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I'm not really a fan of the idea of having projects automatically complete without my intervention, simply because they will fall through the cracks. A perspective to view completed projects doesn't help this, as I could have dozens of completed projects, and going through all of the ones that are actually closed and done to find the one or two that may need to be re-opened is going to be cumbersome at best.

For what it's worth, I think there are two critical issues here that may be quite easy for the Omni folks to solve: The appearance of unassigned parent items in the "No Context" section (or in context view at all), and the new double-meaning for the "Default Context" field. I propose the following:
  • Projects and action groups get two fields: Default Context and Parent Context.
  • The Default Context behaves exactly as it did pre-1.8 and has no effect on the appearance of projects or action groups in context view.
  • The Parent Context field handles the new functionality introduced in v1.8.
  • Projects and Action Groups without a "Parent Context" assigned simply do not appear in action lists at all. No Context continues to be used only for actions and not projects or action groups.
  • Projects and Action Groups with a "Parent Context" behave in the same way they do right now in 1.8 with the Default Context.
The above would allow users who don't like the new functionality at all to completely ignore it by simply not assigning "Parent Contexts" to any of their projects or action groups (which would also be the default state). Those users who know what they're doing and want to take advantage of projects and action groups as actionable items can assign "Parent Context" entries as necessary. Unlike a global option, this also has the very useful advantage of allowing a mixed-mode scenario. For example, I would very much like to see some of my Action Groups be actionable items in context view, but I don't really like the idea of seeing my actual projects appear there.

Although we're talking about adding an extra field, this solution actually strikes me as elegantly simple since it leaves the new functionality "off" by default -- the "Parent Context" field is blank on all existing projects and action groups until the user explicitly specifies one, and only those users who want to use the new feature are going to be bothered doing so.

Last edited by jdh; 2010-02-22 at 10:38 AM..