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Originally Posted by Brian View Post
Mike, wouldn't the 'mail out the minutes' for the last meeting action still be showing up in context view? Admittedly, that doesn't resolve the case where you complete the action but don't mark the project as complete.
Yes, the uncompleted action will still be in the context menu (if I were showing all available actions), and yes, I know that I should then be able to figure out that I still need to finish that action. You're definitely right about that. The problem was that it didn't show up in the perspective looking only at "Next Actions," and that seemed wrong, since it was indeed the next action I needed to perform.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian View Post
Un-completed actions, though, would seem to be their own reminder; you can't do the next iteration until you finish the last one...
At the risk of getting into a semantic debate and looking like more of a dork than I really am -- the idea of the "next iteration of the meeting" is founded on the idea that it's a repeating project, which OmniFocus forces it to be. It's really not -- each meeting is its own, independent event. Attendees won't understand if I explain to them that I didn't send out a meeting agenda because I hadn't sent out the minutes of the last meeting, and therefore, that meeting wasn't over yet... :-)

An alternate way of doing things would be to have it always remind me when it was time to send out an agenda, regardless of whether I had sent out minutes or not. That's what I was going for. Let the people at the meeting chide me for my poor minute-sending, but at least they'll have an agenda for the current meeting!

This is my first day with OF -- I just have to learn a little about the logic behind it. I'll stick with it. Thanks again for your help!

--Mike
 
Don't forget the value of the weekly (or whatever intervals you need) review(s). Monday morning you could review that you did indeed mail out that agenda last week.

Auto-completing action groups are not operative for the sake of not closing a task set until you are sure it is complete; perhaps it is stalled and waiting for that next task to be added—a sort of mini-review. Seem counterintuitive for a simple case where all the actions are very well know, and when I find myself in that situation I make the action group a project and just make the left pane a bit more complicated.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by miked378 View Post
At the risk of getting into a semantic debate and looking like more of a dork than I really am -- the idea of the "next iteration of the meeting" is founded on the idea that it's a repeating project, which OmniFocus forces it to be. It's really not -- each meeting is its own, independent event. Attendees won't understand if I explain to them that I didn't send out a meeting agenda because I hadn't sent out the minutes of the last meeting, and therefore, that meeting wasn't over yet... :-)

An alternate way of doing things would be to have it always remind me when it was time to send out an agenda, regardless of whether I had sent out minutes or not. That's what I was going for. Let the people at the meeting chide me for my poor minute-sending, but at least they'll have an agenda for the current meeting!
Mike, you're looking a solution right in the eye and not realizing it. Yes, OmniFocus is forcing it to be a repeating project, and not repeating until you complete the previous meeting's work, but it doesn't have to be that way. Don't use the repeating feature at all; just paste in half a dozen copies of the meeting project at a time and adjust their dates. Add an action to the 4th one, say, to remind you to put in the next half dozen. You can even get OmniFocus to do your dirty work for you entering the projects. Set the project up the way you want it. Mark it to repeat at the interval you want, based on assignment date. Set the start date for the project to the next meeting date. Now, set the project complete (don't mark the actions complete, just the project), and OmniFocus will make you a new one at the appropriate interval. Go set that one complete, and the one after that, for as many as you want. Then select the lot of them, set them Active again with the Inspector or the pop-up menu (right-click on the project name) and get rid of the repeating status on the project. Now you've got as many meeting projects lined up as you chose to do, the ones with future start dates won't appear in your list of active projects, and nothing bad happens if you forget to mark one of them complete. You do need to remember to install the next batch before this one runs out, but you can do that any time. A small drawback is that if you decide to change the framework of that project, you'll have delete the future ones and repeat the process.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by miked378 View Post
An alternate way of doing things would be to have it always remind me when it was time to send out an agenda, regardless of whether I had sent out minutes or not. That's what I was going for. Let the people at the meeting chide me for my poor minute-sending, but at least they'll have an agenda for the current meeting!
A way that you can maybe get closer to what you are trying to do is have a project or action group in parallel mode, put your three actions in there, with each set to repeat on a weekly basis and with start dates marked. When you check each one, the next one will become the next action, and the next week's inactive one will be added. This way, if you forget to check off the last one, you'll still be reminded the next week to send out the new agenda, when it becomes active in the top-priority position.
 
 


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