[Chad Armstrong]

Hello,
I'm on Leopard 10.5.1, not sure if that's an issue, but I have the following use case:

Create a context in Context View, let's say @home.
Switch to Planning Mode, create a new Action in the Inbox, let's say Do dishes.
This is a single action and not part of a project, so No Project, and assign @home as the context. I'm doing this all as part of the line entry in the Inbox.
Now, when I switch to Context View, @home is listed in the left sidebar, but when clicked, there are no entries. I would expect Do dishes to appear here.
I have been successful in making an action appear under a context in Context View, but it feels contrived to create a meta-project called Kitchen Duties or something just to force this to happen.

Is there a way to allow single non-project actions to appear under their context in Context view?

thanks in advance
Chad

[jasong]

Have you done a "clean up" yet? Items don't get moved into Contexts from the Inbox until an Edit > Clean Up is done.

(Yes, this was one of the things that going to a "real application" was supposed to fix from kGTD, but things "disappeared" on people that this compromise was made. I'm OK with it, as most other stuff gets moved immediately.)

[Chad Armstrong]

Yeah, I did try that a few times. Do you know from experience that this does not (should not) happen on Leopard?

A few notes: I'm using trial version, unlicensed, build as of yesterday.

[pvonk]

In preferences, Data, what have you got checked for "Clean Up should process..." If you have "a project" or "both a project and context", then cleanup will not move the action out of the inbox.

[Chad Armstrong]

Hi Pierre,
Thanks, that did it. Changing that preference to "a Context" now, on Clean Up, creates a list called Miscellaneous, appends my non-project action to it, and displays in the appropriate Context, in Context view.
That was driving me crazy, now I'll check out what the rest of those preferencie thingies do :)

Chad

I consider myself an intermediate-level user, but this is annoying the heck out of me.

I've titled the project "Health." The context is "Doctor." My intention is that when I list a new doctor's appointment as an action under my Health project, I want it to show up under the Doctor context.

I've a follow-up appointment under which I placed several sub-actions (e.g., call for the appointment, review notes). I've used the Inspector panel over and over to confirm that the Project is correctly listed as "Health" and the Default Context is correctly listed as "Doctor." But I cannot get the appointment to appear under my "Doctor" context when I view by that mode.

I've tried changing the Default Context to see if the project will then show up elsewhere, and nothing works. It doesn't appear ANYWHERE under the Context mode.

I've tried keying in a new Action (a fake doctor's appointment), for which I listed "Health" as the project and "Doctor" as the context, and this showed up in the context view without any problem.

Since that worked, I even tried REENTERING the entire doctor's appointment and it's remaining sub-action. It's keystroke for keystroke the same as my original that doesn't show up. And the duplicated project/action don't show up under the Doctor context either.

Feedback and insights will be greatly appreciated.

[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by rspalmer

I consider myself an intermediate-level user, but this is annoying the heck out of me.

I've titled the project "Health." The context is "Doctor." My intention is that when I list a new doctor's appointment as an action under my Health project, I want it to show up under the Doctor context.

I've a follow-up appointment under which I placed several sub-actions (e.g., call for the appointment, review notes). I've used the Inspector panel over and over to confirm that the Project is correctly listed as "Health" and the Default Context is correctly listed as "Doctor." But I cannot get the appointment to appear under my "Doctor" context when I view by that mode.

I've tried changing the Default Context to see if the project will then show up elsewhere, and nothing works. It doesn't appear ANYWHERE under the Context mode.

I've tried keying in a new Action (a fake doctor's appointment), for which I listed "Health" as the project and "Doctor" as the context, and this showed up in the context view without any problem.

Since that worked, I even tried REENTERING the entire doctor's appointment and it's remaining sub-action. It's keystroke for keystroke the same as my original that doesn't show up. And the duplicated project/action don't show up under the Doctor context either.

Feedback and insights will be greatly appreciated.

Hard to be certain without a picture, but it sounds like what you've done is created an action group, expecting the name of the action group to be listed in the context view. OmniFocus doesn't really have sub-actions, but rather action groups, which are sort of like lightweight projects. Differences between action groups and projects include that you can't put an action group on hold, you can't review an action group, and the "shell" of an action group doesn't appear in a context view, which is what you are apparently encountering.

You might consider making Health a folder, rather than a project, and making projects for each visit, episode, or whatever. I've attached an example based loosely on real life (click on the image to see a full-sized version).



and a corresponding context view (slightly condensed to fit my screen)

[brianogilvie]

Originally Posted by rspalmer

Feedback and insights will be greatly appreciated.

To whpalmer's detailed explanation, I will just add an important rule of thumb for OmniFocus:

Anything with a child entry--whether folder, project, or action group--will not appear in your context list.

In CS terms, only "leaf nodes" appear in the context list, and then only if they are actions, not projects or folders.