General Help Questions
 

I have a couple of questios about usage and the ability to do a few things.

1) say I have 3 or 4 concurrent projects that I want to assign a resource to, and that each project will take a week of work full time. do I instead estimate out the project end date to be 3 weeks, OR do I need to manually adjust the resources efficiency? Just something I am unclear on.

2)How can I convert a task to a milestone? I made my project list by using the outline view and typing/hitting return, and now want to convert a couple of tasks to milestones that they are.

3) how do you account for a daily routine? for example while the workday is from 8am-6pm with an hour for lunch, a few of the resources I need to access have a standing meeting, Or have a daily routine of file management etc for 2 hours in the morning. How do you accomodate and account for that?

Thanks

[QUOTE=toddbg]1) say I have 3 or 4 concurrent projects that I want to assign a resource to, and that each project will take a week of work full time. do I instead estimate out the project end date to be 3 weeks, OR do I need to manually adjust the resources efficiency? Just something I am unclear on.[/QUOTE]

So, one person is going to work on 3 or 4 tasks, each of which will take about a week's worth of time? If you're going to be working on these at the same time, you would then make all of the tasks 3 or 4 weeks long.

You could define your schedule a little better by identifying the subtasks for each of those and adding those to the schedule. You wouldn't have two individual tasks taking place at exactly the same time, unless you can actually work on two separate things at once. The projects (task groups) would still span the 3-4 weeks simultaneously, but the individual tasks could be planned out so that you have a better idea what you're doing and when. Depends how detailed you want to get.

[QUOTE=toddbg]2) How can I convert a task to a milestone? I made my project list by using the outline view and typing/hitting return, and now want to convert a couple of tasks to milestones that they are.[/QUOTE]

Select the task, open the Task > Information inspector (shortcut: control-command-T), use the drop-down Type menu to change it to Miletone.

[QUOTE=toddbg]3) how do you account for a daily routine? for example while the workday is from 8am-6pm with an hour for lunch, a few of the resources I need to access have a standing meeting, Or have a daily routine of file management etc for 2 hours in the morning. How do you accomodate and account for that?[/QUOTE]

View > Calendar Mode. Create green boxes to represent your actual work hours. You can create a different work schedule for each resource, and one for the overall project as well.

follow-up
 

That worked out, thank you.

The reason I was wondering about multiple projects is that I have a few different ones that are "research code" or "sketch logos" I know that each one will take about a day total, but I also know I will not work on one straight through to completion.

What is the best way to handle this?

Secondly - is there a way to level without level everything in the project?

I may be confusing a couple of types of information into the project list.
For example I have some reoccuring "tasks" that happen everyday, then I also have some larger projects.

Is this a situation where I am combining "Projects and steps to complete the project" with "Tasks, next actions, and todo items"? I took a look at kGTD and have not been able to fully wrap my head around the "Context and location", so I was trying to use OmniPlan to map out what I need to do - accomplish (in a variety of projects, personal items, etc) and get a Gantt view of when things would be completed. (another drawback to just making a todo list)

Thoughts?

Quick note: OmniPlan is not intended as a GTD app. If it helps you, fine. But you may be better off with OmniOutliner and Kinkless for your personal productivity.

Now to some of your questions:
If you have a task that will be worked on bit by bit over the next few weeks mixed with other things, you can assign a resource to work on it part-time. That's what the "Assigned Amount" column in the Task:Assignments inspector is for. If you work a 40 hour week and think you'll spend 4 hours a week on it, set the "Assigned Amount" to 10%.

Another way to account for daily routine, if there are things outside the project that eat up time, but not at a fixed time of day, adjust the resource's efficiency in the Resource:Information inspector. If you spend 2 hours per day catching up on emails, updating files, etc., change your efficiency from 100% to 75%.

How do I change that Assigned Amount?

I click the Task -> then look at the Task inspector, flip it to Assignments, it shows my name with a check box next to it, assigned 100% of 100% but if I click or try to right click in there I get no ability to alter that column.

Thanks - product is great - just finding some things confusing without the quick help.

Double-click on the "100% of 100%" text that you want to change.