[Revearti]

Hi, everyone.

I have a project template that I duplicate for work. Each project has four main actions. In each of those four actions, I have about five sub-actions.

I need to know the due date for the project. When I assign a date, I don't need to be reminded that all 20+ actions are due that day as well. If I had three projects that are due soon, I'd rather see a 3 on my apps instead of a 15.

Any ideas? Thanks for your time. :)

Adam

[Brian]

I'll go ahead and add a feature request for you on this, Adam. Thanks!

For what it's worth: in my experience, most folks don't have projects that are predictably uniform in this manner. Tracking items rather than projects helps those folks figure out "hey, I have twenty-six things to do today; better get cracking!" If one project had two items and the other had 24, just seeing a "2" might cause an ugly surprise for folks with that sort of workflow...

[Revearti]

Thanks, Brian, for forwarding the request! :)

I understand what you're saying, and I agree. I guess this is just a preference feature because I will always do the same 20 things for each project, but I want to go down the list and mentally check off what I completed to make sure I didn't miss anything because mistakes can happen sometimes if I'm interrupted while working.

For instance, if my project was Mow the Lawn and due on Friday, the sub-actions would be:

(1) Pull it out of the shed.
(2) Pull the cord.
(3) Push it.

For the record, I do not have projects like this in OmniFocus for typical things lol. Without explaining my complicated workflow, I'm just giving a simple comparison. The projects I do at work are done the same way, and it's nice to glance down a checklist of things before sending it off to be sure I didn't miss a step. When I see that a project is due soon, I work on that project, and I've memorized what I have to do. The main step and only action is to complete the project, which is where I would want to see "only" the one due date reminder, so the other reminders for various projects stand out. Now, I see a reminder of 40 things, when I probably only have about 10 things total for other various home and work projects because I'm being reminded for the sub-actions.

[RicardoSaporta]

Originally Posted by Revearti

Hi, everyone.

I have a project template that I duplicate for work. Each project has four main actions. In each of those four actions, I have about five sub-actions.

I need to know the due date for the project. When I assign a date, I don't need to be reminded that all 20+ actions are due that day as well. If I had three projects that are due soon, I'd rather see a 3 on my apps instead of a 15.

Any ideas? Thanks for your time. :)

Adam

Hi Adam,

I had encountered the same situation (I have a work template, where I only want to be reminded of the project as a whole).

What I've done, and David Allen might frown here, is to create a task at the end of the template with a name similar to the task itself. (ie: "Done When: Photographs sent to Client X")

I put the due date just on that last task to represent the whole project. That also allows me to put appropriate due dates on the intermittent tasks as the project requires.

[kimomni]

Thanks for making the request.

[Revearti]

Originally Posted by RicardoSaporta

Hi Adam,

I had encountered the same situation (I have a work template, where I only want to be reminded of the project as a whole).

What I've done, and David Allen might frown here, is to create a task at the end of the template with a name similar to the task itself. (ie: "Done When: Photographs sent to Client X")

I put the due date just on that last task to represent the whole project. That also allows me to put appropriate due dates on the intermittent tasks as the project requires.

Thank you for the tip, Ricardo! This is a great workaround while we wait for a possible feature to be released. :)

[Revearti]

Originally Posted by Brian

I'll go ahead and add a feature request for you on this, Adam. Thanks!

For what it's worth: in my experience, most folks don't have projects that are predictably uniform in this manner. Tracking items rather than projects helps those folks figure out "hey, I have twenty-six things to do today; better get cracking!" If one project had two items and the other had 24, just seeing a "2" might cause an ugly surprise for folks with that sort of workflow...

Brian, do you know if more people have requested this feature?

[Oogiem]

Originally Posted by Brian

I'll go ahead and add a feature request for you on this, Adam. Thanks!

For what it's worth: in my experience, most folks don't have projects that are predictably uniform in this manner.

Can you add my vote for this as an option?

I have lots of those types of projects. They are repeating ones and are typically things like Federal Vet Inspection, or vaccinations for the sheep flock. Often what I have is once I set a start date I want the rest of the due dates to chunk along a certain number of days later. FOr example, if the project is vaccinate new lambs. I know that for the vaccine I use I have to start the first vaccines at 8-10 weeks after birth and the second set 3 weeks later. So I know the dates as soon as the first lambs come. There may be a number of individual steps that have to happen (getting a prescription for vaccine, getting needles and syringes, buying the vaccine itself etc but the critical part is the due date on the whole project and it's consistent from year to year based on the start date of that project in any given year.

[GeoffAirey]

Originally Posted by Revearti

I understand what you're saying, and I agree. I guess this is just a preference feature because I will always do the same 20 things for each project, but I want to go down the list and mentally check off what I completed to make sure I didn't miss anything because mistakes can happen sometimes if I'm interrupted while working.

Hi Revearti,

What I do in this situation is have the project either in Evernote with Check marks (Todos) which means I can access it from my device or as a paper form, this has two benefits

1) I'm not cluttering up Omnifocus with hundreds of repeated tasks, keeps the database small.
2) It creates a record for me of what was completed when which I can file for a period of time if I wish.

I archive my OF database aggressively to keep it small as I rarely look back at when tasks were completed, but these records allow me to review if I want.