Default due date for project?
 

can I assign a default due date for a project. I want a particular due date for any action I create in a particular project.

Well sort of. If you give a project a due date, actions within it will behave as if they have that date without actually showing their own due date, yet you can still give them earlier dates if you want to.

In fact you can also give them later dates, but they'll still behave as if they were due on the project due date. I'm not sure that's right - I can see situations where you'd want to complete a project on a given date, yet still have follow up actions due after the main completion, such as "obtain user feedback".

Mark

thanks. That works for me.

[QUOTE=MacBerry;45712]In fact you can also give them later dates, but they'll still behave as if they were due on the project due date. I'm not sure that's right - I can see situations where you'd want to complete a project on a given date, yet still have follow up actions due after the main completion, such as "obtain user feedback".[/QUOTE]

That's the case for me, from time to time. I deal with it during my (usually) weekly review, by assessing whether the project is done, except for followup, and then adjusting the due date if it is.

Another way to deal with "post mortem" items is to make the by-project-deadline items into an action group. For example:

[CODE]
- Attended conference (set to sequential, no due date)
- Prepared for conference (due by date of conference)
- Tasks to get ready for conference...
- ...
- Submitted expenses for conference (start date after conference)
- From employer, reimbursement for conference
[/CODE]

All the tasks to get ready for the conference in my example will inherit the due date of their parent, but the expense related tasks won't have a due date. Prepared for conference could be a sequential or a parallel action group depending on the nature of the tasks inside it.

Nesting action groups and changing their parallel/sequential status is a powerful way to express dependencies between tasks.