I also filter any mail not posted to me directly, by the mailing list the mail was sent to. I give different amounts of attention to each mailing list. I do follow the mechanism above for each mailing list but some I glance at and some I process in detail.
ReEDIT
In comments I was asked to provide the source for the macros I mentioned above. I DONT suggest this is seen as an example of good VBA, I am pretty sure it was sourced from the interweb and adapted for my purposes. It has worked reliably for many years.
Sub MoveToDone()
On Error Resume Next
Dim objFolder As Outlook.MAPIFolder, objInbox As Outlook.MAPIFolder
Dim objNS As Outlook.NameSpace, objItem As Outlook.MailItem
Set objNS = Application.GetNamespace("MAPI")
Set objInbox = objNS.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderInbox)
Set objFolder = objInbox.Folders("Done")
'Assume this is a mail folder
If objFolder Is Nothing Then
MsgBox "This folder doesn't exist!", vbOKOnly + vbExclamation, "INVALID FOLDER"
End If
If Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection.Count = 0 Then
'Require that this procedure be called only when a message is selected
MsgBox "No msgs selected", vbOKOnly + vbExclamation, "NO_MSG_SELECTED"
Exit Sub
End If
For Each objItem In Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection
If objFolder.DefaultItemType = olMailItem Then
If objItem.Class = olMail Then
objItem.Move objFolder
End If
End If
Next
Set objItem = Nothing
Set objFolder = Nothing
Set objInbox = Nothing
Set objNS = Nothing
End Sub
Depending on the amt of mail you receive I have 2 strategies that can be used together:
1) As most people suggest above, use your inbox as your todo list, and keep it clean. have 1 folder for Archived mails, and use all the search tools for searching!
2) If you get HUGE amts of mail, then use a filter to move mails that you are only CC'ed on to another folder. Then only check that folder N times a day ( I used N=3, morning, lunch & home time )
You will be amazed how much time it saves you, esp if you find that you feel drawn to reading mails that are in your Inbox trying to keep you Inbox clean.
This stop non-urgent mails from disrupting your flow, and is just quicker because you can now read the entire thread of the conversion by the people who were in the TO list.
HTH
any email that is auto-generated gets auto-filtered to its own folder. Separate folders for each project, and more for HR and general company junk. Basically the inbox should only contain things that need responses, once responded to messages move into a folder.
I keep anything that needs my attention in my Inbox and move everything completed to my Saved Folder.
I have just started using Categories as of Monday and I think they are something that more people need to be aware of.
I have a few rules which detect Project Names from the Subject and auto assign to the correct Category with my Inbox set to Group by Category.
Finally I use Google Desktop for Searching - much quicker and easier although does not like me moving my messages to my Saved Folder.
Install LookOut, leave everything in the Inbox and just search for stuff.
Ok, maybe do some organisation, but LookOut is pretty good, and the better the search, the less manual organisation you have to do, and that is a Good Thing, IMO.
i use folders!!! we usually get tasks which have unique number!! so folders are named after task numbers!!
Finished task's folders move to archive!! simple and yet powerful! I found it useful and following it for the past 3+years
I simply have two folders: my inbox, and a subfolder called "archive". My inbox is my todo-list. If any message needs further attention, or has some action that needs to be completed, or I'm waiting for an answer for something, it stays in the inbox. If it's handled, I move it to the archive.
Therefore, if it's in the inbox, it reminds me of the stuff that I still need to do everytime I check my e-mail.
Search indexing in Outlook with Vista makes searching through e-mails just as much fun as it is with Google Mail, so you can apply the same strategy as they did. Why delete an e-mail?
Also, I turn off auto-archiving and keep all e-mails local with me.
I use the same principles as this GTD article - link text
Essentially, I keep my Inbox clear, and move everything to the folders as mentioned in the article. Search is good enough these days that you don't need endless sub-folders.
Everybody seems to suggest folders; I suggest Categories.
I have 1 active pst and 1 pst per archived year, every mail is assigned one or more categories. Adjust folder view to group by category.
The main advantage is that you can assign several categories to a single mail.
Everything that still needs attention is in the inbox without categories.
Oh yes, and Rules! As already mentioned, rules for automated emails, as well as a rule for known senders, which files incoming mail into a special inbox folder.
Folders! Nice and simple.
I have found these to be invaluable over the years to help organise a separate emails on a customer or project basis. Even when there's multiple parties involved i only have to look in 2 folders at most to find what i'm after.
Edit: Similar to what tloach said, i use the inbox essentailly as a todo list of things i still need to look at.
1 folder per project.
1 folder for personal mails.
1 folder for support.
Inbox for most other things.
I usually set up rules to auto-direct mail into the right folders.
Files and folders, auto-filtering and a small inbox (i.e. Inbox Zero) are all good practices, but ultimately it's all about being able to find emails when you need them and for that there's only one answer for Outlook at the moment.
Install Xobni.
I use Windows Desktop Search.
I have a huge offline PST where I move everything, and I can easily find anything by searching.
Use folders - one for each subject ex. project X, Marketing, Personal, TODO etc.
I use Xobni as well to quickly find emails from specific sender.
Two "Special" folders: "Inbox" for emails sent to me and "Inbox-CC" for emails I'm CC'd. New emails arrive to one of those folders and then I decide where to store them.
Merlin Mann has spent a load of time exploring this as Inbox Zero. There's a great video presentation at Google which is well worthwhile watching.
I'm an extreme sorter and have had an interesting time reorganizing my boss's email patterns - she gets 500 emails per day. After spam. And requires that all of her email remain in Outlook (meaning transferring, say, emails form 2001 into an archive file is out). It's still an organic process, but the most effective, and most easily adopted by her, have been to:
1) Use folders to separate functional areas. For example: A Company or Work folder containing Contracts (with a subfolder for each active contract), Business Development (proposals/leads), and Personal Development (education and conference materials, receipts, etc). Outside of the Company folder is a Personal folder for non-work related emails.
My only rule of thumb is embrace the use of folders, but don't go crazy with the subfolders. It's one thing to separate your M&Ms from your Snickers and Dairy Milks, another to separate the colors of your M&Ms.
2) Categories suck. They are not labels or tags. They are deficient. That said, there's little else that can help you highlight/color emails except maybe flags in Outlook 2003. I have a rule set up to categories any email that is sent from other employees within the company, so they don't get overlooked.
Once that's done: Rules, Rules, Rules. I haven't found a limit. I've got all manner of highly refined Spam filters first, followed by News filters that move all the lists and newsletters and RFP announcements to a news folder and mark them as read (unread messages denote priority and require attention; news is optional - it's procrastination, not work). Then there is a rule for each contract filtering any email from the customer domain to the appropriate contract folder.
And of course I would say read Inbox Zero (specifically this one) and Email Zen and take what nuggets of goodness mean the most to you before proceeding.
I just keep it all in my Inbox and let it auto-archive. That way I can sort and search the Inbox to find anything. Google Desktop Search helps too.
I know some people who fastidiously reassign their emails into a huge hierarchy of folders. They can never find anything more than 2 days old! "Maybe I put it under Project X; no, maybe under Oracle Issues; no, ..."