"Due or Flagged" status filter with implicit flags

[curiousstranger]

Greetings,

In poking around the 1.6 release, I noticed that the "Due or Flagged" status filter doesn't display actions which are implicitly flagged due to their project's flagging. Is this intentional? If so, is this something that could be configurable? I often flag important projects and rely on the implicit flagging to ensure I see members of those projects.

[whpalmer4]

Are you sure you are looking in all the right places? I certainly see actions flagged with implicit flags (and no due dates) showing up in my Due or Flagged views.

[curiousstranger]

Absolutely - I only see explicitly flagged items in Due or Flagged. The only implicitly flagged items showing up are those with due dates.

[Toadling]

Hmm, I'm not seeing implicitly flagged items in a Due or Flagged view either.

-Dennis

[Ken Case]

In poking around the 1.6 release, I noticed that the "Due or Flagged" status filter doesn't display actions which are implicitly flagged due to their project's flagging. Is this intentional?

No, it sure isn't! We'll fix it, thanks for letting us know!

[CatOne]

No, it sure isn't! We'll fix it, thanks for letting us know!

See issue # [OG #407104] :-)

[whpalmer4]

Are you sure you are looking in all the right places? I certainly see actions flagged with implicit flags (and no due dates) showing up in my Due or Flagged views.
Well, okay, upon closer examination, I only see it when there was previously a due date for the action with an implicit flag. When I removed same, the window didn't get refreshed sufficiently to remove the items which had been there thanks to their due dates, so it looked like the implicit flag was keeping it in view.

[curiousstranger]

Thanks for fixing this. Now I have another question/request on this feature. I'm not sure I understand the reasoning behind placing the Due/Flagged filter in the "Show Actions with Status" filter rather than in the "Flag Status" filter. Looking at "Due or Flagged" without being able to filter out the Unavailable (due to start date or sequential process) doesn't seem very useful. Am I missing the use case for this feature? Is there a reason it doesn't make more sense for this item to be part of the "Flag Status" filter? I would definately use it as a Flag Status filter, but as is, I can't imagine what I would use it for.

[whpalmer4]

I think the general idea is that one could use the flag to signal something you wanted to work on, regardless of when it might be due. Go through your projects in the morning, flag the stuff you want to do. Then pull up the context mode view, select "due or flagged" actions and grind it out. That gets you all of the stuff you've decided is important to get done first, in essence. One might regard it as the OmniFocus analog of Things' "Today" feature.

There were lots of complaints in the past about how it was impossible to get a single view that showed both things that were due and things that were flagged. Omni listened and addressed that need. Reasonable people can disagree about whether such a view should show items which are due but unavailable -- I think it is a good thing, and protects one from nasty surprises, but I can also see cases where I might not want it. Use Help->Send Feedback to send in your request for the ability to control the behavior. The Due Soon filter works the same way, showing actions which are due (soon or already) but unavailable.

[curiousstranger]

There were lots of complaints in the past about how it was impossible to get a single view that showed both things that were due and things that were flagged. Omni listened and addressed that need. Reasonable people can disagree about whether such a view should show items which are due but unavailable -- I think it is a good thing, and protects one from nasty surprises, but I can also see cases where I might not want it. Use Help->Send Feedback to send in your request for the ability to control the behavior. The Due Soon filter works the same way, showing actions which are due (soon or already) but unavailable.

You could see things that were due but not available by moving the Due/Flagged filter to the flagged menu, and setting the Available/Remaining filter to Remaining.

The problem with showing implicitly flagged but not available items (note that these items *don't* have due dates is that if you have a large sequential project, your view gets all clogged up with unavailable actions that you can't do anything about. I'm not the only person, someone else has noticed the same issue (http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?p=59584#post59584).

[invictus26]

I completely agree with this. I really think the Due/Flagged option should be separate from the Available view. I have cases, as mentioned earlier, of sequential projects with all actions showing. I also have repeating actions that have start dates set in the future, but still show up because they're still flagged. I'd love to see this fixed. Thanks!

[curiousstranger]

Invictus, be sure to "Send Feedback" from the OmniFocus Help menu, so they're aware there's plenty of folks who feel this way.