Filter out projects w/future actions?
 

When viewing a list of projects in Planning mode, projects with actions that have a start date in the future show up in italics and greyed out.

Since these projects can't be done until a certain date has come, seeing them is usually useless for me.

In planning mode, it's valuable to see these items sometimes, but I think there should be a filter to allow me to focus only on projects which have current actions.

I've filed official feedback on this, but I'm curious if others have a similar interest.

I usually filter on active projects - and then review the on-hold and pending projects seperately. Does this help you?

Filtering on active projects includes projects with actions that are set in the future. These aren't pending projects, they're active projects with action starting sometime later.

If the project legitimately has only future actions, then it seems like its start date should be the minimum of the start dates of its remaining actions. That is, you could review the project and verify that, yep, all the actions are there and none of them can be done. As with the discussion about marking projects completed automatically, this isn't something we could do w/o the chance that the user would have added another action had they reviewed the project.

This might be a cool AppleScript, actually.

[QUOTE=jasong;26147]When viewing a list of projects in Planning mode, projects with actions that have a start date in the future show up in italics and greyed out.

Since these projects can't be done until a certain date has come, seeing them is usually useless for me.[/QUOTE]

As Tim implies but doesn't quite say, if the [U]project[/U] can't have actions that start now, you should set the start date on the project to a future date. A "pending" project is just one that has a future start date. It's conceptually distinct from an on hold project.

If the actions are all in the future, but the project doesn't have a future start date, that says to me that I might decide I need to do something now and add a new action.

If a project with a future start date is visible when you have the view bar filter set to Active projects, that's a bug that should be reported.

I'm sorry, I'm perhaps not being clear. Let's make up a project, say "Get Mac Fixed":

* Get Mac Fixed
[x] Something
[x] Something
[x] Call Apple Store for Appt
[_] Take Mac into Apple Store (Start/Due Friday)

I've checked off all the items except for the last, which is due Friday and set to show on Friday.

When I'm scrolling through my list of projects, I don't always need to see the Get Mac Fixed project. I can't do anything with it until Friday, and seeing it doesn't provide me with information.

I don't want to have to do add a future date to the projects; that's needless fiddling. But I would like to not show those projects I can't do anything about at this moment.

I can appreciate the concern that upon review, a project may need a new action, and hiding the project may prevent that, but that same argument can be made for any of the available filters.

I'm merely asking for an additional filter that works the same way that Next/Available/Remaining filters work. This seems to be a better solution than putting the project in Pending as I consider this filter temporary the way I consider the rest of the View bar items temporary.

The available filter in the third pull down from the right should take care of that for you if the start date for that item is in the future.

[QUOTE=jasong;26363]I'm merely asking for an additional filter that works the same way that Next/Available/Remaining filters work. This seems to be a better solution than putting the project in Pending as I consider this filter temporary the way I consider the rest of the View bar items temporary.[/QUOTE]

I'm not sure I follow you. If you *know* that you can't do anything more on the project until Friday, why not just put in Friday as the start date? I don't get your point that you "consider this filter temporary." I almost always use the Active project filter in planning mode except when I am doing my weekly review.

[QUOTE=dave256;26520]The available filter in the third pull down from the right should take care of that for you if the start date for that item is in the future.[/QUOTE]

That's not true. It hides the action but not the project, which is what I'm looking to do.

[QUOTE=brianogilvie;26581]I'm not sure I follow you. If you *know* that you can't do anything more on the project until Friday, why not just put in Friday as the start date? I don't get your point that you "consider this filter temporary."[/QUOTE]

I do have "Friday" as the start date:

* Get Mac Fixed
[x] Something
[x] Something
[x] Call Apple Store for Appt
[_] Take Mac into Apple Store (Start/Due Friday)

Or perhaps you meant put the start date on the project? I think that's useless because it means putting a fake project start date into the system, and potentially changing that fake project start date every time I add a new action that has a start date of its own. To extend my previous example, what if I had

* Get Mac Fixed
[x] Something
[x] Something
[x] Call Apple Store for Appt
[_] Take Mac into Apple Store (Start/Due Friday)
[_] Call Apple for Status (Start/Due Monday)
[_] Pick up Mac from Apple Store (Start/Due Wednesday)

Your suggestion means going in every couple of days and changing the start date on the project, first to Friday, then to Monday, then to Wednesday.

Instead, there could be a checkbox in the interface that says "Show/Hide Projects with Future Actions" or some such.

[QUOTE=brianogilvie;26581]I don't get your point that you "consider this filter temporary." I almost always use the Active project filter in planning mode except when I am doing my weekly review.[/QUOTE]

I too live in Active Project Filter mode. The "temporary filter" I refer to is this hypothetical checkbox to "Show/Hide Projects with Future Actions". I call it temporary, because it, like the displayed actions filter, has a temporary effect on my list: when I change to display "Remaining", it's short term, often to see what's coming next.

Likewise, when I change my duration filter to 30 min, it's temporary, meant to limit the items I see so I can effectively plan or act on them.