Entourage projects and tasks

[lelby]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Email Client: pop

I would like to use Entourage projects to manage the workflow of a handful of small projects at once. Each of these has the same pipeline tasks...as in there are the same 10-12 tasks to undertake for each project.

I'd like to just set them up for one, and copy the settings across when setting up a new project. This worked fine, and I really thought it was going to be all I needed, when I realised two things...

1. The tasks get linked across projects, and when they are marked as completed for one, they disappear from the other project windows, or, if I select 'show completed tasks', they are scored through.

2. The tasks all show up in the 'to do' list, which makes a repetitive list of over 50 tasks....all the same, except for the project name they are associated with. I'd rather just keep the to do list for manual notes i make.

The obvious answer is to redo the tasks for each project, which seems a total waste of time....and still causes them to all be showing in the to do list and task windows.

Is there a simple way to associate the same tasks with subsequent projects, yet not have any action on them linked across tasks?

Am i trying to do something that entourage is not really build for?

I've looked at Daylite, which does this very easily, but only syncs with Mac Mail, which I hate using. Entourage also syncs with myob whereas the Daylite/myob connector is not available in Australian versions of Myob.

Thanks in advance for any help with this...i feel I'm golng around in circles and not a lot of work is getting achieved!

 

[William Smith [MVP]]

Is there a simple way to associate the same tasks with subsequent
projects, yet not have any action on them linked across tasks?

Am i trying to do something that entourage is not really build for?

I believe so.

The Project Center itself doesn't contain any items. Instead, it is
simply showing you a view of various items associated with your project.
If a task is marked as completed in one project then it is marked as
read in all projects because it's really just one item, not multiple.

Hope this helps!

--

bill

Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>
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[lelby]

Thanks Bill. Sorry for the delay in replying, im only just returning to this issue.

So, does anyone know of a way this can be achieved with entourage? That a series of workflow tasks can be set up for each project that can be checked off? Is the only way to add them afresh to each project as Im working on it?

Entourage does everything i want it to do in all other ways but this is just driving me nuts!

 

[Jeff Chapman]

In Entourage, a task that is completed will automatically
have the Completed status associated with it.

However, if it is a repeating task (let's say something that
needs to be done every third Wednesday, for instance),
you can set the recurrence on the task from the task details
dialog. You can even opt to have the task regenerate itself
after you've finished it. What this means is that once you've
marked the task as complete, it will duplicate itself with a
fresh one.

With Entourage, if you need to differentiate tasks between
projects yet keep the same set of tasks, you could create the
common tasks, duplicate them and then relabel them
as [Project 1] Task A-common, [Project 2] Task A-common
and so on. Of course, you'd still have separate tasks and
not common tasks. But at least there would be some
method to your madness, in a matter of speaking, and you'd
be able to track which tasks are completed and which aren't.

As far as filtering the task list to only show the ones you
"manually" created (perhaps you mean the tasks that aren't
common to all projects?), you can use the Quick Filter
functionality (View - Show Quick Filter on the menu bar)
to show or hide only the tasks that contain certain text,
certain categories, or belong to certain projects.
Type Command+5 to go to the Task view, and then
try selecting "Project is" = "None" on the Quick Filter to
show you all tasks that don't belong to a specific project.

You can also use the Quick Filter in Project view to show or hide
tasks with certain categories or subject text.
If you creatively label your task titles, assign meaningful
categories, use task recurrence where needed and make use
of the Quick Filter, you should come pretty close to what
you're looking for in Entourage, even if it's not as elegant as
another application might be.

Jeff

 

[fhbarbosa]

In Entourage, a task that is completed will automatically
have the Completed status associated with it.

However, if it is a repeating task (let's say something that
needs to be done every third Wednesday, for instance),
you can set the recurrence on the task from the task details
dialog. You can even opt to have the task regenerate itself
after you've finished it. What this means is that once you've
marked the task as complete, it will duplicate itself with a
fresh one.

With Entourage, if you need to differentiate tasks between
projects yet keep the same set of tasks, you could create the
common tasks, duplicate them and then relabel them
as [Project 1] Task A-common, [Project 2] Task A-common
and so on. Of course, you'd still have separate tasks and
not common tasks. But at least there would be some
method to your madness, in a matter of speaking, and you'd
be able to track which tasks are completed and which aren't.

As far as filtering the task list to only show the ones you
"manually" created (perhaps you mean the tasks that aren't
common to all projects?), you can use the Quick Filter
functionality (View - Show Quick Filter on the menu bar)
to show or hide only the tasks that contain certain text,
certain categories, or belong to certain projects.
Type Command+5 to go to the Task view, and then
try selecting "Project is" = "None" on the Quick Filter to
show you all tasks that don't belong to a specific project.

You can also use the Quick Filter in Project view to show or hide
tasks with certain categories or subject text.
If you creatively label your task titles, assign meaningful
categories, use task recurrence where needed and make use
of the Quick Filter, you should come pretty close to what
you're looking for in Entourage, even if it's not as elegant as
another application might be.

Jeff

Thanks Jeff!