Status Confusion
 

Hello - First Post and a brand new user of OF for Mac, iPhone and iPad. I'm very comfortable with GTD related concepts, but I have to tell you I'm a little bit stumped with a few features of OF. In particular (at least for now) is the "status" of a project.

A Project can be Active, On Hold(Waiting),Completed, and Dropped as shown in the Project Inspector. OK - Makes sense although I'm not sure of all of the implications of putting a Project "On Hold". The View Bar has a "Status" Filter which lists Any Status (OK I get this), Remaining (What's Remaining?),Due Soon, Next Action, Available (For what?),and Completed. Are we talking about two different statuses or are we using different words to describe the same thing?

I'm currently using the Active and On-Hold Status. An active Project for me is one that I'm currently working. I use the On Hold Status for Projects I'm thinking about or gathering more data before creating any actions. Am I thinking about this correctly? Am I painting myself in a corner?

One more thing... Why does a Context have a "Status"? Can someone give me an example of why a Context would be On Hold or Dropped?

Thanks in advance. I'll be back later with working with Context questions.

Jim

OK, here's my understanding of how it works: Project status refers to the overall condition of a project - for example, a project that's on hold is suspended for awhile, but may become active again at some point. The dropped status is for projects that you don't intend to come back to.

On the other hand, view statuses refer to the "availability" of actions. Remaining shows all the actions that are still not completed; next shows the next action in each sequential project; available actions are the ones that can be done because their start date and time has passed. (They may be blocked if they belong to a sequential project and there are preceding actions that are still undone.)

A context can have a status because it may be temporarily unavailable for some reason. This can apply to a person or another resource.

(If I'm wrong about any of this, I'm sure the more experienced people will chime in.)

Have a look at the manual. It's slightly out of date but should still answer your questions:

[URL="http://downloads.omnigroup.com/software/MacOSX/Manuals/OmniFocus-1.5-Manual.pdf"]http://downloads.omnigroup.com/software/MacOSX/Manuals/OmniFocus-1.5-Manual.pdf[/URL]

For further reading, see the "OmniFocus, GTD, and You" white paper:

[URL="http://downloads.omnigroup.com/software/MacOSX/Extras/OmniFocus/GTDandOmniFocus.pdf"]http://downloads.omnigroup.com/software/MacOSX/Extras/OmniFocus/GTDandOmniFocus.pdf[/URL]

You may also want to check out the video tutorials at:

[URL="http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnifocus/videos/"]http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnifocus/videos/[/URL]

Hope this helps.

-Dennis

Thanks Dennis for the link to the manual. That was very helpful (I'm typing with a smile on my face).

The link to the GTD and OF .pdf was a good one that I missed. Thanks.

Jim

[QUOTE=r48;83641]OK, here's my understanding of how it works: Project status refers to the overall condition of a project - for example, a project that's on hold is suspended for awhile, but may become active again at some point. The dropped status is for projects that you don't intend to come back to.

On the other hand, view statuses refer to the "availability" of actions. Remaining shows all the actions that are still not completed; next shows the next action in each sequential project; available actions are the ones that can be done because their start date and time has passed. (They may be blocked if they belong to a sequential project and there are preceding actions that are still undone.)

A context can have a status because it may be temporarily unavailable for some reason. This can apply to a person or another resource.

(If I'm wrong about any of this, I'm sure the more experienced people will chime in.)[/QUOTE]

I'll add there's two other statuses for projects, "Pending" and "Stalled".

You can't assign a project the status of pending, it gets automatically assigned for any project with a future start date. That project will appear in the "Remaining" filter but not the "Active" filter (since it's not active yet). So if you have a project you can't start yet or want out of the "Active" view but want it to come back later, assign it a start date.

You also can't assign a project the status of "Stalled". A stalled project is one that has no more remaining (i.e. yet to be completed) next actions associated with it. A stalled project is still considered "Active", since presumably you still plan to keep working on it. Switching the project filter to "Stalled" is great for getting projects moving or cleaning out OF during a review.