TOPIC: feature requests: action ordering and dependencies

hi, i love thinking rock but there are a couple of things that are major for me that are missing, which i'd love to see in a future version (doesn't everybody have their own list? B) )..

1) manual action ordering

i'm pretty sure this is not a GTD idea (i did read the book), but i do actually like to prioritize my list of actions by drag/drop or keyboard. Thus, the top/1st one is the one i know is the most important. Next below is 2nd-most important, and so on. i find this is a nice addition to GTD, and helps me when a) i have many items in my Action list, and b) there are quick items that need to be thrown to the top of the list (a fire that needs to be put out that someone just called me on).

thus, i would like to be able to re-order the Actions listed in the Review->Actions page, but cannot. I have a long list of things to do, and yet i see things at the top of this list which I know are much less important than other things i need to do now. I'd like to get those most important things to the top of my list. This long list of items in no particular order (other than the available column ordering) thus makes this Actions pane much less useful for me. In fact, I find myself looking at the Projects pane more than the Actions pane -- which defeats the purpose of GTD of course.

of course, i am tempted to want to take my mouse and manually re-order the actions in the Actions pane, but can't. but, because i like to Sequence my tasks in each project, it might not be necessary to re-order the Actions directly. for instance, rather than letting me manually re-order Actions, instead, let me re-order Projects (already possible) and then have the order of actions shown in the Actions pane reflect the same order as the order of the projects i ordered in the Project pane below.

For instance (again, in the Review->Actions page), i am allowed to re-order projects (Move up or down in the list) by drag-and-drop with the mouse, or by hitting Alt-Shift-Up / Alt-Shift-Down on the keyboard.

But i noticed that the actions listed in the Action "pane" above are not listed in the same project order i've chosen for the projects in the Project pane.

Thus, if "clean house" is my top/highest/1st project according to my ordering, and "sweep kitchen" is the top/highest/1st action (or only active action) listed in that project, then it would be nice if, when looking at the Actions pane above, the top listed action were "sweep kitchen". Next project down might be "fix car" and that has several steps, but only 1st is active, and says, "buy screwdriver". So up in the Actions pane, the 2nd from the top action is "buy screwdriver", right under "sweep kitchen". And so on.

2) action dependencies

i'd like to be able to make an action in one project dependent on an action in another project. that is, i can't do one action until this other one is done. i'd prefer this be by drag-drop, but as a 2nd preference, could just be in the action editing pane.

3) Thus, the overall ordering of actions would have to take both 1) and 2) into account, above. So that, i might be able to re-order projects, but after i let go of the mouse button, ThinkingRock would take over and calculate the topological sorting of the actions in the action pane. (The reason for the topo sorting is because even if an action were in a "lower" project, still, it might appear higher up in the Actions pane's list if another action in a higher-prioritized project depended on it, so it had to be done first, actually.)

if there is a way to do any of this already, and i'm missing it, please let me know! i'd love to know how to do these things!

many thanks!
jeff

Jeff, i am also looking for manually re-ordering my actions.
I posted a suggestion on how to implement it here (in the wrong group):
www.trgtd.com.au/index.php?option=com_ku...view&catid=8&id=1683

Idea is to set a default time of 12.00 for all (scheduled) actions that you create. If one action is more urgent than another on the same date, you change the time to 11.00 so it will appear at the top in the Actions pane (if you sort it on time ofcourse).
This would probably require the least development time i guess as i only requires the ability to set a default when creating actions.

Would this work for you to?

Kind regards,
Bram.

hi bram,
thanks for reading my (long-as-heck!) post and for replying thoughtfully.

unfortunately, i think what you and i are seeking are two different things, though they do have similarities.

i really want to avoid data entry completely. simple and quick drag and drop to re-order. that's it. no dates, no scheduling, no manual entry of "priority", no keyboard at all, in fact. just swipe to reorder and go. let the program deal with the rest (after all, isn't that what computers are for? B) )

anyway, thanks again, and good luck on getting your idea implemented..

--jeff

I agree!:)

Alright... i just discovered another option.
Using Priority to set an action to Urgent (or Must as one of the default values). If that is done it should always display them first automatically.
Unfortunately setting the priority field doesn't change the order of the action on the same day.

So than the feature request would be to make the Priority field sortable (sort order would be: date/time first, priority second).

Ok, this is still not the drag n drop that you have in mind, but just thought to put it out here.

Kind regards,
Bram.