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Questions from a Newbie: Filters only apply to Projects? Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Hello,

at the moment I am trying the trial of Omnifocus and seriously thinking about switching from Things (which is nice, but somehow doesn't really nail it for me).

So far I really like what I see, but I haven't fully understood how the filter system works. Is my assumption correct, that filters only apply to projects or have I forgotten to tick a hidden box?

My case: I really like "hiding" actions by assigning them a future start date. This is probably _the_ feature I like best about Things and I was very happy to hear, that Omnifocus also supports this, just by assigning a future start date and changing the filter to "active".
However, when working on a project with a lot of parallel tasks and assigning future start dates to some of the action steps, it is impossible for me to find the correct combination of filters to make those items disappear. However, if I assign the project itself a future start date, it is hidden immediately (when using the correct set of filters). Same with actions in single action lists (which I use for my everyday stuff).

Am I doing something wrong or is there really no way to make filters apply to action steps and/or items in single action lists? How do you handle this issue? Maybe I'm just thinking the wrong way ...

Thanks for your help!
 
If you set your Availability Filter to show actions that are Available, the actions with future start dates will be hidden from sight.

It is worth noting that there is a general notion that you plan your work in Project mode, and execute your work in Context mode. In Project mode, sorting works on a per-project basis, so sorting by Due Date (for example) sorts the projects, not their actions, and the list would not be very useful for deciding which actions had to be done next in many cases. In Context mode, sorting works on a per-action basis, so doing a sort by Due Date there would give you a true sorted list of actions by due date even though they might be from different projects.
 
Ah ... that's the trick! :)
Thank you very much!
 
I have another question and it's also connected with filtering, so I just post it in here:

I have a folder named "private" and in there I have a single action list for my random daily stuff and a project of my appartment's renovation. I also created a perspective which only shows me remaining tasks with active contexts, grouped by start date, sorted by project - this perspective should act as alternative to the "Today" view in Things and it works well - additionally I also see tasks with a future start date, which is also fine.

Problem: One task in my private single action list has a start date tomorrow and it is therefore displayed in my created perspective. However when putting the renovation project, which has nothing to do with this other task (doesn't share contexts or anything, only the same folder), on hold, the task isn't displayed in the perspective anymore. Any idea why?

And a similar strange behavoiur: I have another task (in another project in another folder) with a start date in two weeks. This task is also not displayed in above described perspective. However, if I change the context filter from "active" to "remaining" it is displayed.
At first I thought that maybe OF doesn't consider tasks with start dates in two weeks as active but when setting the start date to tomorrow, it still isn't displayed (other tasks from different projects with start date tomorrow are displayed, however - those are also displayed if I set them to a later start date).

Hope my description can be understood. ;)
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by dorian_grey View Post
Problem: One task in my private single action list has a start date tomorrow and it is therefore displayed in my created perspective. However when putting the renovation project, which has nothing to do with this other task (doesn't share contexts or anything, only the same folder), on hold, the task isn't displayed in the perspective anymore. Any idea why?
No idea. I made a setup that matches your description and was unable to reproduce this. My suspicion is that there is a linkage between two that you aren't realizing.
Quote:
And a similar strange behavoiur: I have another task (in another project in another folder) with a start date in two weeks. This task is also not displayed in above described perspective. However, if I change the context filter from "active" to "remaining" it is displayed.
Most likely the task with the start date two weeks out is assigned to a context which has nothing else active (either no start date, or start date in the past, or blocked by another task in a sequential project). My suspicion is that if you look carefully enough, that's going to be what is happening in the first case as well. I would bring up a view of Remaining contexts, grouped and sorted by context, Remaining actions, and look down the list for contexts where all of the actions are gray. Then take the apartment renovation project off hold and see what changes.

Quote:
At first I thought that maybe OF doesn't consider tasks with start dates in two weeks as active but when setting the start date to tomorrow, it still isn't displayed (other tasks from different projects with start date tomorrow are displayed, however - those are also displayed if I set them to a later start date).
OF doesn't consider tasks with start dates in two minutes active, much less in two weeks. If the start date is in the future, it isn't active.

You have to be a little careful using the Active contexts filter, as I think you can see. The Remaining actions filter normally shows everything you have left to do, but it just takes one blocked action to potentially screen off a bunch of tasks which would otherwise be seen if you were using the more usual Remaining contexts setting. You might not realize that you are only seeing a subset of the remaining tasks...

Thanks for an interesting puzzle! :-)
 
Thanks for playing! ;)

I think the main problem is/was, that I'm not yet 100% comfortable with the filtes and what exactly they are doing. However, your post was a tremendous help and with it I also think to have solved above mentioned riddles.
 
 


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