How to filter out all stalled projects?
 

In my "available" and "next" perspectives I never want to see empty projects. How do I filter them out?

[QUOTE=makesense;89504]In my "available" and "next" perspectives I never want to see empty projects. How do I filter them out?[/QUOTE]

Change the project to on hold status.

[QUOTE=SpiralOcean;89512]Change the project to on hold status.[/QUOTE]

That is not a solution. I have a number of on-hold projects that have a completely different workflow than empty projects (which are empty because they 1. have no actions inside or 2. have no available actions).

I see that a filter option is missing. Just like with empty projects in no context of Contexts.

Another thing I miss a lot compared to Excel: OmniFocus does not have a "not equal to" capabilities in view options.

Rob Trew's [URL="http://bit.ly/OF-Find2"]Where in OF[/URL] script handles all of these requests with relative ease.
[code]
projects where (status is active) and number of available tasks > 1 --sh gr=folder st=next
[/code]
produces a window which selects only active projects with at least one available task and shows them grouped by folder, displaying only next actions

"does not equal" is also handled. As an example:
[code]
projects where name does not contain "omni" and its estimated minutes is not missing value and estimated minutes is not 10
[/code]
finds all projects that don't contain "omni" in the name, have a duration estimate, and that estimate is not 10 minutes

Use the assisted search editing to get an idea of how to write the expressions.

[QUOTE=makesense;89514]That is not a solution. I have a number of on-hold projects that have a completely different workflow than empty projects (which are empty because they 1. have no actions inside or 2. have no available actions).

I see that a filter option is missing. Just like with empty projects in no context of Contexts.[/QUOTE]

Projects that have no action are stalled and will never move forward toward completion.

Maybe you need to look at your project? Is it really a single action? Is it waiting for something to happen? If it is waiting for something to happen, create a action in the project with a future start date and assigned to a waiting context. This will hide the project from the available filter.

Projects that have no available actions will not show up in the available filter.

[QUOTE=whpalmer4;89516]Rob Trew's [URL="http://bit.ly/OF-Find"]Where in OF[/URL] script handles all of these requests with relative ease.
[code]
projects where (status is active) and number of available tasks > 1 --sh gr=folder st=next
[/code]
produces a window which selects only active projects with at least one available task and shows them grouped by folder, displaying only next actions

"does not equal" is also handled. As an example:
[code]
projects where name does not contain "omni" and its estimated minutes is not missing value and estimated minutes is not 10
[/code]
finds all projects that don't contain "omni" in the name, have a duration estimate, and that estimate is not 10 minutes

Use the assisted search editing to get an idea of how to write the expressions.[/QUOTE]

The result of the script execution is a pop-up window with uneditable contents? Is there a screenshot available?

[QUOTE=SpiralOcean;89518]Projects that have no action are stalled and will never move forward toward completion.

Maybe you need to look at your project? Is it really a single action? Is it waiting for something to happen? If it is waiting for something to happen, create a action in the project with a future start date and assigned to a waiting context. This will hide the project from the available filter.

Projects that have no available actions will not show up in the available filter.[/QUOTE]

Single action projects are in Miscellaneous single-action folders. I have several Misc folders for different areas of responsibility embodied as folders.

Some of the projects have no actions inside as they are used as placeholders - so I always have my logical structure at hand even after all the currently necessary work for that project is over.

I refer to projects more as folders than actions. I have Projects placeholders for those types of work which usually requires or allows sequention completion.

As to 'waiting context': I assign On Hold to all low-priority projects so I can see them when I review database. Other projects, incl. placeholders are active.

The only thing I'm badly missing so far as I understand is ability to natively hide those empty projects (used as placeholders or having no appropriate actions in accordance with my Next or Availability perspectives).

[QUOTE=makesense;89523]The result of the script execution is a pop-up window with uneditable contents? Is there a screenshot available?[/QUOTE]

The script by default will put up a window showing all of the matching items, allowing you to pick and choose none, some, or all of them to be displayed in OmniFocus. You can add options to the search (as I did in the first example) which bypass this and just show you everything.

The chooser window might look like this:

[URL=http://img217.imageshack.us/i/screenshot20101127at110.png/][IMG]http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/5651/screenshot20101127at110.png[/IMG][/URL]

After I pick and choose from the bunch, I hit the OK button (or click the other button or hit ESC if I want all of them) and my display is generated in OmniFocus. If I just hit OK without selecting any items, the default selection is taken, which is to show none of them.

whpalmer4, thanks a lot for the insight.

I think it is rather complicated and will require quite many extra moves from the user which is me as I need to run this script multiple times (for each item that needs to be processed). Not Equal To criterion is used when processing the database mostly.

Anyway Not Equal To criterion should be able to work with filter items and not projects/actions names. For examble, Perspective which shows all 'not stalled' projects.