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What are the outstanding workflow issues in 1.8? Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Quote:
You should now be able to work a project all the way through to completion simply by checking off its Next Actions one at a time in context mode.
ONLY if all the child actions are in the same context. Otherwise they're divided from the project and not displayed.

If you want to work a project through to completion, just click the "switch" button to go to the Project mode and check off your actions for that project. Isn't the project mode where you SEE actions-by-project, after all?

Alternately, if you want to see all the contextually-available actions for a given project, group by project and change the filter to show remaining actions, rather than available/next actions. Then you've got what you need.

This is the thing, all of these circumstances are well covered and done so in a way that is consistent with the design of the app. If I wanted to conflate projects and actions, I would be much better served with a free tagging system, rather than an app with two clearly defined views.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by iNik View Post
Ken says: "you should now be able to work a project all the way through to completion simply by checking off its Next Actions one at a time in context mode."

ONLY if all the child actions are in the same context. Otherwise they're divided from the project and not displayed.
I think you are misreading Ken's statement here. If you have a sequential project with actions A, B, C, if you view that project in context mode, only showing Next Actions, you will initially only see action A in whatever context it occupies. Tick it off, and B pops up. Again, tick it off and C pops up. Tick that off, and the project itself pops up, allowing you to either mark it complete or add more actions. He is not saying that the actions will be necessarily shown grouped together in context mode (though they might be, if you grouped by project). Of course, if you have your projects and action groups fully populated at all times, and the bit set that tells OF to auto-complete them, this isn't much of a feature!

IMO, this is not intended for use as you suggest, working on one project to the exclusion of all else, but rather to make it more quickly apparent that a project (or action group) has had all of its predetermined actions completed so that it can be immediately marked complete, if appropriate, or fleshed out further, without having to wait for a review to catch the now-empty project or action group.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by whpalmer4 View Post
IMO, this is not intended for use as you suggest, working on one project to the exclusion of all else, but rather to make it more quickly apparent that a project (or action group) has had all of its predetermined actions completed so that it can be immediately marked complete, if appropriate, or fleshed out further, without having to wait for a review to catch the now-empty project or action group.
That makes more sense. However, that's not what I'm seeing, unless I have a VERY specific set of filters set up in Context view. Otherwise, I get projects lumped in with everything else, with no information to tell me whether the project is completed or not.

And, truly, what context should the "Wanna check off the project for good?" action/project/item exist in? Per my earlier post, projects don't really belong to any given context -- the assignment is fairly arbitrary -- so there's no guarantee that the project will "pop up" per your example. It is just as likely to pop up in another context entirely, again, leaving me without the information I need to know whether the project's still open and has actions, whether it's stalled, etc...

A more useful approach would be to add a "Yay! You're done!" next action to the end of every project, reminding you that it's time to close the project.

And I have to ask: What's the harm in having an empty project that's actually been completed? Until you're in Project/Planning mode, it won't get in your way at all. And once you are in that mode, well, then you have all the information you need to appropriately check off or add actions and extend open projects.

And, to be sure, checking off a project is NOT an action in and of itself. It's just a record keeping activity to clear off your list of "open loops." So, again, it doesn't belong in "Action Mode."

Workflow-wise, it would make more sense to have a special view for projects which have no more available actions. Something like... I dunno... "Stalled Projects." ;)

Last edited by iNik; 2010-05-26 at 08:45 PM..
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken Case View Post
Possible solution: Add a view option which hides and shows projects and can be saved as part of the perspective.
Enabling the Project view to group by context would handle this pretty well. Show stalled projects, group by context, you're done.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by iNik View Post
That makes more sense. However, that's not what I'm seeing, unless I have a VERY specific set of filters set up in Context view. Otherwise, I get projects lumped in with everything else, with no information to tell me whether the project is completed or not.
The project shouldn't be styled as available until the contained actions are done...
Quote:
And, truly, what context should the "Wanna check off the project for good?" action/project/item exist in? Per my earlier post, projects don't really belong to any given context -- the assignment is fairly arbitrary -- so there's no guarantee that the project will "pop up" per your example. It is just as likely to pop up in another context entirely, again, leaving me without the information I need to know whether the project's still open and has actions, whether it's stalled, etc...
I agree that in a restricted view, the project might not appear, but that is no worse than the previous state of affairs.
Quote:
A more useful approach would be to add a "Yay! You're done!" next action to the end of every project, reminding you that it's time to close the project.
And in which context does that appear?
Quote:

And I have to ask: What's the harm in having an empty project that's actually been completed? Until you're in Project/Planning mode, it won't get in your way at all. And once you are in that mode, well, then you have all the information you need to appropriately check off or add actions and extend open projects.
It is a major issue for repeating projects with a short repeat interval, because the next instance isn't created until the prior one is marked complete.
Quote:
And, to be sure, checking off a project is NOT an action in and of itself. It's just a record keeping activity to clear off your list of "open loops." So, again, it doesn't belong in "Action Mode."
That same logic applies to checking off actions, does it not?

Quote:
Workflow-wise, it would make more sense to have a special view for projects which have no more available actions. Something like... I dunno... "Stalled Projects." ;)
I do like the ability to see such projects easily in project mode, which the old version of the stalled filter provided.

Maybe my memory is playing tricks on me, but I'm pretty sure I remember there being an option to turn off the display of parents.
 
I posted a link that will change the option in this thread: http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=15363
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by whpalmer4 View Post
It is a major issue for repeating projects with a short repeat interval, because the next instance isn't created until the prior one is marked complete.
That's where the "Mark complete when completing last item" checkbox comes in handy. I have that for every quick-repeating project.

Quote:
That same logic applies to checking off actions, does it not?
Nope, it doesn't. On a paper list system, it's organizational (and possibly a nice memory jogger -- "Did I do that yet, I can't remember...?"), but in OF, it performs the task of "releasing" the next action on the project's list.

Quote:
I do like the ability to see such projects easily in project mode, which the old version of the stalled filter provided.
Agreed. The new stalled filter also needs some work.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by iNik View Post
Honestly, I don't see what this is fixing.
There are a lot of folks out there who don't understand why some things show up in context view and other things don't. One goal of this change is to make the behavior of the app less confusing to those people...
 
Brian, can you give an example of something that might cause that confusion?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by jasong View Post
Brian, can you give an example of something that might cause that confusion?
"Context mode" isn't just used for viewing things by context: it's used to view items which are coming due, flagged, or completed; to view schedules of start dates, and items with recent changes. Most people expect to see projects show up in all of those other (non-context-based) lists—and would be mystified (and justifiably upset) when projects with due dates failed to show up in their Due perspective at the appropriate time.

For the most part, this change doesn't affect the GTD workflow: the Contexts perspective doesn't show the contents of the "No Contexts" group, and that's where projects would generally show up in that view (since most GTDers won't assign contexts to their projects). Also, Context mode is most useful when you filter it to only show Available actions, and projects won't become Available until all the actions within them are complete.

However, I do understand that many people are finding that those projects are cluttering up that "No Context" list, making it harder to find actions that are missing a context and thus slipping through the cracks of their system. That's why we've now added an easy toggle to the View menu which can hide parent items from showing up in Context mode. Ideally, though, that "hide parent items" toggle should be a view state which can be saved as part of a perspective, since otherwise you might forget to turn it back on and end up missing a project which is coming due. As soon as we make that change (and then document everything and translate it to all our supported languages), I'm hopeful that 1.8 will be ready to ship.
 
 


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