Filters and search
There are two different questions, and dotby answers them with two different tools.
- “Where is that one thing?” — the command palette.
- “Show me only this kind of work.” — filters.
Mixing them up is the main reason people find trackers slow.
The command palette
Section titled “The command palette”⌘K on a Mac, CtrlK on Windows and Linux, or just /.
Type three letters and you land. Tasks, projects, pages, channels, people — all of it, in one box, in about a second.
Two characters jump straight to a kind of thing:
| Type | Searches |
|---|---|
| @ | People |
| # | Channels |
And the G chords open the palette already scoped: G T for a task, G P for a project, G C for a channel, G M for a person. See Keyboard shortcuts.
The palette also runs things. Most actions you would hunt for in a menu can be typed instead.
Search speaks your language
Section titled “Search speaks your language”Search is accent- and language-tolerant. Typing erro finds Error handling.
Typing cirurgia finds a task written in Portuguese even if your interface is
in English. You do not have to remember which language a teammate wrote a title
in.
Filters
Section titled “Filters”Filters live on a view, and they change what everyone looking at that view sees — including what a bulk edit will touch.
Open the filter rail and every property is there, labelled, in a list. Not a row of icons you have to hover to identify.
Common ones to start with:
| Filter | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Status | Hide what is already done |
| Assignee | Just mine, or just one person’s |
| Priority | Urgent and High only |
| Labels | Everything tagged bug |
| Type | Only bugs, only features |
| Sprint | One time box |
| Module | One workstream |
| Due date | Overdue, or landing this week |
| Custom fields | Your own fields, right alongside the built-ins |
Filters combine. Each one narrows what the last one left.
Search inside the filter
Section titled “Search inside the filter”The filter rail has its own search box, and it searches across every
property, not just the one you happen to have open. Type mar and you get
the person Marina, the label marketing, and the module Market launch, all
at once. You do not have to know which property a value lives on before you can
find it.
Pin the five you actually use
Section titled “Pin the five you actually use”Every team filters by the same handful of things all day. Pin those and they stay on top of the rail — per project, so a bug project can pin Type and Severity while a marketing project pins Channel.
Group and sort
Section titled “Group and sort”Filtering decides what you see. Grouping decides how it is stacked.
- Group by status — the classic board.
- Group by assignee — who is loaded, and who is free.
- Group by priority — what is genuinely urgent.
- Group by module or sprint — cross-cutting workstreams.
Sorting then orders inside each group: by priority, by due date, by creation date, by manual order.
Turn a filter into a view
Section titled “Turn a filter into a view”A filter you rebuild every morning is a filter you should have saved.
A view is layout + filters + grouping + sort + visible columns, saved under a name, and shown as a tab at the top of the project. Ten seconds once, instead of thirty seconds a day forever.
See Projects and views.
Filters are in the URL
Section titled “Filters are in the URL”The current filter set is part of the address. Copy the URL and paste it into chat, and your teammate sees exactly the same board you are looking at — same filters, same grouping, same hidden-closed setting.
This is the cheapest way to answer “which tasks do you mean?”.
- Projects and views — where filters get saved.
- Bulk actions — act on what you just filtered.
- Keyboard shortcuts — the palette in depth.