Last week, Wayne provided three quick tips to get beginners started mapping with MindManager 9 for Mac. Today, I’m going to provide intermediate users with some guidance on how to take their information mapping skills to the next level by creating Power Filters.
Steps To Take To Create Power Filters
1) Say we are working with a Status Report and want to track down all Priority 1 tasks that are overdue to change their Green Flag status to Red or Yellow Flags.
2) To accomplish this we create a filter in order to track down these tasks. Go to the Filter icon and from the drop-down, and select Edit Rules.
3) Here we already have several simple filters listed, but we want to create a Power Filter to narrow down we we are looking for. To do this, click on the “+” sign in the lower left corner.
4) Next we will see a pop-up menu. Select the criteria required for the Power Filter. We can add additional properties to filters by clicking on the plus sign at the end of the row in the menu. For our example Power Filter, we decided that our results must contain ALL of the following criteria:
- Green flag, Priority 1,
- Not Complete
- and an end date of 7/14/2011.
In the bottom left-hand corner, we see the number of items that match our Power Filter in the current map.
5) When we’ve defined our Power Filter, click OK to save. We will then find the new Power Filter saved in the Filter dropdown. This Power Filter is not map specific – meaning we are able to use this on any map we open.
6) When selecting our new Power Filter, we will see all the items that exactly match your criteria
- Green flag, Priority 1
- Not complete
- Past the due date of 07/14/2011
We also notice a big yellow band at the bottom of the screen indicating we are observing a map in a filtered view.
Knowing how to create Power Filters will make your visual mapping experience even more productive! Keep an eye out for next week’s tips for power users!
