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Just updated to Omnifocus 1.8 and one of the changes is that inherited flags now show up as flagged.

Previously, inherited flags would show up when filtered for "flagged" but be sorted under "unflagged" which was really really handy as I could flag projects for tackling this week but I could "hard" flag items that I wanted to tackled today. I would then use the duration field to create the order in which I intended to tackle each task. The flagged perspective was my main working perspective but since the update, it's lost most of its usefulness.

I've tried sorting by "flagged" but it doesn't sort the hard flagged items out from the inherited flagged items even though they look physically different with the latter being greyed out. (Plus this would mean that I would lose my sorted by duration hack).

Another workaround to cut down on the new clutter is by making projects sequential and filtering to available so that only the first shows up but then I lose the ability to flag a number of project steps that I want to tackle.

I've sent an email request but I was wondering if anyone else has had this problem and has found a work around?

Also, I'm sure this was done for a good reason and if someone at Omni could explain why then perhaps it might help me come up with a new workflow for 1.8. At this stage, I'm considering trying to reinstall the last version.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Catherine View Post
Also, I'm sure this was done for a good reason and if someone at Omni could explain why then perhaps it might help me come up with a new workflow for 1.8.
I'm sorry this change broke your workflow!

Inherited flags were never intended to behave differently from direct flags, all flagged items were always supposed to behave the same (though we do draw them ghosted out to help people realize why those items are flagged). This was already true in most respects in the past (such as filtering by flagged), but somehow we'd missed applying them correctly when determining the appropriate group for an item.

But I can see how the old behavior was useful to you, and once again I'm sorry this change broke the workflow you'd found for managing your tasks!

I don't have a direct equivalent to what you were doing, but I'll share my personal workflow: rather than flagging the projects I want to tackle this week, I focus on them (sometimes using the Focus command, sometimes simply moving them into a top-level folder at the top of my project list). I don't do much flagging (I just work through my focused projects), but if you adopted this approach you could still use flags to mark the tasks you want to accomplish today. I don't know whether this approach would work for you or not; but I hope that it will at least give you some ideas.

Hope this helps!
 
Thanks for explaining.

Moving projects into top level folder then focussing is an interesting idea that I'll try out. Thanks for the tip!
 
I happen to find 'flag inheritance' a good and sensical feature in 1.8, much as I am sorry to hear that it breaks your workflow.

I would actually take this a step further and suggest that 'inheritance' apply not only to flags, but also to due dates. It is risky to have a project with a specific due date, and its own actions free-floating without any deadline. It could indeed be a good idea have the due date of the project applied by a default to all children actions. The user may later choose to set an earlier due date for one or more of the children (but not a later one, obviously, which would be a contradiction—and I realize therefore that such a feature would require some new underlying logic).
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by macula View Post
I happen to find 'flag inheritance' a good and sensical feature in 1.8, much as I am sorry to hear that it breaks your workflow.

I would actually take this a step further and suggest that 'inheritance' apply not only to flags, but also to due dates. It is risky to have a project with a specific due date, and its own actions free-floating without any deadline. It could indeed be a good idea have the due date of the project applied by a default to all children actions. The user may later choose to set an earlier due date for one or more of the children (but not a later one, obviously, which would be a contradiction—and I realize therefore that such a feature would require some new underlying logic).
While I would welcome that functionality, I think, I don't really see it as inheritance, but rather a constraint. If you have a (sequential) project like:

Project due Friday
Action 1 due Tuesday
Action 2 no due date
Action 3 due Thursday
Action 4 no due date

Action 4 inherits the Friday due date. Action 2 is logically constrained to have a Thursday due date, but it isn't inheriting it from the project — you would want it to have that due date even if the project didn't have a due date. Forcing Action 2 to have Action 3's due date is the only part of the puzzle that isn't already implemented. I agree that one can get potentially confusing context mode views of Action 3 right now, especially when grouping and/or sorting by due date.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Catherine View Post
Thanks for explaining.

Moving projects into top level folder then focussing is an interesting idea that I'll try out. Thanks for the tip!
You don't even need to move them into a folder. At the start of the week, when you have decided what projects to focus on, just select those projects in the sidebar (using cmd-click to add them one at a time), focus, and save as a perspective. Update the perspective as needed, and keep your projects filed where they belong.
 
Any chance of adding a Flagged option to the Project Filter? Seems like that would integrate well into all the workflows described here. Personally, I have a fairly complicated folder structure that I don't want to rearrange more than necessary. Whpalmer4's suggestion is workable for now, but sounds kinda fiddly to maintain.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by eurobubba View Post
Any chance of adding a Flagged option to the Project Filter? Seems like that would integrate well into all the workflows described here. Personally, I have a fairly complicated folder structure that I don't want to rearrange more than necessary. Whpalmer4's suggestion is workable for now, but sounds kinda fiddly to maintain.
What's fiddly about it? You look at your projects to decide what is important for the week, right? Just flag those projects as you go down the list. When you get to the bottom, sort the project view by flagged, which will put all the flagged projects at the top. Select them as a group to create the "hot projects" perspective. While they are still selected, you can unflag the whole bunch in the inspector.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by macula View Post
. It could indeed be a good idea have the due date of the project applied by a default to all children actions. The user may later choose to set an earlier due date for one or more of the children (but not a later one, obviously, which would be a contradiction—and I realize therefore that such a feature would require some new underlying logic).
You'll be happy to know that OmniFocus works this way - the cells only show dates assigned to the item itself, but the sorting, grouping, and due soon/overdue statuses all take the parent/grandparent/project/etc dates into account. OmniFocus looks at them all, then uses the earliest date it can find.

If you have a project due Friday, with one action due Thursday and one action with no due date, they'll all behave as you describe. (And if a third action has a Saturday due date set, the project will trump that. When Friday ends, it'll be treated as overdue.)
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by whpalmer4 View Post
Forcing Action 2 to have Action 3's due date is the only part of the puzzle that isn't already implemented.
I know we have a feature request on adding something like this, as well as notifying folks when they assign a project deadline that's sooner than a deadline in the project. Folks that would like this should, as always, email our support ninjas and let them know they want it. :-)
 
 


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