[jjb]

Hey folks. I'm new to the forum. I used OP heavily for a project 2 years ago, and am now picking it back up for another project.

Here is my question: Is there any reason for me to not put a milestone and all the tasks and groups on which it depends into one big group?

I'm guessing the answer is either "sure, that's fine", or a drawn out philosophical discussion about the proper uses of Milestones and Groups. I look forward to either :-)

Thanks,
John

[Tom Bunch]

Sure, that's fine!

;-)

With the exception of dependencies to and from task groups, putting tasks into groups really makes little difference to the app. It just helps you to keep yourself organized. Clever use of groups can also make the overview (View -> Show Overview) a lot more useful for giving you the 20000 foot view of your project. And, of course, you can collapse groups that you're not interested in seeing the details of at the moment. If you like color coding things, you can turn on group shading (View -> Gantt Chart -> Show Group Shading) and the group's window shade will be colored according to the group's task bar color. Personally, at this point I'd ask myself why I'm fiddling to my .omniplan document instead of doing real work.

One common design pattern we see in plans is to put the tasks in the groups and sprinkle enough milestones around so that you can see at a more granular level whether your schedule is slipping. You could put all the milestones at the top of the project.

It should be pretty easy and relatively non-destructive to create, destroy, and rearrange groups. Most of the row data for them is derived from their contents. The only exceptions I can think of are title and dependencies. I would encourage you to experiment with a copy of your plan and see what works for you.

-Tom