What are action groups?

OmniFocus OmniFocus for Mac
#1

Hi there,

Excuse me, but I don’t know what action groups are.
Will you please tell me?
This is a question from a new German user.

Thanks a lot.

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#2

Action groups are an organizational tool within projects. It’s a way to collect a few actions that share something in common and which you may want to hide/show all at once.

For example, if your project has a few distinct phases or stages, you could use action groups to separate the list into managable chunks rather than have a overwhelmingly long list that showed everything.

Hope that helps!

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#3

Thanks for the fast answer.
But I don’t understand. Can you please give me an non theoretical example.

Thanks in advance.

#4

Here’s a possible example:

Project: Go on vacation
 - Action group: make travel arrangements 
   - Action: buy plane tickets
   - Action: reserve hotel
 - Action group: pack for trip
   - Action: buy hiking boots
   - Action: borrow mom's suitcase
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#5

Think of OmniFocus as a filing cabinet.
Each Project is a drawer in the filing cabinet.
Each Action is a sheet of paper in one of the drawers.
Action groups are folders. You collect papers in them to keep organized.
(But they are not themselves things you can act on.)

Does that help?

(I apologize if the German translation is not good. I used Google. ;-)

===========

Denken Sie an OmniFocus als Aktenschrank.
Jedes Projekt ist eine Schublade im Aktenschrank.
Jede Aktion ist ein Blatt Papier in eine der Schubladen.
Aktionsgruppen sind Ordner. Sie sammeln Papiere in ihnen organisiert, um zu halten.
(Aber sie sind nicht Dinge, die Sie sich selbst handeln können.)

Hilft das?

(Ich entschuldige mich, wenn die deutsche Übersetzung ist nicht gut. Habe ich Google.;-)

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#6

Mercy, now I understand!
I love these forum!

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#7

YES, that helps! (without google translator) I use a babelfish ;)
That’s the reason why I buy omnifocus!

TipTop, vielen Dank!

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#8

I tend to just think of them as sub-projects – in other words, projects within a larger project.

#9

An Action Group can collect a few Parallel Actions as part of a larger Sequential Project. This is not yet evident in the outline pane but can be seen in the inspector pane. Action Groups can be helpful in organizing larger projects in this way.

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#10

The German translation is not that bad by the way.

#11

I’m still struggling with action groups, too.

In Projects all is fine, but in my Due, Next and Forecast views the child items appear as single tasks and are arranged by their due dates (what makes sense of course). And the parent action are lost anywhere at the buttom of the list. When I only assign a due date to the parent action, the childs do not appear at all.

I know it is difficult to design all the different views and perspectives, but I’d love to see actions in the Due/Next/Forecast grouped together as well.

Any ideas?

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