The My Assigned menu in the left pane can become a terrific asset when working in Agiloft, provided you take a few minutes to customize it to your needs. If you’ve ever found yourself becoming frustrated when scrolling through the list of tables to find the one you need, or resorted to Ctrl+F to locate a table, this article is for you. Or perhaps your organization set up a team home page, but it’s not customized for your specific working environment. I’ll show you how to save time and get quick access to your key records using the My Assigned menu. The screenshot below shows my personal My Assigned section for a commonly used KB:
Let’s look at a few ways to get the most out of this simple yet powerful feature:
- Save a search from each table you access most frequently. These searches don’t necessarily have to find records you’re assigned to. In fact, you may not be assigned to any records in that table, but still need to check on the process with some regularity. By saving at least one search from each table, I’ve created a handy shortcut to get to my most frequently visited tables without scrolling down the left pane.
- Pin saved searches that find important reference records. For example, we maintain several template knowledgebases, managed in our internal system by the KBs table. I’ve saved the Generative Templates search to the My Assigned section as a quick way to find this important list of records.
- As a manager, I use the My Assigned section to track tasks and projects assigned to members of my team, not just to manage my own workload. By having ready access to these searches, it’s easy to see who has time for a new project or a list of tasks passed the due date. In short, saving searches to the My Assigned menu is a great way to easily retrieve key information, in conjunction with Agiloft’s reporting capabilities and home pages.
- The thing I love most is that I don’t have to scroll down to find a table. My Assigned searches are just shortcuts to tables, after all, so I might be repeating myself from number 1 on this list. Compared to hunting for a table, it’s much faster to click on a My Assigned search to load the table, then click the Show All link to see all records and begin a new search if necessary. You could then load a new search from the table’s action bar.
- One of the options when you create a saved search is to load a particular View. This feature amplifies the time-saving benefits of the search by automatically switching to a view that’s optimized for the specific results. For instance, I save a search that finds my active Projects, which loads a view showing the Project Update Notes field. Further, quick edit is enabled on that field so I can add weekly update notes to all projects at once, without opening and editing each record. We’ll write more about quick edit and view optimization in upcoming blogs.
When you save multiple searches from the same table, they will be grouped together in the My Assigned section.
In a later post, I’ll show how I added the icons that appear next to my assigned searches. What kinds of searches would save you time? How else have you used the My Assigned menu? We’d love to hear your feedback – send an email to docs@agiloft.com
How to save searches to the My Assigned section
Note: If your administrator disabled the My Assigned menu by default, you can restore it by navigating to Preferences > Left Pane. Additionally, your ability to create and save searches may be limited on a per-table basis. This article assumes you can at a minimum manage your own searches and can see the My Assigned menu.
Steps to add a search to the My Assigned menu:
- Navigate to the table which has the relevant search, for example Tasks.
- Hover over the search menu and click Manage.
- In the Manage Searches window, scroll or page through to find the search you want. Then select the checkbox in the Show in My Assigned column.
- Click Save and Close. The search will appear in the My Assigned section of your left pane, giving you quick access to your most used tables and records.
