Perspectives Questions
 

Hi, I'm getting behavior that I can't figure out when I'm using some saved perspectives. In particular, sometimes I see "Due within the next month" and sometimes I don't. There are items that are due in between a week and a month from now, but only one of them is showing up in the [I]Dwthm[/I] list when I see it. I am actually trying to achieve a work focused perspective that shows all due items from the past month through the next month. I think I am following the appropriate setup steps. Any suggestions? If there is some kind of known bug, do you know if that kind of thing is being fixed in 1.7?

Which brings me to a related 1.7 question. I don't mind switching to the sneaky peak version at this point, but I would just need to know that I have all the information I need to protect my data and revert to 1.6 if needed. Is there a neatly collected message or thread that contains all the necessary info of that kind? Thanks very much for any feedback!

[QUOTE=KeithFK;65231]Hi, I'm getting behavior that I can't figure out when I'm using some saved perspectives. In particular, sometimes I see "Due within the next month" and sometimes I don't. There are items that are due in between a week and a month from now, but only one of them is showing up in the [I]Dwthm[/I] list when I see it. I am actually trying to achieve a work focused perspective that shows all due items from the past month through the next month. I think I am following the appropriate setup steps. Any suggestions? If there is some kind of known bug, do you know if that kind of thing is being fixed in 1.7?[/QUOTE]

Could you clarify a bit? Is it the same item that shows up sporadically, depending on the perspective you use? Can you reproduce this behavior on demand? What are the view bar settings you are using?

[QUOTE=KeithFK;65231]
Which brings me to a related 1.7 question. I don't mind switching to the sneaky peak version at this point, but I would just need to know that I have all the information I need to protect my data and revert to 1.6 if needed. Is there a neatly collected message or thread that contains all the necessary info of that kind? Thanks very much for any feedback![/QUOTE]

Because of changes to how perspectives are stored in 1.7, users have reported crashes when trying to run 1.6.1 and 1.7 on synced machines and when trying to revert from 1.7 to 1.6.1. I think it's safest to assume that there is no going back from 1.7 without losing the changes you've made to your data under 1.7. (You could always go back to 1.6.1 using a backup database from 1.6.1.) That said, 1.7 has been quite stable. There were a couple of early crashers related to printing and archiving, but those have been fixed. I've experienced no data loss under 1.7.

I made the jump this morning on two machines with no problems.

Just backup your 1.6.1 data/perspectives somewhere offline so that if you need to you can revert to it.

Enjoying 1.7 so far...

[QUOTE=KeithFK;65231]Hi, I'm getting behavior that I can't figure out when I'm using some saved perspectives. In particular, sometimes I see "Due within the next month" and sometimes I don't. There are items that are due in between a week and a month from now, but only one of them is showing up in the [I]Dwthm[/I] list when I see it.[/QUOTE]

This is because with 1.7 the Due perspective is not restoring focus. So, if you have focused on a project or a group and then switch to the "Due" perspective you will only see due items that are in the project or group you were focused on perviously. There is nothing in the UI that tells you the focus is still active.

I solved this by setting up the Due perspective to show all projects and then save its focus. But this seems like a bad behavior to me.

The UI indicates focus in the title bar. Specifically, the window title ends with "(Focus: <list of focused projects>)".

Not if you customize the title bar.

Sorry, you are correct it does. I never noticed that up there. But this behavior seemed different to me in 1.7. My apologies.

Hi - sorry, here are some details: I'm using 1.6.1 on my MacBook Pro. I installed 1.7 on my iMac last night, but I turned off syncing before, so there shouldn't be any cross-talk between the two installations.

I go to projects mode and click on the Library folder, which contains a Personal folder and a Work folder. I select remaining projects and click on the default Due perspective. That gives me items in:
Due within the last month
Due within the last week
Due yesterday
Due today
Due within the next week
Due within the next month

But there is only one item in that last category whereas I have 8 items scattered throughout the Personal and Work folders (all with projects and contexts - different ones, though) that are defined as due within the next month time period. If something is dated 09/01 it gets categorized as Due within the next week whereas something dated 09/02 gets categorized as Due within the next month and anything after that doesn't get listed. I have Due Soon set to the max setting - which is 1 week. Is the Due within the next month category supposed to work? I'd like to be able to define separate Work and Personal Due perspectives that capture all of those categories listed above if possible. It sounds like maybe I should consider going to 1.7 SP at this point. Thanks so much for any continued feedback! Keith

A couple of things to watch for:

Actions with a due date will have that due date overridden by the project due date if the project due date is earlier. In such a case, the actions you are expecting to see in the "Due in the next month" group might be filed in an earlier group, corresponding to the due date of the containing project or action group.

Actions in a sequential project (or sequential action group) won't show up if they are not available or due soon. If you have a sequential project with an action due tomorrow and a following action due in 10 days, you won't see the one due in 10 days because it is not available until you've completed the previous action. You would see it if it is 6 days away, because that is inside your Due Soon limit, and so OmniFocus would display it even though it is not available (a matter of some controversy).

The Due perspective I believe uses the Due Soon action selector by default, which means you aren't going to see actions from more than a week out with your settings. Turn on the View Bar, change the selector to Remaining actions and see if you suddenly get that Due in the next month group.

I believe that one of these cases will explain what you are (not) seeing. I haven't had any issues with the Due in the next month group not working properly.