Hi, I’m continually running into a Smart Folder issue and wondering if others have experienced the same.
I have a Strategy space with Objective and Key Result databases. I have a relation on the Key Result database relating KR entities to our Team entities in another space.
My objective is to have individual Team-specific spaces with Smart Folders of OKRs to which the specific teams are assigned. This gives my teams a hyper-focused view of the OKRs on which they should be focusing their efforts.
I have been able to successfully configure this Smart Folder in each team space. The issue I’m seeing is that the Smart Folder lists the Objectives and Key Results appropriately but also displays a No Objective folder. I have attempted many filter combinations and have been unable to find the appropriate configuration to remove the No Objective folder from being listed.
I’m hoping someone else has run into this as well. I’m grateful for any tips or tricks you all may have.
The ‘No objective’ folder exists to show Key Results that are not linked to any Objective (if there are any) and to allow Key Result to be created without a parent Objective.
There is no trick to removing it - it is not intended that it should be able to be removed. Of course, that decision can be debated.
Thanks for your response, @Chr1sG. I understand your explanation. Though, I will skew to your “that decision can be debated” comment.
As with any process, it’s ideal to train team members the ideal path of conducting work according to the process. In this specific scenario with OKRs, it is bad practice to allow team members to create KRs without associating those with their respective Objectives. While the display of the folder “No Objective” would expose those KRs without an assigned Objective, it presents users with the ability and opportunity to perform a less than ideal workflow of creating KRs without a relationship to Objectives. Additionally, the display of “No Objective” is more noise for the user and potentially leads users to perceive a negative case of something being wrong with their OKRs.
There are many scenarios where this might apply: Features without an assigned Product Area, Support Tickets without an assigned Customer, Contacts without an assigned Company, so on and so forth.
I can see both sides of this debate, of why one would want this “No {Entity}” folder to appear while others would want it hidden. Seems like this comes down to user preference, which could necessitate a possible improvement to how Smart Folders are hidden: possibly a Hide entities without a parent entity relationship toggle option.
Interestingly enough, I just realized the functionality to hide “No Objective” already exists in the Board View with KRs as the cards and Objectives as the lanes. Given the Filters feature is developed for use across all View types, it seems that adding this “hide” functionality to the Smart Folders filter might require only a small effort to implement.
Query-wise, I’m expecting the selection of KRs, grouped by Objective. In this case if KRs without parent Objectives existed, then we’d be okay with the “No Objective” folder appearing. Otherwise, hide the “No Objective” folder if it contains no children KRs (similar to how Objectives are hidden if the team has no children KRs related to that Objective).
