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Issue with On-Hold Inheritance Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
I'm having an issue with inheritance (i think). Here's the setup:

In context view:
Contexts
-People
--Allen
---Waiting
--Jill
---Waiting
--John
---Waiting
etc.

Note that the context status is set to On Hold (Waiting) for all of the "Waiting" contexts under each persons name. The context status is set to Active for the "Name" contexts.

In a GTD sense, these are for my @Agenda items. I don't use a generic @Agenda, rather I have a specific context for each person I routinely deal with. I found that when I used a single @Agenda context, I had to preface each item with names like @Jill or @John to keep track of who had what. In addition, within a single context, you can't have both active and on-hold items. My approach solves both of these issues.

I use the contexts as follows. If I have an Agenda item for one of the people on the list, I add it to their named context. For instance "Discuss the status of xxx" would go into the Jill context since the action is "on me" to perform. Conversely, if I'm waiting for something from one of the people on my list, it goes into their "Waiting" context. For instance, "Complete task yyy" would go in the Waiting context subordinate to the Jill context.

So far so good. Where it goes wrong is in the context view. With the context filter set to "On Hold", you see:

People: Allen
active stuff
active stuff

People: Allen: Waiting
on-hold stuff
on-hold stuff

People: Jill
active stuff
active stuff

People: Jill: Waiting
on-hold stuff
on-hold stuff
etc

Because the on-hold bits are subordinate to the active stuff, both the active and on-hold bits show up in the view EVEN THOUGHT THE FILTER IS SET TO "ON-HOLD". This is true, even if there is nothing in the Waiting context under a particular person. For instance, let's assume Jill has no items in her Waiting context but does have items in her Jill (active) context. The Jill (active) context shows up in the view.

The obvious answer here is to simply make all the contexts at the same level. In other words:

Contexts
-People
--Allen
--Allen Waiting
--Jill
--Jill Waiting
--John
--John Waiting
etc.

When it's setup like this, the On-Hold Filter works perfectly. Yes, it's reminiscent of the trip to the doctor where you say "it hurts when I push here" and the doctor's response is "then don't push there" ;)

I can rearrange the folders but it would seem to me that there is an issue with OF in the way it's handling my original setup. Besides, IMHO my setup is a bit more elegant. What am I missing?

Last edited by rebunkerjr; 2009-03-08 at 06:12 AM..
 
A little more testing reveals that this setup also works as you'd expect with the Context Filter set to On Hold:
Contexts
-People
--Allen
---Active
---Waiting
--Jill
---Active
---Waiting
--John
---Active
---Waiting
etc.

The trick to making this work is to ensure that there are no items in the high-level name context (e.g. Jill). Anything in the high-level context appears in the On Hold filtered view, even though it's an active task.
 
 


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