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Cloned tasks (feature request) Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
I know this was discussed before, but after using OmniFocus for two months now, I am even more convinced that this is a very important feature, and it would be a bummer having to wait for it until 2.0 comes along. What feature? Cloned tasks.

Say my car needs to go to the shop. I'll have a task, maybe it's a singleton task, maybe it's part of a project, but it goes: "Take the car to the shop for repairs". While the repairs are being made, I can't use the car. It's in the shop. The action "Get car from shop" will become available once the @Waiting task "Wait for car shop to call and say car is fixed" is checked off.

Meanwhile a number of other projects will have to be paused, because going somewhere in the car is a necessary step in these projects. How is pausing those other projects achieved without reverting to workarounds? By adding an alias, a clone, so to speak, of the "Get car from shop" action to them (and making them sequential). Now, as soon as I have gone to the shop to pick up the car, the next actions in any car dependent projects will show up again.

Right now, there is no way to alias or clone tasks. But just imagine being able to simply copy and paste a task from one project to another. Would be quite wonderful, don't you agree?

Last edited by HiramNetherlands; 2007-08-22 at 12:02 AM.. Reason: typo and better title
 
In my system this would only really affect the "errands" context, so it wouldn't be a major problem for me. I'd just deal with it by selecting actions off my context lists that I can do without the car for the couple of days that it's in the shop, or I'd walk, get the bus or cycle. :)
 
Cloning and aliases are really interface solutions to the problem of dependency. Should OF manage dependency? Right now the answer seems to be no, but future integration with OmniPlan should open up that possibility.

Meanwhile, just don't select the Contexts which are dependent on you having a car to see just the truly available Actions (or don't focus on the Errands project, if that would suffice).
 
Really, what would be nice would be the ability to set a task or project's start date to the completion date of some other task or project
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by GeekLady View Post
Really, what would be nice would be the ability to set a task or project's start date to the completion date of some other task or project
That would effectively solve the problem, yes. But it would be less intuitive, to once more use that too-often-used expression, than simply copying and pasting the task to other projects that depend on its completion to proceed.

(As an aside: I don't understand pjb's solution. Just not looking at any car related contexts won't move my projects forward, I think; especially not if they're waiting for a car-dependent task to be completed.)
 
The car-in-shop scenario is just one use case. There are other cases where blocking a whole context wouldn't help. For example, I recently had 4 different projects blocked waiting for my sys admin to fix a single problem. Sure I could create a different context for all the blocked actions, but this seems to be an abuse of contexts to manage dependencies. Ultimately I would have to slice my contexts more and more thinly over time. I'm actively trying to minimize my number of contexts so as to avoid overmanaging my system.

OF already manages action dependency in a limited way, through parallel and sequential projects and subprojects. Full dependency management is something that OmniPlan handles. Action cloning would provide an intermediate level of dependency management, and in a very clean way as I see it.

I really like the idea of cloned actions, though I'm not sure that it needs to be a version 1.0 feature. On my current wish list it would probably be third, after named perspectives and a way to easily see actions with no assigned context.
__________________
Cheers,

Curt
 
For these situations I would rather have the ability of allowing an action be in multiple contexts vs. cloning the action. They are essentially the same thing, I think the difference is in the UI implementation. Either way would make me happy, as it would give me the flexibility I need in my workflow.

GTD-ness aside, this is really something that would help me get things done.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by JasonI View Post
For these situations I would rather have the ability of allowing an action be in multiple contexts vs. cloning the action. They are essentially the same thing, I think the difference is in the UI implementation. Either way would make me happy, as it would give me the flexibility I need in my workflow.

GTD-ness aside, this is really something that would help me get things done.
They are definitely not the same. Multiple contexts would be useful for a different set of use cases. For example, I can (to borrow an example) order concert tickets using my phone or the web. That action could have multiple contexts.

Clones would be useful when a single action is part of advancing multiple projects. That action might be do-able in just a single context, but until it is complete several projects are stalled.

To put it another way, actions with multiple contexts would appear multiple times in the context view but just once in the project view. Actions with clones would appear multiple times in the project view but just once in the context view.

Personally, clones are much higher on my wish list than actions with multiple contexts. (Actually actions with multiple contexts aren't on my personal wish list at all, but I respect that others want them for legitimate reasons. So I'm willing to wish a little on your behalves.)
__________________
Cheers,

Curt
 
I have encountered a similar problem, when one task in project A is causing tasks in projects B, C, D, etc. to be non-actionable – all at the same time. I usually put the affected projects on hold, but then have to remember to activate them again by hand.

I thought about this a little, and here is my idea for a solution: triggers.

It would be great if we could add actions, at the task level, to be performed by OF automatically when a task is marked as completed. Two types of available actions that come to mind immediately are:
  • take a specified project or projects off hold
  • run AppleScript (passing a reference to the task just marked as completed)
 
I've just recently started using OmniFocus and would like to throw my vote in for this as well. While it's usable as is, the lack of dependencies is one of the first things I really missed. I am working around it by putting tasks in a Waiting context, but that requires me to keep mentally checking to make sure they are still supposed to be there. It seems like a pretty important feature to me.
 
 


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