I’m pretty new to Omnifocus, so I don’t know if this is intended behavior or not, but I ran into something that seemed odd to me.
In sequential projects and action groups, if an action is not the first one in the sequential project, but it is due soon (has a yellow circle) then it appears as active, ie. not grayed out. Is there a reason for this? I ask because, if I have multiple sequential tasks due on a single day, I’d like to only see the next action for the project in my forecast, as opposed to all of them.
Hi michaelosky,
If an item is due soon, and you intentionally set the hierarchical date assignments to make a child item due before the entire action group, OmniFocus takes you seriously that this one task has to be finished first even if it isn’t first in sequence. If you put the action item group as all due tomorrow, but one item is set as due sooner, that now becomes the item that you must complete before proceeding to the next. If they all have the same date, the sequence you set up is the determining factor for which item is due next. If you want to use a specific date/time for one action group item, but not have the item show up until later, you can put it in a waiting context, defer it until later, or remove the due date so that it follows the dates set on the project or the action group. If the time isn’t as important as the sequence, use the inherited dates for action groups, setting the due date at the highest meaningful level. That should keep them in sequential order. In your case, I’d try setting the exact deferral time to when you’d like the item to show up, and then in view settings, view “Available” items.
One thread that helped me was reading Parallel vs. Single Actions especially the comments Lizard left about the differences in the project types and when to use each one.
I hope this helps. Good luck!
Thanks,
Lanette
