OmniFocus<->Plan; Group vs Sub-Project
 

What are the plans to allow OmniPlan to work with OmniFocus? Is this on the horizon? Actually it makes more sense to me that it just be one well integrated app.

After discovering "groups" and then recognizing they are a way to deal with the sequential/parallel issues, I wondered if there was any differences between a sub-project and a group (or is dragging a Project into another project essentially making it a group.

OF doesn't do " sub-projects " action groups take the place of sub-projects. If you have a huge project, you could represent it with a folder and then make it contain individual projects etc .

Integration between OF and OP is discused elsewhere many times on the forums . Omni has stated that they have intentions of greatly improving the interaction between OF and OP but it's a way off.
It sounds like OP 2.0 will improve this area . Had both products been around at the same time, I think Omni would have seen the need much quicker but hind-sight is always 20-20 : )

I would call an action group a sub project. Omni doesn't label it that way. According to GTD, a project is an action that takes more than one action to complete it.

I view groups as mini projects, with the children actions needed to complete it's parent.

To answer the question, dragging a project into another project does make it an action group.

Thanks Spiral Ocean, for answering the question.

I assume they (in part) established groups to allow for sequential and non-sequential tasks to be in the same project. Not sure why they need to do this as this (establishing these groups) is not required in Project Mgt. I suspect it is related more to intitial software design. For project A I have 5 tasks; 4 need to be done in order and one can be done anytime. So I need to create a group so OF can manage this logically?

Tasks should be identified as sequential or not; not entire projects (or sub projects).

I suspect this alone will make any integration between OF and OP much more difficult.

If it were me, I would have merely integrated GTD options into OP, but then the purists from both ends would have likely complained.

[QUOTE=ext555;53020]Integration between OF and OP is discused elsewhere many times on the forums . Omni has stated that they have intentions of greatly improving the interaction between OF and OP but it's a way off.
It sounds like OP 2.0 will improve this area . Had both products been around at the same time, I think Omni would have seen the need much quicker but hind-sight is always 20-20 : )[/QUOTE]

I'm looking for a more firm answer, not a "someday we plan to". OP did exist when they developed OF. Omni has apparently never seen in advance the "need" to integrate their apps. Notes, Graffle, Plan and Focus all have logical needs to interact. One should be able to do a mind map in Graffle that syncs with an outline in Notes, that syncs with a project in Plan, that syncs with tasks in Focus. Actually there should just be two apps Graffle/Notes, and Plan/Focus. But breaking the cookie in half so you can sell more seems to be a good "business model".

My understanding is that OF was developed as sort of a special purpose OmniOutliner, since that was the product the GTDers were using.

There was a lot of emphasis early in the OF development on keeping it simple. (That seems funny in retrospect, because the end result is extremely powerful but I wouldn't call it simple.) Plan was seen as too heavyweight for a GTD app.

OmniOutliner and OmniGraffle also developed separately. The addition of outlines as an alternative representation for object trees in Graffle came several generations into the product. So I wouldn't say Omni is breaking the cookie in half, I'd say they realized that ice cream is good with cake. (And with their bundle pricing you can get a whole meal of Omni goodness, to extending the analogy well past what good taste would dictate.)

[QUOTE=dancingbrook;53025]
I assume they (in part) established groups to allow for sequential and non-sequential tasks to be in the same project. Not sure why they need to do this as this (establishing these groups) is not required in Project Mgt. I suspect it is related more to intitial software design. For project A I have 5 tasks; 4 need to be done in order and one can be done anytime. So I need to create a group so OF can manage this logically?

Tasks should be identified as sequential or not; not entire projects (or sub projects).
[/quote]

Simply identifying a task as sequential or not is not sufficient to unambiguously describe all potential combinations of parallel and sequential tasks. For simpler cases, a project or action group (which is [b]not[/b] a sub-project) will be composed entirely of either parallel or sequential actions and thus marking a project or action group as either parallel or sequential is the right choice, rather than having to individually mark each action as one or the other. For more complicated cases, one groups actions and action groups to express a hybrid structure.
[quote]
I suspect this alone will make any integration between OF and OP much more difficult.
[/quote]
Maybe it will, and maybe it won't, but what good is integration if the cost is that you can't correctly express the dependencies in your work?
[quote]
If it were me, I would have merely integrated GTD options into OP, but then the purists from both ends would have likely complained.
[/quote]
Not only the purists, but the customer base that didn't want to pay roughly twice as much to buy their tools! (OP: $150, OF: $80) And speaking as someone who uses both programs, I wouldn't be happy with using OmniPlan with some GTD features grafted on for what I do with OmniFocus, nor OmniFocus with some extra features for what I do with OmniPlan (not that this was an option, given that OmniPlan already existed). I suspect that for the majority of customers for either program, the other program is not something of interest. It makes more sense to build something that you'll be able to sell widely than something for a much narrower audience, if the revenue per copy is going to be similar. From what I can tell, everyone at Omni seems to enjoy their work, but I'm not entirely sure they would all continue to work there if the paychecks suddenly got much smaller :-)

[quote]
I'm looking for a more firm answer, not a "someday we plan to".
[/quote]
Based on past experience, you won't get the more firm answer you desire until Omni decides that whatever they are doing is close(r) to completion. Even if they knew exactly what shape and form the features are going to take, it's still a bit of a no-win situation for them to tell you what that will be and when you'll be able to buy it. I'd rather they had the flexibility to build what they need to build to have something really great, even if we don't get to mark a date on our calendar when it will be available rather than getting whatever they could cobble together and test a bit by the date it was promised.
[quote]
OP did exist when they developed OF. Omni has apparently never seen in advance the "need" to integrate their apps. Notes, Graffle, Plan and Focus all have logical needs to interact. One should be able to do a mind map in Graffle that syncs with an outline in Notes, that syncs with a project in Plan, that syncs with tasks in Focus. Actually there should just be two apps Graffle/Notes, and Plan/Focus. But breaking the cookie in half so you can sell more seems to be a good "business model".[/QUOTE]
I guess I don't understand why it is in Omni's best interests or mine to have only one or two apps so that they can't sell me just the parts I want to use. What are they going to charge for these beasts? I think the pricing is pretty reasonable now (and that includes my thinking that I just don't get enough use out of OmniGraffle to buy the latest version, cool as it is). I want them to sell their products at a price that I'm willing to pay that also nets them enough that they can continue to support the products and improve them. That won't work if they charge too much, and it won't work if they charge too little.

As for their apparent lack of vision, I'm not buying it. In my opinion, they've done a fine job of assessing what they need to provide to quickly build a large base of happy customers for their products. That doesn't mean that every customer has every feature he or she might desire, but that the product has enough features that people will buy it and use it productively and thus fund ongoing development, which has increased the amount of integration between their products. I don't think most people would agree that they should have waited to ship the first version of OmniFocus until they could provide the iPhone client and sync. I can't remember reading a single post on the OmniPlan forum (and I have read every single one of them) suggesting it would have been better to wait to ship it until it had a full personal task management system like OmniFocus built in. I do remember many posts where both customers and Omni felt much value had been derived from their interactive development style. Try getting Apple or Microsoft to take note of your great idea for an improvement to one of their products!