Project Management

This is what my notes say about Autoassign. I don't recall the original source, but it was a post here or elsewhere, IIRC:

Well, I think I figured out what the difference is between * and # when used in auto-assign rules. When I used "www*" as the auto-assign rule, the value assigned to "Net Location" was always "www". But when I used "www#" as the rule, it matched an item containing http://www.nasdaq.com" and included "www.nasdaq.com" as the value in the Net Location text column.

It seems that the "." (period) character is treated as a delimiter between words, and * matches the text only up until the period is reached (i.e. "www").

When # is used, the "." is not treated as a delimiter, and the # matches the whole URL up to the next space (all text up to the next space). The documentation is a bit skimpy on the auto-assign rules, isn't it? Let's see if I have auto-assign rules right:

 • A word in a rule matches only a whole word in the item.
 • Delimiters (spaces, periods) must appear on both sides of the word.

For example, the rule "www" matches " www " or ".www." in the item, but not " wwww ". The item must contain each word contained in the rule. There is an implicit logical "AND" between the two terms. For example, the rule "dog cat" matches the item "dog chases cat" but not "dog" or "the dog bit Cathy".

An underscore matches a single space in the rule match spaces in the item. "john_smith" matches "john smith", but not "john smith" (2
spaces) or "john.smith" (period delimiter)

* matches any series of characters up to the next delimiter (space,
period?), but only when it comes at the end of a word (i.e. the rule "smi*" matches Smith in an item but the rules "*mith" and "s*th" do not).

Compound rules - contrary to the documentation, the rule "dav*_jones" did not match the words "dave jones" in an item.

What value is assigned to the folder when an item matches the Auto Assign Rule for that folder? My experimentation indicates the following:

 • Text folder - the text that matched the rule (e.g. "www" or
"www.nasdaq.com") is assigned as the value
 • Date folder - today's date is assigned as the value, even if the rule
and the text matched is a date like "4/1/00"
 • Checkmark column - no value is assigned
 • Popup list column - if the rule and the text matched is one of the
popup values, that popup value is assigned. Otherwise, the first
popup value is the value assigned.
 • Number folder - the number zero is assigned to the folder, even if the
text matched is a number like "1234"

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