Perspective by start date excluding certain projects
 

Hello Forum,

I've recently moved away from deadline based planning to start date based planning which is great. I have a perspective set up which has all contexts (except waiting for) and all projects selected. It is organized by start day with Any Start Date closed. (Thanks to the forum for helping me set this up!)

One rub: I have three specific recurring projects that are my daily, weekly, and weekly w/ Mrs flyingdesigner reviews - projects that pop up daily or weekly which outline my tasks during a review. I need them to have start dates/times in order to fit into my workflow - so that I know to build in time to do them.

On days like today, when my weekly review hits, that is a lot of tasks. I'd like to create a perspective that mimics my To Do perspective but doesn't show the review projects so I don't see that whacking big list in the first part of the day which is devoted to doing other things.

Any suggestions?

Thx

Take your existing perspective, select all of the projects under the Library in the sidebar (but not the Library itself), then cmd-click in the sidebar on the projects you don't want included to deselect them, save as a new perspective...

Note that if a project you don't want is in a folder, you have to deselect the folder after deselecting the project or it will still include the project. If you can put those projects you don't want in their own folder, that makes the job a bit easier, as you can collapse the folder and deselect it.

Doesn't seem to work. When I select my existing perspective (which is a context view) and switch to projects, it changes the sort order, etc. Am I doing something wrong?

Okay, make a note of your desired perspective settings. Now go to project mode (using View->Planning Mode or cmd-1, [b]not[/b] by pressing the Projects button in the toolbar!) and select the desired projects for your perspective. Having done so, use View->Context Mode or cmd-2 to switch to the context mode view and apply the desired perspective settings. Save as a new perspective.

The Projects and Contexts toolbar buttons actually open perspectives named (wait for it) Projects and Contexts, so if you click them in the process of setting up a perspective, you may not get quite what you want :-)

For some reason, this isn't working.

More detail:

Daily, Weekly, and Mrs FD reviews are each discrete projects in a folder called Reviews in the Library. I have selected the projects I want in this particular context in the Project Pane. (see Projects pic attached).

I then hit command-2 to swap to Context view and there are the list of tasks from the projects not selected... (see Contexts pic attached)

Really not sure what I'm not doing correctly. Of note is that when I swap to context view, it has kept the sort order from the last perspective I applied.

Now, I did try, after selecting the projects in project view, using View>Show in Context Mode, but all it did was bonk at me.

It seems as though when I'm in context mode, the contexts I have selected to see are overriding the projects I have deselected.

Any ninja's lurking?

Sorry, I omitted a vital step! Originally I was thinking you were doing this as a project mode perspective, where simply selecting the projects you wanted would have been sufficient, but because you are switching to context mode, you need to focus on those projects first. So, after selecting your desired projects, use View->Focus on <selected projects> and then switch to context mode and continue with the instructions.

Focusing on a set of projects/folders allows you to go to context mode and only see the subset on which you had focused, rather than the whole database. It's a great feature if you like splitting up your projects into roles or other groupings.

Bingo!

Thanks so much.

As an aside, I wish there were more transparency on why/when certain settings carry over from Project to Context / Context to Project views. I wish that there were a way to see both panes when creating a perspective and then the choice in which mode to see it.

I don't think any view bar settings carry over in the absence of a perspective setting them. My impression is that it may seem like some do, but it's just a coincidence. Focus carries over, clearly, but selection does not.