Switching from "on hold" to "active" from a quick entry

I’m an attorney and have about 70 projects (clients) in Omnifocus. some of these are waiting on things that will take months to complete, and so I want to put them to hold to clear from the lists I review often. But, every once in a while a random task will come through for that on-hold project (respond to phone call from client, send a reminder letter, etc) that I may add from quick entry, but with no capability of seeing or changing the status of the project.

Is there a way to have a new task from quick entry flip an “on hold” project to “active" automatically without having to go in and manually change something?

I am also an attorney, and my Omnifocus set up handles multiple clients with multiple projects each. I don’t put much on hold - I use flagging to move tasks from an “Available” perspective into a “Today” perspective to manage my daily tasks. Nevertheless, “on hold” makes some sense, and I will have to investigate using it for some projects.

In any event, I use folders to hold my clients, and then each client will likely have multiple projects, any of which can be put on hold at any time. For your scenario of returning a phone call or sending a reminder letter, you might add a Single Actions project that never goes on hold. I call mine Single Actions project “[Client] Admin.” If there is nothing in it, then I don’t see it in any of my normal perspectives (except Review, from time to time). If I add a task to “Client Admin” from Quick Entry, it will show up in my “Available” perspective, and if I flag it, it will show up in my “Today” perspective.

Obviously, this is a different approach than putting a client/project on hold and then activating it, but it might work in your situation too. I hope this is responsive to your question.

I’ve thought about using my single action list or a “communication” single action list for this, but i have template subprojects for things like settlement - i.e.,

  • when receive offer, communicate to client.
  • respond to offer
  • [possible other communications depending on negotiation process}
  • send acceptance/settlement draft instructions
  • when receive drafts and release, contact client to set closeout meeting
  • [closeout meeting template]
  • send follow-up email/letter with online review instructions

The issue is see is having tasks for client communication in two different places at once.

I already struggle with this since I can’t decide between a courthouse single action list (for everything needing done at courthouse) or a courthouse perspective by context (so tasks with “courthouse” context included in distinct projects that have things that need to be filed or picked up populate in one list).

but now that I think about it…maybe anything that involves communication gets a communication context or sub context (communicate: update or :call or :email), and I just have a communication perspective. I just tested and I can pull from “on hold” projects, so this may be my solution.