Projects

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Robert Samuel Young

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Dec 21, 2020, 1:54:18 PM12/21/20
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My understanding of PROJECTS in MLO is very poor. I have designated several tasks as a project. That is I have clicked on the "This is a project" for that task. Then I have made a TAB I call Projects. Within that TAB I have under the Filter "Group by..." I have selected the first option "Is Project". But the list I get does not show any of my Projects.
What am I doing wrong?
Thanks,
Bob Young.

Stéph

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Dec 21, 2020, 4:51:14 PM12/21/20
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I think you've got me stumped there, Bob. I have a View in which I group by top level parent (which happens to be four areas of my life: personal, home, work and community) and then by project status (in progress, suspended, completed, etc). I just tried converting the second level of my groups to "IsProject" and I get all my projects listed under the group value "Yes".
Grouping tasks by IsProject status.png



Definitely, though, it's more useful to group tasks by Project Status:
Grouping tasks by Project Status.png

All the best,
Stéphane

Dwight Arthur

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Dec 22, 2020, 12:42:01 AM12/22/20
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Hi, Bob.

First issue involves where you set the project status. Maybe I am reading it wrong, but it sounds like you are setting project status on each task that's part of the project. I would suggest instead creating a parent and putting all of the project tasks as children of that parent. Set "this is a project" for the parent but not for the children. I have projects like "year end accounting" and "replaster swimming pool" and "grant renewal for clinic" - each of which has a bunch of child tasks comprising the work that needs to be done. It is often the case that the parent project has "complete subtasks in order". The difference between a project and a simple collection of to-do items is that the project usually has multiple steps, often a later task cannot be begun until earlier tasks have completed, the project is not considered done until the last subtask is completes, and it makes sense to set up a progress bar that shows how much of the project is done and how much remains.

Now, lets talk about what is supposed to be in the view that you have in the Projects tab. Lets start with something that might be obvious, my apologies if you are already on top of this, but tabs are not a great way to save a set of filters and such - once you get it set up how you want, it's far too easy to make a change, intentionally or by mistake, and then struggle to try to reverse the change. What you should do is, once you get it set up how you like you should save it as a view. After any future changes you can reload the view to put it back the way you want it

So, when you are creating a view, you need to set up filters that select the items you want to show, and also specify how the display should be organized. The "Group by" control affects how your items will be displayed but does not have any effect on which items are selected to be included in the view. To show your projects you want to select each of the project items, but you also want to include all of the children under each of the projects. Any view that shows parents and children arranged in hierarchies is called a hierarchical view. So what you want is to select every item that says it is a project and show them all, with a hierarchical view of the child tasks.

A setup for a project view like this would involve the following settings in the view specifications in the left hand sidebar:

  • Show Actions: All
  • Show Hierarchy: Yes
    • hit the "config" button after show hierarchy
    • include children. Do not include parents
  • Show completed: yes
  • Advanced: set the "add advanced" checkmark
    • hit the "setup" button
    • hit "add rule"
    • enter "IsProject is True"

This should give you roughly the view you seek. You do not need the group-by control unless you have a view with some projects and some non-project items and you want to break the report into two sections, one for projects and the other for non-project tasks.

hth

dwight

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Robert Samuel Young

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Dec 23, 2020, 5:45:45 PM12/23/20
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Dwight:
Everything you have written was very helpful. The "Add advanced" was something I was lacking knowledge about. Now I am better equipped to get MLO to do what I need.
Thank you for your instruction.

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TS OGrady

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Dec 26, 2020, 4:08:58 AM12/26/20
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Dwight,
I appreciated you comment to Robert and was puzzled by your comment 
' tabs are not a great way to save a set of filters and such - once you get it set up how you want, it's far too easy to make a change, intentionally or by mistake'

I use Tabs all the time, and I right click on the Tab and  'Set as Default for this Tab' and then 'Lock Default in the Tab'.  Then if I mistakenly change some filter or grouping (which I agree is easy to do), it doesn't change that Tab, but makes another similar Modified Tab to the far right.  
TS

Dwight Arthur

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Dec 26, 2020, 10:31:26 PM12/26/20
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Hi, TS. Maybe I am missing something. To me, a collection of specifications for selecting and displaying tasks should be saved in a view; workspaces (each locked to a view) are a fast and efficient way of selecting and pulling up a particular view. Temporary, ad-hoc or throwaway mods get made into unsaved view edits housed in modified tabs. If one of these mods turns out to be a permanent improvement to the view, just use save view and the changes propagate back to the locked tab.

I wonder how different your procedure is than mine. Would you have different types of displays, such as today's priority tasks, tasks starting tomorrow, and high-importance overdue tasks, all using different modifications of the same view or would each have its own saved view? In other words, if you had three locked tabs, each one showing one of the three queries named above, and for each one your right-click on the tab and select "set up workspace to see the view name, would all three be the same view name or would each one have its own view name?

-Dwight

TS OGrady

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Dec 28, 2020, 11:32:42 PM12/28/20
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Dwight, 
I think I got caught up in semantics.  Yes I have Views locked to Tabs, so I access the different Views by clicking on the Tab. 
I appreciate your insights.
TS

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