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-   -   Many projects in many folders and subfolders, subordinate tasks (http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=13391)

Avis 2009-08-13 03:59 PM

Many projects in many folders and subfolders, subordinate tasks
 
I'm looking for setup advice for iPhone OF (I don't have the desktop).

My main use is for my team of several people who are assigned maybe 5 tasks each day, some tasks last for more than a day.

I also delegate a lot and need to keep track of what was delegated to whom and need to know whether they completed the delegated task.

In addition, I need help setting up the project folders. Each task that my subordinates are assigned belongs to a larger "project container" and each of these project containers belongs to a "project area". I have 6 project areas and each of these has about 10-20 project containers in which between 5-20 individual tasks are happening. These tasks are mini projects in themselves, they have their own start date, research actions, followup, meetings, etc.

So it looks like this TASKS < PROJECT CONTAINER < PROJECT AREA

Project Areas are fixed for life of the product, but project containers get revised every few months. Each revision is a set of new tasks.

I'm looking for general setup ideas. How to assign the tasks to my subordinates and how to follow their lifecycles from assignment to completion.

The delegated actions usually fall into project containers, but sometimes they are too general for a particular container or even for a particular project area. They're global actions. All of that is under one product. We are also setting up for another product and all of this will be duplicated in a new hierarchy.

I had OF on my iPhone for a while now but I'm not sure where to start with this. If someone can draw up a structure of project folders, projects and context structure, it would help me tremendously. Right now I'm using a large excel spreadsheet to assign and monitor the work. But I resist to add all of the delegated actions to it out of fear of cluttering it up. So the actions to delegate currently live in my Notes on the iPhone. One big note that is difficult to manage. I need to keep a record of a completed action, too.

Brian 2009-08-14 04:32 PM

General tips:

People you'll be delegating to are contexts - when delegating, assign to the person's context. Other folks have different preferences, but when I delegate something, I leave a due date assigned to the action, and get it off my radar screen by setting a start date in the future. When that start date rolls around, the action re-activates, and I know I need to check in with the person if the action isn't complete.

Nested folders are supported, so go ahead and layer them if you need multiple layers of Project Area -> Project Container structure. Ultimately, you'll end up with one or more layers of folders, with the last containing a project, which itself contains actions.

For the actions that don't fit into any given project, just add a "single action list" - the type of project with a blue shoebox icon - to the appropriate folder. It's specifically designed to hold those types of actions.

That all seems solvable, but the record-keeping portion may trip you up; the iPhone version is more focused on helping you do things, and while it records all the data on completed actions, displaying them is something on our "we need to add that in the future" list.

You'll definitely want to send email to the [EMAIL="omnifocus-iphone@omnigroup.com"]support ninjas[/EMAIL] and let them know that you need this. They can add a vote to the corresponding item in our development database, so the team knows that you need those features added to the iPhone version.

Avis 2009-08-14 06:46 PM

Excellent. I set up the skeleton for the projects with folders but I'm going to get the desktop version to keep it organized and to print my lists. I was kind of resisting the desktop because we use windows at work but since I saw the screencast last night, the desktop seems like a nice companion product and it will keep my data backed up. This way I can also add my home task to the work tasks. Thanks again for the help. I'm sure I'll have many more questions in the future.


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