I wrote a separate post about some of the current limitations facing those who want to migrate from Logseq MD to Logseq DB. I’m sure a bunch of those problems will go away as the team turns to addressing those issues. But one thing that remains unclear is whether they will support importing custom workflows.
Right now, NOW/LATER is converted to TODO/DOING, but some of you might be like me and want to keep the distinction between four different task statuses. Once you import you can create custom task statuses in LogseqDB, but there is no easy way to do so on import. So here is what I do:
I use a MacOS app called BBEdit which has an excellent multi-file search and replace function. If you are comfortable in the terminal you can do these operations there as well, but I prefer to have a GUI. Whatever you do, backup first so that if you make a mistake at any point you can easily revert back!!!
I use TODOs as simple checkboxes, for instance in a shopping list. Logseq DB has another way to make checkboxes. You can assign a #checkbox tag (I use #ck) and then add a “checkbox property” to that tag. I like that these are no longer treated as a task status, meaning that they don’t show up in my queries for tasks. I don’t want them to.
To prepare for import I run this search and replace:
Search: ^(.*?- )TODO
Replace: \1#ck
I then edit the #ck properties after import.
The second thing I want to do is add a tag to all DOING items so that I can assign them a new status after import. They will still be DOING, but I want to treat them different from LATER (which will also be imported as DOING). For me, the difference is that LATER is for tasks, and DOING is for projects, so I want to create a new status for active projects. After Import I will call that status “active”, but I need to be able to find all my projects and manually change each one after import. For that I need to add a #project tag to them. Here is how I do that:
Search: ^(.*- )DOING(.*)$
Replace: \1DOING\2 #project
Fortunately I don’t have many active projects at one time, so it is easy to make the changes manually after import.