Problem with project names and hierarchy
 

I keep going back and forth on how to name my projects and need some help. I currently have a hierarchy of projects within folders. Many of the folders have a "Misc" project as a catch-all for misc actions that I want to group together. I have set in preferences to show the full path for the projects so my Project drop down menu, and the Project column in my context view shows the full path to the project. That works great. My problem is that when I look at the Review perspective, it is just showing the project names. So, I end up with a bunch of projects called "Misc" and have no idea which "Misc" project they are. Is there a way to get the Review perspective (and Completed which does this too) to show the full path of the project.

As an example, I have project folders called:

Family
Personal Finance
Health
Professional
...

Each of these has a project called Misc in it, as well as any other larger projects and other subfolders.

I don't believe you can get that at the moment -- normally I would group by Folder if I wanted to see the full pathname, but then you don't have the program sorting out which projects need a review for you. Send in your feature request with Help->Send Feedback or email [email]omnifocus@omnigroup.com[/email].

If you're going to review the projects, you're going to need to look at the actions -- can't you tell from that which one it is?

Another approach would be to name them Misc-Family, Misc-Health, etc. The string matching magic ought to make that no more tedious than your current setup, as you wouldn't have to type the whole string, and you should be able to see in the review just which Misc collection it is.

Normally, I don't post "me too" responses, but - me too. I just noticed this today.

It would be great if folders could contain actions instead of just projects, as that would avoid the necessity of these "Misc" or "Tasks" single-action projects. I realize that wouldn't fit in with OF's data model, but I suspect it would fit in with that of OF's users.

But yeah, I also just noticed the lack of full pathname when reviewing projects. Seems like a bug.

[QUOTE=mwilden;72038]It would be great if folders could contain actions instead of just projects, as that would avoid the necessity of these "Misc" or "Tasks" single-action projects. I realize that wouldn't fit in with OF's data model, but I suspect it would fit in with that of OF's users.[/QUOTE]

This capability is supposedly planned for OmniFocus 2.

-Dennis

[QUOTE=mwilden;72038]
But yeah, I also just noticed the lack of full pathname when reviewing projects. Seems like a bug.[/QUOTE]

Not a bug, strictly speaking -- the program behaves as its creators intended. The ability to show the full path while reviewing projects would be a nice enhancement, I agree! As Dennis mentioned, OF 2 is supposed to do away with the need to have catch-all bins, though they may still be useful for those of us who accumulate large numbers of such tasks.

Remember, "me too" responses aren't worth anything, only official feedback...

[QUOTE=whpalmer4;72042]Not a bug, strictly speaking -- the program behaves as its creators intended.[/QUOTE]

A design bug, then.

[QUOTE=whpalmer4;72042]
Remember, "me too" responses aren't worth anything, only official feedback...[/QUOTE]

Actually, in this case, it elicited some information that was useful to me.

BTW, I used your suggestion about including the folder name in the bin name, and it works well.

I did at one point have all these projects names with the hierarchy I now have in folders. Several months ago I redid it with the folders and it seemed to be working better other than this. While the idea of naming my Misc projects as Home-Misc, Work-Misc, etc. seems reasonable on the surface, you need to know that I have probably 4 levels of folder nesting with Misc projects sprinkled throughout. Trying to name all the Misc projects with fully qualified names would get very, very ugly in the places where the folders are listed out.

I guess I'll keep fiddling with this and try to figure out the best balance until V2 comes out. Any idea when that might be?

Another idea would be to put a distinguishing string in the Misc project's notes and leave that uncollapsed.

OF 2 is supposed to be hitting the streets sometime this year. There's at least one 1.x release slated before that, so who knows, we might see a change to display the full pathname in review mode before OF 2 comes out. That's a preferable solution from some standpoints, because if you can't tell which collection an action belongs to by looking at the action, are you going to do any better if the action is just rattling around loose in a folder whose name still isn't being displayed?

[QUOTE=whpalmer4;72065]Another idea would be to put a distinguishing string in the Misc project's notes and leave that uncollapsed.
[/QUOTE]

This seems like the best solution and I had stumbled upon it before I came back here to update my progress. For many of these, I also have a Doc Link to a DevonThink folder (group) as well, so in those cases if I just leave it uncollapsed then I can easily see what Misc project it is. If not, I just need to add a distinguishing note as you suggested.

Assuming I've not done this yet, I found two ways to figure it out. First, if there are tasks in the Misc project I can click on one and look at the Inspect dialog which tells me the project. If not, then I can just select the Misc project and switch to the Projects perspective and check... then go back to the Review perspective.

I've been using OmniFocus for a long time but am just now trying to start using the Review buttons rather than just doing it on memory. So that is why I have just run into this.

Looks like I'll live until something better comes along in a new version. Thanks for all the helpful suggestions.