I am playing with OmniFocus and I am puzzled why I can create new tasks in some perspectives (Inbox, Projects, etc), but can’t in others (Completed for example). How does OmniFocus determine where (in which perspective) I am allowed to create new tasks?
The 1.x releases were long enough ago that I won’t even speculate as to what our thinking was at the time, but I think the main reason it’s not in there now is because it looks like you’re the first person to request it. We’ve got a couple of requests for additional filtering/grouping options, but none for item creation that I can find. No worries, though - if you describe how that would be helpful to your workflow, happy to file it!
(If it helps at all, you can edit the items that appear in that view, and the Quick Entry window can be used from within OmniFocus itself to add items to the database.)
OmniFocus will allow you to create an new action in a perspective when it can be certain of where the action should go. For example, in Projects it’s clear that the new action goes to the currently selected project or the same project as the currently selected action. When that’s not clear, it will make a new project.
In a custom perspective, whenever OmniFocus can make a decision on where to put the action that is clear and expected by the user, it will do. The more complex the custom perspective though, the less likely you are to be able to do so.
As for Completed, it’s a bit complex but doesn’t quite go over the bar of being unclear to my mind: any new action entered there would need to be immediately marked completed (and given the current time for when it was completed, presumably). It gets a bit weird when you consider that the new action would go into the Inbox, at least until you gave it a project. I’m not sure if you want this ability, but if you’re looking to enter back catalogue actions, I’d start by adding them to projects rather than looking to work through the Completed perspective.
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Thank you for the clarification. Please don’t consider it as a feature request. I was just curious how this works as I am relatively new to OmniFocus…
I believe I have a related question - after entering a project name in a task record (e.g., while in Inbox), OF moves the task to the END of the task list in that project. That may seem like a logical default behavior, but most often, I am adding a new task to a sequential project that is a newly arising “next action” (e.g., client sends an email asking me to email a status report on a current sequential project). While the task makes it into the right project, it’s hidden by the sequential nature of the project. So, unless I remember to re-order the project immediately, the “next action” is buried deep in the project until/unless I catch it during a review. Definitively not the intended consequence, especially when frequently I use Airmail/Drafts actions to add tasks to projects. I’ve considered adding a “next” tag to highlight these for easy fixing later, possibly by some sort of re-ordering automation. Any better approaches? I’m temporarily using too many tasks! LOL!
