[GeekLady]

Originally Posted by Butterfly

GL,

When you created your baptismal gown project, were you able to create real sub-projects? If so, how do you do it? All I have been able to enter under a project are actions and sub-actions. When I try to indent a project it becomes an action.

I'd like to be able to break a project into sub-projects too in order to be able to have both sequential and parallel aspects of the task.

School classes would lend themselves to this. Last quarter I had classes with several major assignments going simultaneously.

The gown is still a work in progress, but it needs to be done by Christmas, so I've plotted out all the steps.

I do not have real sub-projects, but I called them subprojects in my description because that's what they are, with or without OF supporting them.

The way I see the containers breaking down is thus:

A Project or a subproject can contain other projects, task groups, and individual tasks in mixture, or just individual tasks that are sequential.
A Task Group contains just individual tasks that are parallel.

[dancingbrook]

Sorry to stir up a ghost, but I searched for answers to this question and this went unanswered and remains mostly unaddressed (in my mind). Or maybe I'm just an ignorant newbie. Then again thomasgchappell never returned, and GeekLady hasn't posted since 2007. Maybe they are just quiet experts now?

I can see Contexts are supposed to be (reasonable enough) used for the on-hold part of the question. What about dealing with a parallel project with Actions and/or parallel and/or sequential Groups? Only the top Action (in the list) shows up in next-actions. This seems contrary to both the idea of parallel actions and the idea of grouping. Why would I not want to see and plan to handle perhaps 3-4 parallel next actions from one project just as I would from many projects?

Or am I supposed to use Available rather than Next Action?

Perhaps the whole notion of letting OF (or any other app) decide what I should be able to see (and thus plan to do next) is flawed as most often one needs to be able to make a judgement that is more complex than simply a linear decision?

This brings me back to the desire to more easily be able to select tasks for the day/week and get them into a calendar view so I can schedule time to devote to them.

Any advice would be appreciated.

[Brian]

I personally use Available more frequently than I use the next action filter, for the same reasons you cite. That said, I know that there are customers who prefer to see one and only one thing they can do to move their projects forward. (Some folks struggle to decide which equally-important thing they should do first, for example.)

I wouldn't say that you're supposed to use the Available filter, but it does sound like it returns results that are more in line with what you're looking for. :-)

Re: calendars - personally, I do fine with my "due soon" set to 24 hours and with specific due date/time combos attached to the actions in OmniFocus. I don't care when I complete something in a given day, as long as it's before the deadline. Adding those actions to my calendar would just make it harder to see that I need to be at a meeting between X and Y, with another a few hours later.

Opinion on this subject varies greatly though, as several other threads on the forums will illustrate. :-)

[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by dancingbrook

What about dealing with a parallel project with Actions and/or parallel and/or sequential Groups? Only the top Action (in the list) shows up in next-actions. This seems contrary to both the idea of parallel actions and the idea of grouping. Why would I not want to see and plan to handle perhaps 3-4 parallel next actions from one project just as I would from many projects?

Or am I supposed to use Available rather than Next Action?

To my mind, Next Action views are most useful when you are in execute mode, cranking through those actions, having already decided what you are going to work on. If you're going to do some decision-making, then a wider scope makes for a better decision. By using the Next Action filter, you are asking the software to make a selection for you from a group of choices which you've already declared to be equally available as a Next Action. It does fall down a bit in the case where you've got a bunch of parallel actions in different contexts and the very first one turns out to be in a context where you aren't, even though you could possibly work on every other one of the lot.

Bottom line for me is if the Next Action view says do XYZ and I can't or won't do XYZ right now, pick something else from the Available view. Rely on the regular review to balance the progress across multiple parallel branches.

Perhaps the whole notion of letting OF (or any other app) decide what I should be able to see (and thus plan to do next) is flawed as most often one needs to be able to make a judgement that is more complex than simply a linear decision?

It's very much a situational matter -- sometimes letting it feed you tasks one after another is the right thing, and just as obviously at other times you'll need to use your judgment.

[dancingbrook]

Thanks to both of you. My dilemma remains as groups, or sub-projects (per GeekLady) and parallel actions get ignored unless they happen to be at the top of the list.

I've never been a next in line kind of person; bad enough that I have to be this organized.

Brian, I'd just color my meetings/appts and other firm items a different color (like red maybe).

Thus perhaps when you (& the rest of Omni) do take my suggestions for being able to select items to move to iCal, you'll allow us to choose which "calendar" to put them in?

[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by dancingbrook

My dilemma remains as groups, or sub-projects (per GeekLady) and parallel actions get ignored unless they happen to be at the top of the list.

Only if you insist on using a restrictive view...why someone who claims to not be a next in line kind of person wants to use the next in line view is a bit puzzling!

[dancingbrook]

Originally Posted by whpalmer4

Only if you insist on using a restrictive view...why someone who claims to not be a next in line kind of person wants to use the next in line view is a bit puzzling!

Reasonable point, though it seems the choice is all available or just the one that's at the top of a project, regardless sequential or parallel, no matter how many groups.

Perhaps the option to define a group as a subproject, and vice versa, with project options, would indeed be a solution to many desires. Though I'd really just like to be able to select more deliberately (flags?) what I see and what makes it to iCal.

For those with a long OF history, I hope you can accept their is a significant learning curve as well as long process that follows for users to accept the limitations (or discover their ignorance) and then decide how best to use what is there (a lot). Thanks to all of those with the patience to put up with the hopefully never ending parade of newbies.

Edit:
Proving my own point (and considering whpalmer4's), I just discovered that using Available does indeed give me more of what I want. Now if I can just figure out how to easily get just the things I want into iCal the way I want.

If this could happen, I'm actually seeing one user's suggestion, of keeping the calendar separate, as possibly being actually helpful. One of the biggest hurdles for me is getting over the long list of too much I want to do. If I could move a smaller list to iCal, that would allow me to plan without being overwhelmed.

[dancingbrook]

Regarding the all Available vs the single Next Action question, I wonder if some of this couldn't be solved merely by being able to select Status with something like Next # Actions, and Next # Available, where the # could be easily entered by a user, giving us options for more or less than one or all.

[curt.clifton]

Originally Posted by dancingbrook

Regarding the all Available vs the single Next Action question, I wonder if some of this couldn't be solved merely by being able to select Status with something like Next # Actions, and Next # Available, where the # could be easily entered by a user, giving us options for more or less than one or all.

That's a very cool idea! I'm imagining a slider somewhere in the UI to control this number. As I slide it to the right, the number of tasks listed would increase. As I slide it to the left, the number of tasks would decrease, until at the far left setting only my next actions would show. You can use Help --> Send Feedback to submit feature requests. And please do!

[dancingbrook]

Originally Posted by curt.clifton

You can use Help --> Send Feedback to submit feature requests. And please do!

I've sent so many Feature request this past few days I suspect they are just ignoring them by now. I hope they at least pay attention to the learning curve as that will help them do better even my suggestions come from my initial ignorance.

That said, I'll do another, just in case they are still listening.