Setting the Current Priority

Question

I would like to choose and use “Current Priority” in the “Assignments and Projects” window. How do I identify which priority in the “Define Priorities” dialog box should be recognized as the “Current Priority”?

Answer 1

Phil - priorities are defined from top to bottom. The top priority (in the list) that is not complete should be the current priority. So, if you have several priorities you can always select one to work on, but the current priority should be the highest priority that has not been completed. If you decide you want to make a later priority the current, you can move it up in the list of defined priorities.

Comments

Thanks for the explanation, but it does not currently seem to be working that way for me. Please see this screenshot, in which the “Current Priority” is somehow set to JHN, and I cannot tell why.

Current Priority should not be JHN2447×2095 271 KB

As you can see in this next screenshot, LUK is not complete yet.

LUK not done2445×1239 197 KB

Answer 2

The “Current Priority” is defined as the highest priority items that the current user is assigned and can actually work on. This means that the Current Priority changes per-user and depending on which tasks are available to work on (i.e. are not being blocked by some other work).

The idea is that Current Priority represents the work the current user should focus on right now.
Note that the “current user” is always you unless you’re in the My tasks view and change the user.

Answer 3

In an effort to show what happens with current priority, here is a quick video that shows that in the top filter current priority is actually the highest priority for which I have assignments. At the bottom of the window when Paratext indicates “current priority” it really means “active priority”
Current Priority

Comments

anon848905, thanks for the explainer video. I agree the meaning of “current priority” changes or has multiple senses in Paratext. The two main things that users have to pay attention to are 1) Current priority can be different for each team member. 2) If you ever check a box in a chooser filter for a specific priority, then Paratext tries to use that priority as "current’ everywhere else. It is unexpected that filtering in one view will affect all others.

Answer 4

Thank you, gentlemen; it has all been helpful. As a general takeaway, I am glad to now understand that the “Current Priority” selection option in the dropdown refers to the user, not to the project.

Comments

It seems to be implied that if a team uses priorities at all, then they need to prioritize all the books in the project scope. This need not be the case. The reality is that you can use priorities for special projects like The Life of Abraham, The Joseph story, or the Christmas story, and once you are back to only working on complete books then simply use the Assignments and Progress window to assign books as needed. Priorities give the most value when you want to create custom units of chapters to work on. They do not add much if you are working on complete books. Having said that, if you feel that making units for lets say, the Synoptics, or the Pauline epistles would help your team, then Priorities of groups of books can be helpful. The fact that if I define Synoptics as a priority, then I can filter and do assignments for all three synoptic Gospels easily. Others may have other opinions about how useful priorities are for teams only doing complete books.