Subtask - Is there a way to show parent task as tag or projet path?

Hi, I’m new to omnifocus so maybe I just haven’t found the relevant settings, but the way omnifocus handles subtasks is a bit frustrating. In perspectives, I can either group and sort as individual actions - losing the parent tasks which makes a lot of subtasks confusing - or as entire project - which double counts parent task and subtask & clutters the view. (side note: I really think if I mark the parent task as “complelte with last actions” it should mean that the parent task is not to be counted in the badge and such). Ideally, I’d like the parent task to be displayed in a subdued way, just like how project paths are shown (maybe just appended it to project path). Is there a way to achieve this?

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There isn’t a way to achieve this in exactly the way you’re wanting.

But, I usually find that if I’m creating a ton of sub-groups of tasks in a given project, that it usually means I need to create a project folder then create full-fledged projects inside that folder. You can even create sub-folders and projects inside those folders for even more complexity if you need that.

I find that task sub-groups are mostly for visual organizational reasons when working from that project, rather than anything you can sort, filter, or organize with custom perspectives, etc.

Sorry, I’m sure that’s not the answer you were wanting, but I hope it was helpful.

Yeah I’ve figured using projects is the way to do this, but I have a ton of actions with only 2~3 subtasks and it’s very cluttering to have a bunch of tiny projects. Besides, I don’t understand the decision to display parent task and subtasks separately & count both in forecast etc. I think I’d either want only the parent task (e.g., a shopping list, I wouldn’t want every item to be its own task) or only the available subtasks. For what use case would the current behaviour be helpful? I’m genuinely curious.

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I’m more of a project-view worker anyway, so the grouped tasks have never really bothered me much. I like to group tasks in projects when I’m working from them just to give me a visual cue of what’s needing done with a certain thing inside that project. I rarely use them, in any sort of useful way, outside of the project view. I also use due dates very sparingly only on very specific tasks, so I rarely have too much clutter inside the Forecast view.

That being said, I tend to agree with you that it doesn’t make much sense especially if you’re a user who’s wanting to use custom perspectives to batch certain kinds of tasks and pull one or two tasks from here and there throughout your database.

I guess, however, the retort would be that a project is technically anything that has more than one step and has a definable “completion” and/or date. So someone could say that if your database is cluttered, you should either work on fewer things simultaneously or use perspectives to clear away some of the clutter.

OmniFocus is super powerful and can be flexible in many ways, but can also sometimes feel restrictive in the way it can do things if you’re not totally bought into the way the app wants you to do things. I’m no OF expert, by any stretch of the imagination, and I’m always refining and improving my workflows, but I’d imagine most of your woes could be fixed with custom perspectives rather than trying to get the Forecast view to work for you. That’s just my two cents though – best of luck figuring out a solution!

I think for now I’ll just have to give up subactions entirely and just work with a bunch of projects with like three items in them, which technically solves my problem. My brain really does not like tiny projects, but you’re right maybe I should change the way I conceptualize this. Custom perspectives are the main reason I switch to ominifocus and they are great but I don’t understand why there aren’t any custom forecast views. Peculiar deisgn choice imo. Anyway thanks for your thoughts

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