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THE MISSING CHILD... Losing the Parent|Child|Grandchild relationship in Context View Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
It's important to keep in mind that as OmniFocus is currently implemented, there are no subprojects. Repeat: there are no subprojects. There are folders, projects, and action groups. An action group is a way to organize related actions, but it does not appear in context mode (unlike actions) and does not have project features such as independent status (active, stalled, on hold, dropped) or review times.

You may think this is a silly way to implement something between an action and a project; you may prefer something like Life Balance's implementation. But until the Omni Group changes action groups (if they do), it's important--for your peace of mind if nothing else--not to think of them as something they are not. See http://forums.omnigroup.com/showpost...07&postcount=5.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by brianogilvie View Post
It's important to keep in mind that as OmniFocus is currently implemented, there are no subprojects. Repeat: there are no subprojects. There are folders, projects, and action groups. An action group is a way to organize related actions, but it does not appear in context mode (unlike actions) and does not have project features such as independent status (active, stalled, on hold, dropped) or review times.

You may think this is a silly way to implement something between an action and a project; you may prefer something like Life Balance's implementation. But until the Omni Group changes action groups (if they do), it's important--for your peace of mind if nothing else--not to think of them as something they are not. See http://forums.omnigroup.com/showpost...07&postcount=5.
Thank you brianoglivie for your clarification.

Given this, I still feel that as an action group it would be more useful to be able to see the parent of a task in the Context view's project hierarchy so that one doesn't have to toggle back and forth between Project view and Context view looking for the immediate purpose of the tasks at hand.
 
When I was up against this system I'd created wishing action groups were subprojects, I found that reorganizing the projects with folders and making most of those action groups actual projects helped a great deal. I was reluctant at first to have so many projects, but focusing and selective viewing have really come into play to make that work.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by pjb View Post
When I was up against this system I'd created wishing action groups were subprojects, I found that reorganizing the projects with folders and making most of those action groups actual projects helped a great deal. I was reluctant at first to have so many projects, but focusing and selective viewing have really come into play to make that work.
That's exactly how I work as well.
 
This is also one of my main concerns with OF as of today. The problem goes deeper still though. I would go as far as to say that OF currently does not support sub projects!

You must not think of action groups as sub projects. They are not!
They are simply a collection of actions within a project. It allows you to structure things better in planning mode and they allow you to have a combination of parallell and sequental tasks within a project. But they are NOT sub projects.

They cannot be reviewed on their own. This is a major problem if you have large projects that contain many sub projects (possibly also large) that you might want to deal with separately or even assign to other people. They also cannot be put on hold or dropped on their own.

I.m.o, Omni should do something about this problem before anything else...
 
I think we've already covered this in other threads, but just to offer an alternative point of view, I don't really find the lack of sub-projects to be a problem. Instead, I use folders to contain related projects and haven't really had any problems.

That's not to say I wouldn't mind seeing sub-projects added so you could establish dependancies between them. But I don't see an urgent need for the feature in my workflow.
 
I know this has been talked about in many other threads but whenever the opportunity arise I like to lobby for getting this adressed. :)

With the risk of starting the whole old discussion up again;
If I use a "folder" as project and "projects" as sub projects I am forced to drop the folder/project once its done. And I can still not have sub sub projects. I have multiple super large projects that I need to track.
 
I see that my newbie-ness at OF has caused some confusion because I suppose I haven't been calling things by the correct names according to the system. So I will clarify (although the root problem I was expressing in this thread is still there and unsolved... I will explain.)

OK to clarify...

Currently I have a project called "Goodrich Hall Renovation" with an action group called "clarify light fixture lead times" with an action in it (among other actions) called "call Mark M" with an assigned context of "phone". This is all very clear within the Project view, with a clearly established hierarchy. But when I switch to Context view to begin working from that point of view, I see under "phone" the action called "call Mark M" re: project "Goodrich Hall". But I've lost the purpose of the call "to clarify light fixture lead times" as it is not showing up in the heirarchy. The hierarchy shown in context view is not really full as it does not show the action group that the action is within. I'm left with an action with no idea what the purpose of it is, because it's purpose is left out of the context view. To find it I have to toggle back to the Project view and search for the project to find the purpose of call in that view of the hierarchy. Now multiply this same problem a hundred fold or more for large projects and you will see how inconvenient, cumbersome and unusable OF is without allowing the action groups to be in the full hierarchy. The whole benefit of working in context view is lost because I cannot see the full hierarchy including the action group that the action is part of.

Now today is the last day of my free trial. I love the general way that this program works, to me it has great potential. But if I'm not going to be able to use the context view as powerfully as was shown when this program was described to me, I don't know if I will buy it? The developers of the software should allow you to see the full hierarchy including the action group for an action in order for it to be the most effective and useful system. The way it is now, the power of the context view is not fully realized for me. And this is only with a project and action groups with actions in them. I can't imagine how hard it will be to understand the relationship of things in larger projects with action groups buried within action groups that much drill deeper. I don't know if I'll have the opportunity to find out though as my free trial expires tomorrow. That's a shame.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by smiggles View Post
I'm left with an action with no idea what the purpose of it is, because it's purpose is left out of the context view. To find it I have to toggle back to the Project view and search for the project to find the purpose of call in that view of the hierarchy.
If you select an action, you can switch back and forth between viewing that action in Context and Planning modes using the "Show in [Other] Mode" command from the View menu (Option-Command-R)? (You'll also find this command in the contextual menu for an action, or you can add the "Switch" toolbar item to your toolbar for even easier one-click access.)

I use that command quite a bit to help me quickly see more context (and possibly add some follow-up actions), then use it again to quickly return to the context where I was working. Does that help?
 
Thank you Ken... I will give this a try. But honestly I think I'd prefer to see it all there in context view without the added step.
 
 


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