Control sort order of entries for Gmail with multiple login accounts

jboren

Greetings,

This is probably a feature request but maybe there's a way to deal with this that I don't know of. Here's the scenario:

We use G-Suite for business and also have a few dozen free gmail accounts that we use for password recovery addresses for various services for clients. When I go to log into gmail, I use the hotkey combo and it pops up the list of ALL the gmail logins stored in 1password that I have access to. Dozens of them. Then, I have to slowly scroll thru all of them until I find the one I need somewhere way down the list. The one I need, regardless of which one it is, seems to NEVER be at the top, but that could be coincidence. Anyway I read on another article about how you don't want to rearrange the list of entries on the fly, for example moving the most used to the top, because it makes it harder for visually-oriented people to find their entry in the list, and that's a very valid concern, but I think there may be some other options, at least for Gmail.

The way the gmail logon screen works now (and I hate it but have no influence over google) is, the first screen asks for your email address, fill that click next and you get a screen with the email address on it, and a box for the password below. On the first screen, there's no way for 1password to have any idea which of the multiple accounts I want to use, fair enough. But on the second screen the username is printed right above the password entry field. It should be possible to parse that and only offer the correct login option.

Another possibility I though of, would be to be able to set a 'default' login for any service that has multiple logins, and that login would appear at the top of the list always. 1password is smart enough to know that all our g-suite accounts @mycompany.com and all the @gmail.com logins are for the same service so if I could set my g-suite login as default for all google service logins, that would cover 98% of my use case. I use the other gmail logins on rare occasions, but every time I log in I am presented with dozens of gmail logins that I never or rarely use, with a bunch of them above my login, which i use all the time. I have a hard time scanning thru the list to find mine, particularly on a mac where it doesn't' show the email address, just "Google Apps" and I have to mouse over to see which email that one's for. Yea, I know I could rename that login with my email address in the name, but I keep forgetting... :)

Anyway is there a better way to deal with this that I don't know?? If not, consider this a feature request for 1 of 2 features.

Either:
1.) read the email address off the second gmail login screen and only offer the login for that email address.
or
2.) allow user to set default login for services with multiple logins stored.

Thanks a ton!

Best regards,
Joe

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1Password Version: 6.8.1 (681006)
Extension Version: 4.6.11.91
OS Version: Both OS X and Windows
Sync Type: Not Provided

littlebobbytables

Greetings @jboren,

So there are a couple of levels to the current sorting that I wish to cover just to make sure you're getting the full use out of how 1Password currently works.

1. FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name) and registered domain matching. I don't know about possible business variants so please do educate me if needed. The standard login page for Google that I'm aware of is at https://accounts.google.com. 1Password will first look to see what Login items match against the FQDN of accounts.google.com and then to the registered domain of google.com. If there are a mixture it will always display the FQDN group over those that only match the registered domain. I have seen confusion from users who didn't know about this particular piece of behaviour.
2. Favourites. After grouping by either FQDN or registered domain matching we then split each of these groups by whether they are flagged as a favourite. Favourites appear before non-favourites in their own group.
3. Alphabetical ordering based on title. Each of these four potential groups is then sorted alphabetically.

If there are FQDN matches 1Password will show the favourites, followed by non favourites and will hide the registered domain matches behind a click to show more action in the menu. If there are only registered domain matches 1Password shows the favourites followed by the non-favourites in lieu of more exact matches.

There is an option titled Allow filling in pages that closely match saved websites in the Browsers tab of 1Password's preferences. You want this disabled as what it does is only look for registered domain matches, grouping everything into one pile.

So you can manually tweak the sorting via first favourites and if needed, altering the titles.

Offering the user the ability to set a default Login item sounds nice in theory but, and I apologise for sounding pessimistic, I fear it will cause huge amounts of confusion for the majority of our users who will end up thinking 1Password has lost data when they aren't asked to choose. Sometimes a design decision (which we certainly don't always get right) comes down to can it cause confusion and the ratio between benefit versus accidental misuse.

At the moment 1Password retains no state when filling, each invocation is a completely separate task. A degree of automation would be very neat as long as it was solid. If the automation causes false filling at all it could become a liability and one we would be responsible for causing, one that is avoided with the more cautious approach that we have at the moment. This doesn't lessen the fact that I think most people would like such a feature but it means we would have to be very sure it worked nigh on perfectly before releasing it onto our users.

Did anything here help improve how 1Password orders your existing items based on what 1Password currently can do?

jboren

Hey littlebobbytables,

Great username, BTW... :) THANK YOU! That's a great explanation, exactly what I was looking for. I think with this knowledge, I think I can get it behaving close enough to what the ideal behavior would be for my use case.

I totally get where you're coming from with being conservative changing things that would have a big impact on how users interact with the product. It's one thing when you're introducing new behavior, but changing existing behavior can be a real minefield when users have existing workflows and expectations. And I love automation as much as anyone, but there are plenty of parts of my job I haven't automated yet cause I can't figure out how to do it without too many errors, which, as you mentioned, kind of kills the case for automating that particular thing.

I really appreciate the care you guys put into the product, and I think this will give me what I need to get it working close enough to how I want. Thanks for the help! I'll post back if I run into anything I don't understand.

Best regards,
Joe Boren

littlebobbytables

Greetings @jboren,

I actually start off in these forums as a user of 1Password much like yourself. I was offered the honour/opportunity of working for AgileBits but by then those that knew me did so as littlebobbytables and so I have the rare privilege of being one of the few members of AgileBits here in the forums who doesn't go by their real name. Oh and Randall Munroe is brilliant! :lol:

Automation can be fantastic but errors can kill it and make a task more complex than if it were handled manually. I learnt that one recently when a change disrupted one of our build scripts. It took some time and a healthy amount of expressiveness shall we say before everything could eventually be tamed. That said, when automation works well it does make like so much easier like filling in the browsers or something even as simple as the keyboard shortcuts. You don't think about it much until you've lost it for a while.

We always love hearing ideas, observations etc. from our users so if there is a site you use where we don't work well, something in 1Password that you think could be improved or is missing please do let us know. We can't make any promises but users do help shape 1Password and much of the work I've done on the extension and filling code is based on bug reports and requests. The downside is trying to make a good product doesn't mean being able to please everybody. It's a balancing act. Lots of options can be joy for power users or a source of never ending pain for less experienced users. Sometimes an idea can be great but would only benefit a small group or maybe worse, be potential confusion for a larger part of the user base. We do try to consider all requests though and keep 1Password moving forward and a product that we all love to use :smile:

If you have any questions about the ordering that we can help with please let us know.

bciccolo

Thank you for your explanation littlebobbytables but I have a similar issue with 15+ Google accounts in 1Password and the sort order should be tweaked. After sorting within each of the groups you've listed above, I recommend sorting by the login's username.

I've made sure all my Google logins use the same website (https://accounts.google.com) and I don't have any favorites. Notice how the accounts are NOT sorted by username which makes it difficult to scan the list:

I don't want to add a custom suffix to each login's title (I think I removed all those when 1Password starting showing the username!). Is there a reason why the username isn't considered by the sorting algorithm?

bundtkate

@bciccolo: I'm afraid I'll be a bit less technical in my explanation than littlebobbytables, but I'll do my best in his absence. Usernames aren't taken into account likely because they're only displayed for items with matching titles. In this particular case, it makes total sense to use them as a sort factor, but if mini is ever showing you some items with the same title and others with different titles, only some of those will show usernames, which goes back to the point about things making sense in a certain setting and being confusing in others. I'm honestly a fan of suffixes myself. My various Gmail accounts have defined purposes and adding a suffix with that purpose makes scanning easy for me (Gmail - Work, Gmail - Personal, Gmail - Spam, etc.). That said, I can definitely see the utility in sorting by username and will certainly pass your feedback along to the team. :chuffed:

bciccolo

Thank you @bundtkate for your response. I understand that you don't want to confuse people. I'm only suggesting sorting by username when all other factors are equivalent.

1Password is currently showing all my Google logins in some order (i.e., the order doesn't change from one day to the next). It seems like the sort is based on when the login was first added in 1Password. Sorting by username makes more sense then sorting by creation date IMHO.

Lars

@bciccolo - thanks again for the feedback. One of the issues we have with making changes to heavily-used UI elements like search and sort is that people have gotten used to having it work the way they've come to expect it. Making changes to how things are sorted/search will often - OK, usually - wind up annoying as many people as it pleases. That's not to say we don't ever do it, just that we have to consider the ramifications for all users before we make changes to a UI that's familiar to so many people.

rwspiegel

Hello all,
I would like to be able to sort on different fields in each record as well. Many of the same things mentioned above, like I have 11 different google mail account records. How 'bout giving the user a couple of different presentation formats (browser views), you could add multiple views as a new feature so as not to confuse existing users? One format would be like a spreasheet and the user would be able to sort/filter/group any of the fields in the record (thing Excel or SQL). I constantly have this issue when sharing data with others; i.e. they enter with one tag ("business") when I'm expecting something else like "work", etc.
Thanks
Rolfe Spiegel

ag_michaelc

Hey Rolfe (@rwspiegel)! Thanks for the feedback. :smile: The design and functionality of 1Password is ever-evolving, so it's always helpful to hear from our users and their use cases.