[jolepabo]

Dear Omni Team,

One feature that I really expect in such application is some kind of advanced task delegation workflow ... Like I delegate, the person receive (via mail, I guest this is the easier) the task, and we keep synchronizing the task avoiding unnecesary followups until the task is complete ... a little bit like with iCal and invitations (I like the notification inbox in iCal to see that I have unprocessed notifications about some events) ...

We are a small team of consultants working widespread in the world (well at least Europe) ... Having staff meetings or coordination meetings is very complicated for us, and very expensive ...

Is it on your plans ?

[BwanaZulia]

This seems like a little more on OmniPlan side of features.

BZ

[jstrat]

Had to register to weigh in on this one! :o)

I think you are partly right BwanaZulia, however its a mater of scale.

I think both applications would benefit significantly with the abillity to delegate tasks.

I see OmniFocus or any GTD app as a way to dump all my tasks or tasks I generate. As we all know part of the idea is to get it out of our heads and into a system. So it would seem perfectly natural for me to think...

"I need fred to do X as part of this project I am working on"

Enter it into OF then click delegate and send it off to Fred to do... the item would then be in some pending state waiting for a completion notice back from Fred.

OmniPlan is just a scaled up version. I am co-ordinating a plan for an entire multi-resourced project, having OP delegate the tasks out to the resources would be one less thing for me to do, and if they are using OF at the other end as well - all the better!

My 2p worth! Might change my mind once I get access to OF.. should be in the next batch of invites given the date I registered... Omni just couldn't have done an extra day in the last run... they just had to make me wait that bit longer! Ever had one of those weeks, read the update about invites... "..last batch brings us up to all who registered before..." NoooOoooooOoooOoooo!

[Mario.Batz@cern.ch]

Hi,

well for me the line between delegating small tasks and managing bigger projects is thin. So I would rather see a closer integration with OmniPlan rather than the iCal type send a task off to someone else.

I got plenty of delegated tasks to follow up on different projects with deadlines. So far, I use OF, but there are definitely features in OP that would make that more efficient, if linked back to OF (e.g. managing ressources across projects, see conflicts with deadlines etc.)

Cheers

Mario

[BwanaZulia]

I think the difference is that OF is for personal productivity and planning while OP is for groups.

Delegation, for me, falls into groups.

in GTD, if you ask someone to do something, you put it in your project as "Waiting for"

BZ

[jolepabo]

OP is for project planning ... Delegation doesn't mean Pert and Gantt charts ...

[jstrat]

Originally Posted by BwanaZulia

in GTD, if you ask someone to do something, you put it in your project as "Waiting for"

BZ

Ok thats fine, but from a making it easier to delegate point of view. To be able to enter a task then click 'delegate', have the task sent off through Omni wizadry to that person and have the task marked as 'waiting for' in my project is a nice way to work. To then have a response come back through some more Omni wizadry to mark the task as complete when its done would be even better.

My review process would show it as a waiting for task (and hopefully who its been delegated to) so I can follow up with the person if needed.

For me its one less thing to worry about... Enter task that needs to be delegated - then forget to delegate it. Thats the risk with current systems for me. Then again it might be that I am just not doing the GTD thing properly yet and that when I do, delegation won't get forgotten. Until then having OF able to do it when I think of it would be good.

[jbursztyn]

I supervise 18 people in 6 countries, and delegation and followup is crucial for me. I have not found a way to do this efficiently in OF . I have been using TR as a tool for two reasons, Delegation and Followup, and PocketMod Printing. TR lacks a lot of things and I want to move on to OF.

I have read many porst on this subject and I understand that OF is not only a GTD tool. My question is simple: can anyone help me on how to manage delegation and followup with OF? can anyone share their methodology? I would like to know details, for example, what you use each field for, start date, due date ,and review date, what contexts do you use and how you set up filters. Also how you differentiate followup from waiting for something from that person.

Here is what I do so that you understand my situation.

1- I do most of my communication through email (entourage), that includes task delegation, and followups.
2- I need to be able to have a clean and uncluttered list of tasks. (no future followups showing)
3- with some sort of filter, I need to be able to see what I have assigned to a person even though the followup date is in the future.
4- with a filter I need to be able to see things I need to followup on tomorrow, next week, today, and overdue.

all your feedback will be greatly appreciated.

thanks

Jack

[dhm2006]

Originally Posted by jbursztyn

My question is simple: can anyone help me on how to manage delegation and followup with OF? can anyone share their methodology? I would like to know details, for example,

what you use each field for, start date, due date, and review date,
what contexts do you use and how you set up filters.
Also how you differentiate followup from waiting for something from that person.
...
2- I need to be able to have a clean and uncluttered list of tasks. (no future followups showing)
3- with some sort of filter, I need to be able to see what I have assigned to a person even though the followup date is in the future.
4- with a filter I need to be able to see things I need to followup on tomorrow, next week, today, and overdue.

Since no-one else answered, I will share a few things. Unfortunately, I don't delegate much, so I don't treat delegation any differently from waiting for.

Work in context view to manipulate the actions; in planning view, the view bar settings work at the project level, not the action level. First, set the followup date. If you want to limit your followup date to one day, put the same date in both start date and due date. If it is a longer time range, put the earliest date in start date and the latest date in due date.

To get a clean and uncluttered list of actions with no future followups showing, put a start date in the future for the actions to be hidden and set the filter to available. Anything with a future start date will be hidden when the filter is set to available.

To see what you have assigned to a person even though the followup date (start date) is in the future, change the filter to remaining. Anything not completed will show up when the filter is set to remaining.

To see things you need to followup on tomorrow, next week, today, and overdue, set the view bar to *group* by due date, *sort* by due date, *filter* by either available to hide actions with future start dates OR remaining to see everything not completed, *filter* by any time, and *filter* by all regardless of the flag setting. The date you put in the due date field determines what group the action is in. You can group by start date instead if you prefer. Also, you might want to try sorting by something else. You will still get the groupings you want (tomorrow, next week, today, overdue, etc.) but the order of the actions within each group will change.

As for what contexts to use, you could create a context called "agendas" with sub-contexts for each person. What you see in the outline in context view is limited to the context(s) you select in the sidebar. If you want to see the actions for just one person, select that person's context. If you want to see the actions for all of the people, select agendas. If you want to see something in between, you can Cmd-select multiple non-adjacent contexts at the same time.

I don't use the review feature, but if you search the forum for "review", you will probably find several threads on topic. I do know you have to be in planning view to use the review date. You cannot filter by review date, but you can group and sort by it. And there is a toolbar button to mark items reviewed, which sets a new review date in the future at the interval you set.

I hope that helps. Maybe someone who has the same work structure that you do will refine my comments.

[jbursztyn]

Thanks for the reply, any more OF users want to share on their methodology