[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by omnibob

OK, but I initially assigned them a resource (me) and they still were set to T=0. However your subsequent text I think sheds more light on the situation.

If you didn't do a Level command, they would still show up like that. The Level command schedules tasks to optimize the project, including making sure you don't try to schedule a resource (you, in this case) for more than 100% utilization. If it can't find a solution, it will throw up a violation notice and suggest ways that you can alter the plan to address the conflict.

Will do. I would ideally like to enter tasks without fixed dates, and have them set to start in the present, and then auto move forward in the Gantt chart as each day passes.

That's a bit more in the OF style than the OP style, as you suggest. Some might argue it isn't really planning or management :-) It does appear that running the Reschedule command every day might give a passable facsimile of what you want.

Sorry, I don't understand. When I enter a new task, it automatically gets the project's start date, even if I assign a resource. Do you mean I should create some dummy resource? (I don't think that's what you mean, I just don't understand.)

Well, no, I'm not necessarily suggesting you should create a dummy resource. What I meant is you might have some new resource (we'll call it "new guy" for illustration) assigned to your project that became available part way through, and whose availability (or lack thereof) you sketched out in the resource availability view (the little calendar), using the Work Schedule for <resource> selector in the lower left. Any tasks assigned to "new guy" would not be scheduled to start before the start of "new guy"'s availability. Or maybe it is a material resource, like "slate tile", in which case the "Install new kitchen flooring" group won't get scheduled before the tile shipment is expected (as reflected on the resource availability view).

Here's my real world scenario (apologies for changing gears here a bit):

I have a bunch of things I can do on the project right now. I just learned I need to get a part at the hardware store, and this is something I should do today, before anything else. I enter the task. I set it's finish to be a pre-req to the start of another task. I manually change the start date to today. I set it's priority to highest, yet another task (with a "0" priority) shows up as first in the critical path.

Okay, the first observation is that you probably didn't level the project, which is when the priority values are taken into account by OmniPlan. When you do the leveling, OP will look at all of the tasks, resources, constraints, etc. and try to order the tasks to get the project completion date to be as soon as possible. There's sometimes some guesswork involved as to what will accomplish that.

The critical path can be shown in a couple of different styles to illustrate the reason why Task A has to precede Task B. For a dependency-based ordering, where you've set up a dependency between the two, you'll get a solid line. For a resource-based ordering, which includes your case of setting a higher priority because you've assigned all the tasks to the same resource, you'll get a dashed line.

The rule of thumb is that you should level after making any resource allocation changes, or dependency changes, or marking a task as complete. Or if it just doesn't seem to be showing the graph you expect :-) The rough GTD analog would be looking at your lists and saying "okay, finished that, what should I do next?"

Next question, keep 'em coming, or I'll have to get back to cleaning!