[lorew]

Hi,

I searched already to see if this topic was already discussed but didn't find anything related.

I have a problem with action groups. Let's say I have a action group called daily shopping. This group contains all shopping items as single actions such as sugar, milk,salt etc etc.

Now in my weekly review or in my own perspective "today" (first action item of all entered projects) I see all my single actions. But in regards to the action group I would like to see the action group "daily shopping" and not the first action "sugar". Just to see sugar will not help me.

Thanks for any suggestions

[Lucas]

If you make daily shopping its own project (you can just use apple-[ to promote it) and then change it into a single action list (use the inspector window) all of the actions will qualify as "Next Actions", which appears to be what you are looking for.

[lorew]

Hi Lucas,

thanks for your help. Unfortunately it is not that easy. Maybe daily shopping was not the best example. I have some actions within a project which I grouped together to an action group (for a better overview), so there is no way that I can turn this action group to a single action list as it still needs so stay within its assigned project.

[whpalmer4]

A related best practice is that your actions should clearly describe what is to be done, as if you are delegating the task to some assistant who can't be relied on to figure out what you meant. That assistant is usually you, a few days later, when you've completely forgotten why you put the cryptic action in OmniFocus :-)

"Sugar" is probably short for "Buy sugar", agreed, but "Apple pie"? Did I want to buy one, or buy the ingredients to make one? If I printed or emailed the list for someone else to do for me, everyone's going to be happier with verbs and clear descriptions.

I'm not quite sure if you are asking to see all of the actions (Lucas' answer handles that well), or if you are asking to see the action group itself show up in some listing (in other words, you want to see "daily shopping" in the list of things to be done today, not "buy sugar"). If your question hasn't already been answered, perhaps you could clarify it and we'll take another whack at it.

[Brian]

Lorew, are you saying that you want to see "Daily Shopping" in your Due perspective, before the actions in that group have been completed? (And instead of those actions?)

OmniFocus isn't set up to do that; it'll show "daily shopping" once all the items in the group have been completed. That said, if you email the support ninjas, we can write up a feature request for you.

[Lucas]

Originally Posted by whpalmer4

I'm not quite sure if you are asking to see all of the actions (Lucas' answer handles that well), or if you are asking to see the action group itself show up in some listing (in other words, you want to see "daily shopping" in the list of things to be done today, not "buy sugar"). If your question hasn't already been answered, perhaps you could clarify it and we'll take another whack at it.

I think it would be really useful to have a script that would convert a bunch of single tasks that would really be best to do all at once into a single task with the listing of tasks that you grouped together in the notes field. A lot of times I jot down the same task two or three times in the quick entry window or put two or three ideas about the same task in and just deal with them all together when they end up grouped together in the same project. It would be nice to be able to select a bunch of actions that are really all the same thing and smoosh them all together.

[lorew]

Thanks for all your help. Let me give you my real scenario. I am opening currently a hotel.

All my hotel departments are in folders each (housekeeping/front office/kitchen etc).

My folder kitchen has one project called "Order kitchen equipment". This project has several actions. One action is called "check quotation of company xyz for correctness".

When this action is completed the next action should show as next action but which is in my case an action I called " Mail back to company xyz to include additional items in latest quotation".
Now these additional items are added as single actions in this action group.

So my problem is that in the review process not the action group shows up "mail back to company xyz..." therefore I always see the first action of this action group e.g.: 5 more pots diameter 16cm order no 2652438".

Could I express my problem?

[Brian]

We've got a feature request open that would include the action group title in the project field for those actions - that would at least make the items in question more understandable when they showed up in your lists. If that would help you, email the support ninjas and let them know you'd like to be attached to that request.

If you do email, we can also file a feature request for the "show the list header instead of the actions" behavior, but I'm not sure how many other folks will want to use groups that way. Most folks seem happy with the "do the steps, then check off the list itself" behavior that the app currently has...

If you do want to see a single action in your project, doing something similar to Lucas' suggestion is probably the way to go. Treat the action as "send this email" and include the list of items you want to mention in that email in the note field...