Hello. This is my first post. I have been using OmniFocus for about 10 days. So far and am very pleased with it. I'm noticing I'm really getting a lot more done than I have before. My adrenaline is up, yet my stress level is down. I actually think that I will be completely up-to-date with all my projects at the end of today... which is a state of being I don't think I've ever had at my job... or at least not since the very beginning. But I'm having a bit of trouble with the parent : child : grandchild structure in the Context view...
I work in an architecture office and have been using my own personal Mac to organize my project To Do lists with Omnifocus. Currently I have folders labelled "Work" and "Home". Today, I'll focus on my "Work" folder. I've got it set up with project entries (parents) for all my client projects that I am currently working on. Then I've got tasks (children) within the parent project. Many of these tasks have multiple tasks associated with them (these are actually subprojects), so I have created subtasks (grandchildren) underneath them. I've assigned appropriate contexts to the grandchildren as needed. This all makes great sense when I am in the Project view. But when I convert to Context view many of the subtasks (grandchildren) lose their relationship to their parent (i.e. the child or rather the child of the project parent... oh my this is getting complicated). This appears to be due to the fact that the Context view only displays the name of the parent project, and does not list it's children's project.
For example, I have a project named "Goodrich Hall Renovation" with a task that says "clarify light fixture lead times" and a sub task under that that says "call Mark M" with a context of 'phone'. This is all very clear within the Project view. But when I switch to Context view, all I see is a task under phone that says "call Mark M" (i.e the grandchild) re: project " Goodrich Hall" (the parent project) and I've lost the purpose of the call (the child task or subproject) which is "to clarify light fixture lead times". So I'm left with a task that says to make a call, but I have no idea what for. So then I have to switch back to the Project view to find the context of call. This will become cumbersome very soon. Not sure if I am structuring the folders/projects and tasks correctly? Or is there some setting preference that I do not have set right?
I suppose that this can be solved by being more explicit in the sub task. But that would become really cumbersome to have to explicitly write the whole child, grandchild project relationship within every task in order to understand what I am working when looking in the context view. This would become even more unwieldily if one was structuring into the grandchild/great grandchild / great great grandchild level of things... which there may be a need to do occasionally.
I suppose using a folder for what I am calling the parent project would allow one more level of relationship to show in the context view. This could become problematic as it seems that you cannot add folders to projects. only project to folders.
So.. bottomline.. Is there any way to preserve the parent : child : grandchild: etc. structure in the project column of the Context view? Am I doing something wrong?... help me....
I work in an architecture office and have been using my own personal Mac to organize my project To Do lists with Omnifocus. Currently I have folders labelled "Work" and "Home". Today, I'll focus on my "Work" folder. I've got it set up with project entries (parents) for all my client projects that I am currently working on. Then I've got tasks (children) within the parent project. Many of these tasks have multiple tasks associated with them (these are actually subprojects), so I have created subtasks (grandchildren) underneath them. I've assigned appropriate contexts to the grandchildren as needed. This all makes great sense when I am in the Project view. But when I convert to Context view many of the subtasks (grandchildren) lose their relationship to their parent (i.e. the child or rather the child of the project parent... oh my this is getting complicated). This appears to be due to the fact that the Context view only displays the name of the parent project, and does not list it's children's project.
For example, I have a project named "Goodrich Hall Renovation" with a task that says "clarify light fixture lead times" and a sub task under that that says "call Mark M" with a context of 'phone'. This is all very clear within the Project view. But when I switch to Context view, all I see is a task under phone that says "call Mark M" (i.e the grandchild) re: project " Goodrich Hall" (the parent project) and I've lost the purpose of the call (the child task or subproject) which is "to clarify light fixture lead times". So I'm left with a task that says to make a call, but I have no idea what for. So then I have to switch back to the Project view to find the context of call. This will become cumbersome very soon. Not sure if I am structuring the folders/projects and tasks correctly? Or is there some setting preference that I do not have set right?
I suppose that this can be solved by being more explicit in the sub task. But that would become really cumbersome to have to explicitly write the whole child, grandchild project relationship within every task in order to understand what I am working when looking in the context view. This would become even more unwieldily if one was structuring into the grandchild/great grandchild / great great grandchild level of things... which there may be a need to do occasionally.
I suppose using a folder for what I am calling the parent project would allow one more level of relationship to show in the context view. This could become problematic as it seems that you cannot add folders to projects. only project to folders.
So.. bottomline.. Is there any way to preserve the parent : child : grandchild: etc. structure in the project column of the Context view? Am I doing something wrong?... help me....
Last edited by smiggles; 2008-05-19 at 12:23 PM.. Reason: clarification
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