How to Show Recent Activity First?

[John Fineberg]

Hi Brendan,

When opening a database document, I’m wondering if there’s any way to set up the window with a list of my recent activity first. I’m attaching a screen shot of how it currently lays out.

Under the second column, “Forms,” some of those contacts are people with whom I’ve had recent conversations and such. But not all of them. So is there a way to lay out that column in chronological order, based on my most recent activity first?

John

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[Brendan]

Sure. Click on the Form button in the toolbar and then select the First Sort Field popup button. Change it to some date field that records that information and click on the descending button next to it. That’ll cause the records to be sorted by date in descending order. If you don’t have a Date field, add the Date Created Field type and sort by that instead.

[John Fineberg]

It looks like I’ve already set it like you recommended. And yet only one of the contacts that I’ve been working on today (and lately) is showing up at the top of the list. So I added a Date Modified field. I can see that it made some changes to my list, but it still doesn’t show the records I’ve been working on today (and the one and only contact that had been showing up is no longer at the top of the list). Ideas?

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[Brendan]

Remove the grouping by Keyword and that’ll work better for you. The Group Records By setting takes priority in the sorting. And you don’t need the second and third sort settings if your first sort field is by Date Modified. The reason for that is because there will most likely never be more than one record with the exact same Date Modified value. So it doesn’t make sense to have those other levels of sorting. The way those sort and group settings work is by a hierarchical system. The Group Records By sorting takes precedence, so it sorts by that first. Then for all the records within each grouping, the First Sort Field will dictate the sort order. Then, if you happen to have values that are identical for the First Sort Field’s values, then the Second Sort Field kicks in. And only then if you also happen to have values in the Second Sort Field that are identical, then the Third Sort Field kicks in.

[John Fineberg]

That worked fabulously! What a great convenience it is to be able to quickly get back to what you’ve been working on recently, without having to do a search by name!

Thanks again, Brendan!

[Brendan]

Hi John,

An alternative thing you can do is to create a Saved Search which uses one of the “in the period” comparison operator so you can have Tap Forms display just those records which have the date value that is one of the provided built-in periods, such as “is today”, “is yesterday”, “is this week”, “is last week”, “is next week”, etc.

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