Smart Groups are one of the most powerful features of LogTen. They will help you quickly view your totals based on any attribute of your flying.
When you launch LogTen and navigate to the Radar tab, you'll notice the 'Analyze' and 'Plan' views.
In the Plan view, you'll see that there are a number of limits and currencies that have been set up for you – things like Day/Night and Instrument currency. And for commercial pilots, some key duty and limits groups come pre-loaded.
You can find and download region-specific limit groups in the Regional Limit Group section.
Also in the Plan view, you can use the Time Loupe feature at the top to see your groups ford or backward in time. See the Time Loupe video here.
In the Analyze tab, you can view flight time for different time periods: the last week, month, year, 28 days, and 12 months, as well as all your Currency, Limit, and regular Smart Groups current status. (You can read more about the Analyze tab here)
Currency, Limit, and regular Smart Groups work in very similar ways, but they will display their information differently. Currencies will count down the number of days you are still current. Limit groups will show the amount of time remaining until you reach the specified limit. Smart Groups enable you to keep count of any value based on the parameters you choose.
The standard Currency, Limit, and Smart groups mentioned above are the tip of the iceberg! So we'll dig a little deeper into Smart Groups and you will find an incredibly flexible and versatile tool which enables you to:
- Track totals for ANY criteria you choose, and you can customize criteria specific to your situation... want to see flights logged with night time greater than 2 hrs in a B757? No problem.
- Choose from several options for what data to display next to the group, instead of just Total Time you can choose from PIC Time, Landings, or a count of matching flights.
- You can choose what flights are displayed in the Smart Group results (only Simulator Flights, or only Positioning flights)
Here’s an example of how to do it:
- STEP 1: Tap the "Radar" tab and then "Analyze" at the top right. In that tab, tap the “+” button at the top left of the screen.
- STEP 2:Name your smart group. For this example, we’re going to sort for tailwheel time, so we’ll name the group Tailwheel.
- STEP 3: Set the date range. You can look back as well as forward to keep an eye not only on where you’ve been but make sure you’re not hitting limits any time in the near future. So we add the last 12 months as a time limit.
- STEP 4: Choose your criteria. Please feel free to play around with this, you’ll see that, with the ability to customize criteria, you can pretty much sort based on anything your heart desires. For this example, we'll choose Aircraft and Tailwheel.
Tap on the field and voilà, your new smart group is tracking your total tailwheel for the last 12 months.
How different time frames work for "Dynamic Date Range"
The beginning and the ending of where a group's entries are populated are between the "In Last" and "In Next" times. Here are the differences between Consecutive, Calendar, and regular time frames. Days will be used in the following examples but Hours, Weeks, Months, and Years work identically.
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Days (regular) will look back in multiples of 24 hours from the current time. For example, if it's currently 1647 PST, a group with In Last 1 Day will look back to 1647 PST yesterday.
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Calendar Days looks back to the beginning of the previous day, so 1 Calendar Day looks back to 0000 yesterday or "one calendar day ago", regardless of the current time. 0 Calendar days would be just the current day.
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Consecutive Days allows a group to specify a certain amount of time that will automatically reset the group to zero.
Note: Consecutive Days should only be used for the reset functionality
P.S. If you want help setting up a more complicated Smart Group or further guidance, please don’t hesitate to contact our support team via a support request here!
Smart Groups are one of the most powerful features of LogTen. They will help you quickly view your totals based on any attribute of your flying.
When you launch LogTen for the first time, you start off with a few standard smart groups including Currency information for Day/Night and Instrument operations. Also included are a few flight time Limits for the different time periods: the last week, month, year, 28 days, and 12 months.
Currency, Limit, and regular Smart Groups work in very similar ways, but they will display their information differently. Currencies will count down the number of days you are still current. Limit groups will show the amount of time remaining until you reach the specified hour limit. Smart Groups are the basic option, allowing you to keep count of any value.
These standard Smart Groups are the tip of the iceberg! Dig a little deeper and you will find an incredibly flexible and versatile tool which enables you to:
- Track totals for ANY criteria you choose, and you can customize criteria specific to your situation ... want to see flights logged with night time greater than 2 hrs in a B757? No problem.
- Set maximums for currency groups, enabling you to handle currencies that require a certain amount of one thing but no more than X of another. E.g. 3 hours total instrument, but no more than 1 hour simulated.
- Choose from several options for what data to display next to the group, instead of just Total Time you can choose from PIC Time, Landings, or a count of matching flights
Here’s an example of how to do it:
STEP 1: Click the “+” button at the bottom left of the main screen and select "New Smart Group". Alternatively, click “File” >> “New Smart Group”.
STEP 2: Name your smart group. For this example, we’re going to sort for tailwheel time, so we’ll name the group Tailwheel Time.
STEP 3: Set the date range. You can look back as well as forward to keep an eye not only on where you’ve been but make sure you’re not hitting limits any time in the near future. So we add the last 12 months as a time limit.
STEP 4: Choose your criteria. Please feel free to play around with this, you’ll see that, with the ability to customize criteria, you can pretty much sort based on anything your heart desires. For this example, we'll choose Aircraft and Tailwheel.
STEP 5: If you wish, you can manually key-in color thresholds to let you know when we’re getting close to your specified limit or goal. You can also have the total on the left side be shown as Total Time, a Count of Flights, Total PIC time, etc.
How different time frames work for "Dynamic Date Range"
The beginning and ending of where a group's entries are populated from are between the "Flight is in the last" and "Flight is in the next:" times. Here are the differences between Consecutive, Calendar, and regular time frames. Days will be used in the following examples but Hours, Weeks, Months, and Years work identically.
-
Days (regular) will look back in multiples of 24 hours from the current time. For example, if it's currently 1647 PST, 1 Day will look back to 1647 PST yesterday.
-
Calendar Days looks back to the beginning of the previous day, so 1 Calendar Day looks back to 0000 yesterday or "one calendar day ago", regardless of the current time. 0 Calendar days would be just the current day.
-
Consecutive Days allows a group to specify a certain amount of time that will automatically reset the group to zero.
Note: Consecutive Days should only be used for the reset functionality
Display options
Show Results As:
In this dropdown, you can select the data you want the groups to display.
Threshold colour limits
For Smart Groups, you can set these thresholds to be ascending (from low to high) or descending (from high to low). Let's take a look at the first example, ascending. Here we have set the thresholds to be 10, 20, 40, All. If the group's resulting time value is less than 10 it will be grey. Red if the value is between 10-19, orange/yellow if the value is between 20-39, and green if the value is 40 or higher.
Lastly, let's take a look at the Smart Group where the thresholds are set descending. Here we have set the thresholds to be 40, 20, 10, All. If the group's resulting time value is 40 or greater, it will show Red. Orange/yellow if the value is between 39-20, green if the value is between 19-10 and grey if the value is lower than 10.
Click OK and voilà, your new smart group is tracking your totals.
P.S. If you want help setting up a more complicated Smart Group or further guidance, please don’t hesitate to contact our support team via a support request here!
Comments
Hi haqeem.nasser, If a flight spans the timeframe of a smart group only the portion of the flight that is within the smart group date range will be counted. For example, if you have a smart group set to look at December only, and you have a 3-hour flight that starts at 2300 on Nov 30, only 2 hours of that flight will be calculated in the smart. But the entire flight will display in the filtered list of flights. Hope that helps.
Hi there. I'm just wondering why my Display Option which is set as Total Time has different timings as in the Total time columns of the entries.
Can you please explain, "And entry is in the next:" field? I don't understand the idea of filtering future flights.
Also, why is it that when I have a smart group tracking ICUS time I can display "Total ICUS" hours but when I add a second filter, say, aircraft type I lose the ability to display ICUS time (it is no longer in drop down menu), I can only show Total Time.
Hi Brant, The "Entry is in the Next:" field is used in various ways. Since Smart Groups can be used to filter anything, many people like to include their future schedule in whatever they are filtering for. But also, Negative values can be used to designate the start and endpoints for the group. For example, a group set to filter "...in the last: 1 Calendar Month" & "...in the next: -1 Calendar Month" will display only the previous month.
Regarding the ICUS time. You are correct that when a single criterion is used that criteria will be added as a Display Option, but when multiple criteria are used only the default Display Options are displayed. Under the Pro subscription, you can use Nested Groups on the Mac to create more advanced filters which it sounds like you are trying to do. If you want to get in contact with our support team they would be more than happy to help design it.
The nested Smart Groups worked! Thanks!
How can I set up night and instrument as one smart group? I added the criteria as
“Display night time”. Then, at the bottom, added “Actual Instrument Is”
Hi bbollhardt1
What you described should work. If the criteria is "Any entry with Actual Instrument greater than zero", then the group will display Night time.
Or you could do the reverse. Make the criteria, "Any entry with Night greater than zero", then display Total Instrument time.
Each of these groups will get you close to Night Instrument time, but neither will be exact.Imagine a scenario in which you have an entry with 2 hours of Night and 1 hour Instrument. How much of that Instrument was at night? We don't know.So the two group above will either display 2 hours or 1 hour depending on how you have it set up.
I tried to create a smart group to catalog "XC PIC time", I set the two criteria for "TIME, PIC, IS" and "TIME, XC, IS" and somehow my total is actually .1 hours longer than my total XC time recorded (impossible). What am I doing wrong?
Hi Roman
What do you have the "Display As" field set to in the smart group settings? Another way might be to create the criteria to "TIME, XC, >, 0" then set the "Display As" to PIC
I am new to LogTen Pro and have a few different Smart Groups that I would like to set up and am in need of some guidance.
Hi flyinfisherman
Welcome to Logten! Go ahead and Contact Support in-app and our team should be able to assist
Why when I updated to the latest version, have I lost all the limits, landing currencies and smart groups that I had for years? They are still on my laptop but not on my iPhone which is where I need them.
Hi Matt
Go ahead and Make a Backup on your Mac app. Then on your iOS device try running the Repair function. To find this, go to the Settings menu and long press anywhere on the screen for 3-4 seconds. A new "Troubleshooting" menu will appear. Open this and run "Repair Logbook". If you are still having issues Contact Support in-app from the Help section and they can assist further.
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