Finding tasks without a specific property set

[Bernt Hansen <bernt@norang.ca>]

Hi all,

I'm using properties to track estimated effort on tasks.  I have the
following setup for estimaged effort for tasks and use column view to
set the values normally.

,----[ .emacs settings for property Effort ]
| (setq org-global-properties '(("Effort_ALL" . "0 0:10 0:30 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 5:00 6:00 7:00 8:00")))
| (setq org-columns-default-format "%40ITEM(Task) %17Effort(Estimated Effort){:} %CLOCKSUM")
|
| (custom-set-variables
|  '(org-agenda-custom-commands (quote (("W" "Waiting Tasks" tags "/WAITING" nil) 
| 				      ("n" "Next Tasks" tags "/NEXT" nil) 
| 				      ("N" "Next Tasks - No Specified Duration" tags "-Effort=\"0:10\"-Effort=\"0:30\"-Effort=\"1:00\"-Effort=\"2:00\"-Effort=\"3:00\"-Effort=\"4:00\"-Effort=\"5:00\"-Effort=\"6:00\"-Effort=\"7:00\"-Effort=\"8:00\"/NEXT" nil)
| 				      ("h" "Next Home Tasks" tags "@home/NEXT" nil)
| 				      ("w" "Next Work Tasks" tags "@work/NEXT" nil)
| 				      ("E" "Errands To Run" tags "@errand/-DONE-CANCELLED" nil)
| 				      ("S" "Stuff To Do Someday" tags "/SOMEDAY" nil)))))
`----

One of the things I do regularly (as part of my weekly review) is find
NEXT tasks with no Effort property so I can use column view to add a
value for each task with no effort estimate.  I'm currently using a
custom agenda view (N) for this.

,----[ Tags search for NEXT tasks with no Effort property assigned ]
| Headlines with TAGS match: -Effort="0:10"-Effort="0:30"-Effort="1:00"-Effort="2:00"-Effort="3:00"-Effort="4:00"-Effort="5:00"-Effort="6:00"-Effort="7:00"-Effort="8:00"/NEXT
`----

I haven't found a better way to do this other than to list all possible
Effort property values in a tags search.  What I really want to match is
any NEXT task with no Effort property (or a Effort property value that
is blank)

Is there a way to do that?

I could just do a todo search for NEXT and go to column view and scan
down the list for blank entries... but my list of NEXT tasks is long
(currently 140).  Hmmm actually that isn't too bad and the NEXT todo
search is much faster than my "Next Tasks - No Specified Duration"
search which takes 6-10 seconds to execute.

Maybe I answered my own question :)

Regards,
Bernt