show due and start availability
 

I confess that I don't use 'start' very often in OF. However, I think I may have figured out a way to integrate it into my workflow in a very effective way.

I currently have a perspective called 'due/context' which sorts things by their due date and context. And another called 'date' which lists available tasks by their due date. What I'd love to do is essentially keep those contexts and have task which are within their start window appear as well.

Any ideas? I feel like this is a no brainer, and I'm missing something essential.

Thx
FD

Tasks that have not yet reached their start date are considered to be "remaining" but are not yet "available". So you can use the availability filter to select based on start date. Mostly. The catch is that a task can also be unavailable for a couple of other reasons. I can be unavailable because it is in a sequential project or group and there is an incomplete task before it. It can also be unavailable because it belongs to a context that is on hold.

Does that help you find a solution? If not, can you give a specific example of a project and tasks and show what you want to appear. (Screenshots are helpful here.)

Hi Curt,

Thanks for the reply.

Reading thru your response and trying to tweak layouts has made me realize that I may be framing the question incorrectly. What I'd really like to do is have a view that lists by due date but also includes things that are available because of their start date, but not yet due.

For example, here is a project that I have that has a number of things that have start and end dates.

due.http://forums.omnigroup.com/images/attach/jpg.gif

And here is a view that arranges everything by due date and is sorted by context.

http://forums.omnigroup.com/images/attach/jpg.gif

I use this view to figure out what I want to be working on when I have free time based on when things need to be finished. I need it to be chronologically based, a list of items by their due dates (as due dates are very important for my work which is almost entirely deadline based).

Also, if I group it by start, OF assumes that a null start is the same as now.

Make sense? Thoughts? I really appreciate it.

FD

I'm going to second this one: I'd really like to be able to create a perspective that shows actions with a start day of today. Any ideas, or is this really a feature request? Or should I just wait for tagging :)

Thanks historydoll -- I hope it isn't something that can only be solved by tagging because OF is already pushing the edge of a too-complicated GTD list manager, thinking in terms of Best Practices. If it has to be done by tagging, that is yet another level of thinking to be applied just to the collection process...

If anyone from OF is reading, let us know if we should submit as a feature request.

You can submit anything as a feature request, and the OmniGroup actively solicit feature submissions. Just use the "Send feedback" link in OmniFocus.

I think a perspective that uses context mode, rather than project mode, is going to be most helpful. Try the following, and if it doesn't work, let us know why - we may be able to work around it or help you file a feature request. :-)

View -> Context Mode
View -> Sidebar Filter -> Remaining
View -> Grouping -> Start
View -> Sorting -> Due
View -> Status Filter -> Due or Flagged
View -> Time Filter -> Any

That should help you keep any short-term deadlines from going bad. Once that perspective is empty, you can use a similar perspective that uses "Remaining" for the status filter to see which tasks farther out are also starting soon.

Does that help?

Brian,

Thanks for your response. Tried exactly what you said - screenshot attached [url]http://forums.omnigroup.com/images/attach/jpg.gif[/url] - and it still doesn't show projects that are available based on start date.

What's my next action?

Hmmm... well a project mode perspective is going to show you *projects* that are available because of their start date, but it's going to show you the entire contents of those projects. So if there's one action due tomorrow in a project due next month, it wouldn't show there.

A context mode perspective is going to filter the database action-by-action, but it omits the project rows - it only cares about actions. It would help you find actions like the ones I mentioned above, but it sounds like that's not what you want.

Can you describe the way you'd use this perspective in more detail? That may help us come up with a perspective that works for you.

[QUOTE=Brian;84864]A context mode perspective is going to filter the database action-by-action, but it omits the project rows - it only cares about actions.[/QUOTE]

OmniFocus 1.8 (currently in [URL="http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnifocus/download/sneakypeek/"]sneaky peek[/URL]) does show projects in context mode, and based on flyingdesigner's screenshot it looks like he's already using it…

[QUOTE=flyingdesigner;84815]Tried exactly what you said - screenshot attached [url]http://forums.omnigroup.com/images/attach/jpg.gif[/url] - and it still doesn't show projects that are available based on start date[/QUOTE]

Flyingdesigner, the reason your projects don't appear is that the status filter "Due or Flagged" doesn't apply to the projects in question (they're not yet due or flagged), so they've been filtered out of the list. If you switch the status filter to "Any Status" you should see your projects as well—but that list might not be quite what you're looking for.

You might have some luck building a custom view of what you want using Rob Trew's [URL="http://bit.ly/OF-Find"]Where in OF[/URL] script. (However, at the moment there isn't any way to turn that custom view into a perspective which you could sync to other devices.)