The Omni Group
These forums are now read-only. Please visit our new forums to participate in discussion. A new account will be required to post in the new forums. For more info on the switch, see this post. Thank you!

Go Back   The Omni Group Forums > OmniFocus > OmniFocus 1 for Mac
FAQ Members List Calendar Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read

 
Flagged-Option for Project Filters Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
I like that not only we can flag actions but also flag entire projects.

Good thing - and it'd be even more useful if we could also simply filter the projects by their flagged status as well.

That would allow to focus on a list of projects that are of a certain priority while hiding all the rest for the moment. Especially this would eliminate distraction from any flagged actions outside of flagged projects.

Anyone with me?
Chris

After all OF is about focusing on what's important - be it in context-mode or in planning/project-mode.
 
In the meanwhile, you can already save filters like the following in the main menu of Where in OF (http://bit.ly/OF-Find2):
projects where (flagged is true) and (status is active)

Last edited by RobTrew; 2012-07-17 at 06:03 AM.. Reason: Updated link to Where in OF
 
[s]Thanks for the suggestion Rob - but sorry - not the same thing:

Your suggestion shows every flagged action in every active project - no matter if the project itself has been flagged or not.[/s]

We can flag a project and thus prioritise it. So we should be able to filter on project level, by using this flagged option as a filtering criteria.

Hence my idea and suggestion is to add "flagged" as a new filtering option to the project filter dropdown choices.

What do you think, friends?
Chris

Last edited by c.nick; 2011-03-22 at 07:43 AM.. Reason: I noticed the first 2 sentences are wrong
 
Sorry Rob - I think I misread your suggestion. I guess your script should basically be capable to do the trick the way I meant it.

Unfortunately I found your script to struggle heavily with my database and OF crashed several times. When the search finally succeeded and delivered 2 project results in your little results list, I could not get OF to actually display these results. It returned with an error message (in German) sth like
The script could not be completed. AppleScript returned the following error: "OmniFocus" has recieved an error: "window id 1445" can not be read"
Perhaps this can help you to further refine your script.

However - I think you already proved that an additional filtering option "flagged" in the project dropdown should be rather easy to realise. (Says me, who I am not into coding - tell me if I speak rubbish please...)

It'd be perfect if flagged projects would also be highlighted in some way in the project library.
 
Rob's search & script combo would produce a focused window showing only the flagged, active projects in your data, without showing any flagged actions that are part of unflagged projects. You could then create a perspective showing the contents of that window and update it when flagging or unflagging projects. It's unfortunate that it runs into an error in your setup, but perhaps if you supply the details of exactly which version of OF you are running, and the system configuration, we can try to figure out what is going on.

That said, allow me to try to convince you that you don't need the feature you requested :-)

The natural way to work, I think, would be to look at all of your flagged actions before looking at the actions without flags. Let us suppose that you have a project to write a report on some matter, and another to prepare for a meeting, both of which are urgent, so you have flagged the two projects. You also have a need to contact a colleague today about some other matter, but only that task is urgent, not the whole project to which it belongs, so you flagged the action.

How to proceed? Flip over to context mode, group your display by project, sort by due, show available actions, flagged actions only (or perhaps flagged and due soon), any duration. If you only had a few flagged actions outside of the flagged projects, you can probably get right to work from the list as is. If you had a lot of flagged actions outside of the flagged projects, and you want to ignore them while you work the flagged projects, use View->Collapse All to close all of the groups, then open just the ones for those projects on which you wish to concentrate.

Is there anything about what you want to achieve that isn't handled by doing that? Or even simply sorting project mode by flagged, which puts all of the flagged projects at the top of the window, and everything else below, making it easy to replicate the results of Rob's script by hand by selecting the flagged projects and pressing the focus button?
 
I normally have a couple of important projects that are generally prioritised and thus would get flagged (as the entire project). These are projects with rather complex work-scenarios that I need to concentrate on for 2 hours or 3 every day over a longer period.

In parallel I sure have individual tasks inside non-prioritised projects as well as in single actions lists that I may flag on a day by day basis in order to do them asap.

You see, such individually flagged actions outside of flagged projects don't require concentration on the same overall topic, so it's ok to crunch through them in the general flagged actions view, context after context, jumping between projects and single action lists - just as they come.

Much in contrast flagged projects require continuous step by step work with concentration on the same overall topic.

Hence, filtering by flagged projects allows me to get "the rest" out of the way:

a) hide all non-flagged projects
b) hide all flagged actions from non-flagged projects

When I'm done with the 2 or 3 important and thus flagged projects for that day, I can then go into crunch-mode, switch to context view and get done whatever is due or flagged outside my main projects...

See what I mean?

And after all: If we can mark a project with a flag,
why shouldn't we utilise this flag for filtering just as we do with actions...
 
Right, that's easily accomplished as I suggested by simply sorting by flagged, and focusing on the top projects, or with Rob's script.

Sure, what you suggest is an obvious extension of what's already there in the filter support. But given that it doesn't provide substantially new functionality (just makes something you can already do slightly more convenient), and we don't see lots of people asking for it on the forums, you probably ought to get used to doing it via one of our suggestions, because I'm guessing it will be pretty low on the priority list for Omni.
 
So you say a simplifying filter is not necessary because it can be accomplished through some manual workaround steps??

That's a fun way of looking at how to keep software lean :-) Could skip the flagged actions filter then, too :-)))

Ok -
In the meantime Omni replied they have the "filter by flagged" project option on their development database already. Not a big deal.

Let's hope it comes rather sooner than later.
Making things easier always makes sense.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by c.nick View Post
So you say a simplifying filter is not necessary because it can be accomplished through some manual workaround steps??

That's a fun way of looking at how to keep software lean :-) Could skip the flagged actions filter then, too :-)))
Sure, you can practically accomplish what the filter would do without it actually being there. The "Due and Flagged" filter is an example of something you couldn't practically do.
Quote:
Ok -
In the meantime Omni replied they have the "filter by flagged" project option on their development database already. Not a big deal.

Let's hope it comes rather sooner than later.
Making things easier always makes sense.
Agreed, but I'm a realist — if all-new functionality that lots of people want takes a long time to get here, holding my breath for Omni to deliver something that makes it slightly easier to do something one can already do is a low percentage play unless they are already planning to work on the feature (and even then, it may not be very quick in arrival). Don't get me wrong, I file all sorts of feature requests that I would tar with the same brush, but I do it in the hopes that it will spur some action when they next visit that part of the program. Look at Rob's script — it would be great if OmniFocus had such powerful searching built in, but given the choice, I'd rather they spend their time on features a third party can't implement, or in some cases, features that enable a third party to implement something.

So, you wanted to drum up or gauge support for an improvement, Rob and I made some suggestions about how you could achieve that functionality right now, you got another vote in the development database for your suggestion, it's all good, right?
 
 


Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search
Display Modes


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Add option to sort "flagged" by context heatherpeters93@gmail.com Forums Feedback 1 2011-10-17 05:41 PM
Custom Perspective: Due or Flagged by Project nickbarbosa OmniFocus 1 for Mac 1 2011-06-01 09:11 AM
Change and Set Project Filters tragicallyhip@ OmniFocus 1 for Mac 3 2010-02-01 10:24 AM
Everything in a particular project shows as flagged (even when it isn't) kastorff OmniFocus 1 for Mac 2 2009-10-31 06:51 PM
Context View Flagged option? mnisbet OmniFocus for iPhone 1 2009-07-23 07:14 AM


All times are GMT -8. The time now is 12:30 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.