[jdh]

Originally Posted by Hope

Alright... that seems good... maybe. But suppose someone manually sets a parent's context to something other than the default - and it turns out not to be the one that is most intuitive or useful when all of the children are complete? Isn't the parent then at risk of "falling through the cracks"?

In other words: Some users may want certain parents to show up in a particular context when the children are complete - if they tend to plow through a perspective which shows a single context. Misjudging what context should be applied may result in a stalled project, and some difficulty in tracking down the culprit. A hard-wired parents bin (which displays and counts parents according to the applied filters) would help here.

The problem is that there's no computer program that can (or should) ever take full responsibility for ensuring nothing falls through the cracks. OmniFocus is a great tool, but it can't replace being used as part of an effective review system. Any task could potentially be set to a context that the user wouldn't normally check and therefore result in a stalled project -- I don't think that parent action groups or projects are necessarily a special case here (nor should they be treated as such IMHO).

Keep in mind that pre-1.8, projects don't appear in context view at all, meaning that they will effectively "fall through the cracks" anyway unless you pick them up as part of your weekly/daily review, which is done in planning mode. Further, I don't think there's any proposal that has the "Auto-complete" going away in 1.8, so projects that don't need to be reviewed manually upon completion can still be set to be completed automatically.

[Ken Case]

Originally Posted by macula

One additional reason why the new behavior is, in my view, problematic. You look at your actions in planning mode, and see at least one available action within an unavailable group. How inconsistent and disconcerting! Available actions under unavailable headings… That's a lot of mental turbulence.

With last night's changes, planning mode will render parents as available whenever they contain available actions. Hope that helps!

[Ken Case]

Originally Posted by jasong

Hiding the projects, and using Available instead of Remaining may be a workaround. The inaccurate number of items in a context remains an issue, and disturbs my attempts at "mind like water".

Did last night's change to the "No Context" counter help with this?

[jasong]

Originally Posted by Ken Case

Did last night's change to the "No Context" counter help with this?

I'm not sure, as I'm seeing some odd behavior I can't quite explain, and don't have a non sneakypeek to validate.

At the very least, I still have my No Contexts view saying I have 42 items in them, though those items don't show up except under "Any Status".

The odd behavior is that with Remaining Projects and Active Context Filter set, and with Availability Filter set to "Any Status", items that are Dropped are showing up in my list.

For example, I have a Project "Use my Interval International "Search First" credit", and it's Dropped



It shows up under my No Contexts grouping



Many other Dropped projects are showing up under No Contexts also. I don't think that's supposed to be true.

[macula]

I wonder whether the developers are still considering implementing a more elegant solution for making groups and projects actionable, along the lines of the lively debate that unfolded around post #110 or so. I am quoting a related idea that gained considerable support below:

Originally Posted by jdh

For what it's worth, I think there are two critical issues here that may be quite easy for the Omni folks to solve: The appearance of unassigned parent items in the "No Context" section (or in context view at all), and the new double-meaning for the "Default Context" field. I propose the following:

• Projects and action groups get two fields: Default Context and Parent Context.
• The Default Context behaves exactly as it did pre-1.8 and has no effect on the appearance of projects or action groups in context view.
• The Parent Context field handles the new functionality introduced in v1.8.
• Projects and Action Groups without a "Parent Context" assigned simply do not appear in action lists at all. No Context continues to be used only for actions and not projects or action groups.
• Projects and Action Groups with a "Parent Context" behave in the same way they do right now in 1.8 with the Default Context.

The above would allow users who don't like the new functionality at all to completely ignore it by simply not assigning "Parent Contexts" to any of their projects or action groups (which would also be the default state). Those users who know what they're doing and want to take advantage of projects and action groups as actionable items can assign "Parent Context" entries as necessary. Unlike a global option, this also has the very useful advantage of allowing a mixed-mode scenario. For example, I would very much like to see some of my Action Groups be actionable items in context view, but I don't really like the idea of seeing my actual projects appear there.

Although we're talking about adding an extra field, this solution actually strikes me as elegantly simple since it leaves the new functionality "off" by default -- the "Parent Context" field is blank on all existing projects and action groups until the user explicitly specifies one, and only those users who want to use the new feature are going to be bothered doing so.

[new user]

just curious, has the extra blue hidden window bug in expose been taken care of..?

[bradleychambers]

I'm using the OF sync server and when I installed the latest 1.8 build (using auto update feature), the sync settings get deleted

[mobilejorge]

What I would like to see is a sort option to input a text string. ie. I have multiple websites and since we can't setup perspectives on projects, well adding a code to a next actions or task would suffice if I could sort by it. For example, "update html code on the sidebar @nmt" and then I would be able to input my "@nmt" in the text field alongside the other criteria and it would work, or better yet, enable Perspective Projects :) cheers OF team

[braver]

When are you guys going to add "sync flagged" to the sync prefs? Folks were asking for a year... This is where Things shines, making it easy to sync Today to a calendar, which then can be propagated to things like Anxiety. For those who use Flagged for select actions Today, "sync flagged" would accomplish the same.

[hypotyposis]

Originally Posted by braver

When are you guys going to add "sync flagged" to the sync prefs? Folks were asking for a year... This is where Things shines, making it easy to sync Today to a calendar, which then can be propagated to things like Anxiety. For those who use Flagged for select actions Today, "sync flagged" would accomplish the same.

Omni considers the number of requests submitted officially (i.e. through OF>Help>Send Feedback) in their features development...