Org-agenda: List project with deadlines

[Sébastien Gendre]

Hello,

I have some problems to manage my tasks for school with Org-mode. I had
read manual, blog posts and tried different way. With no success.


* What I need.

For the school, I have a list of projects to do. Each with a deadline
and different level of importance. And each project have their how
tasks. Some with schedule, some with deadline and some with neither.

Some times, I need to see only the list of projects, with their status,
deadline, percentage done, importance and class name. How many days left
would be nice. But not their inner tasks.

When I work on a project, I need to see its tasks with their
deadline/schedule, importance/optionality and status.



* The problem I got

I search a good way to manage it with Org-mode, but I have difficulty to
do it easily. I always end with a complex system.


** Record the information

Each class have its own file. In each class file, I have a section named
"Projects and Tasks". As the name say, this section regroup the class
projects and tasks.

For each project and their tasks, I was thinking of creating a heading
for the project and sub-heading for its tasks. Adding a [%] in the
project title, a level A to C for its importance, a DEADLINE for its
deadline and a tag for the class name.

To record a new projects, I use a capture template to not forget
anything. The new project go into an Inbox.org file and I use Org-refile
to move it to its file.

But how do I differentiate a project from a task for Org-mode ? Tags
have inheritance. Do I use a property ?

Is it a good idea to organize every thing by classes ? Or is it better
to have one Org file named "Assignments" to regroup every projects ? In
these files, I have other information recorded, like the taken notes,
the list of distributed documents and their notes and also the list of
class sessions to see them in my agenda.


** List the projects

To list only the projects, I wanted to use Org-agenda todo list view and
editing the column shown. But the manual say it may cause issues.

What can I do ? Do I use it correctly or do I need to it in a completely
different way ? Is it better to use a column view for it ? If yes, is it
possible to build a column view from multiple files ?


** List of tasks from a project

What is the best way to do it ? A custom Org-agenda view for each
project ? A column view under the project top heading ?


* Conclusion

I have the felling that wanting to have everything well organized and
using Org-agenda push me to think of too much complex ways to do thing.

Maybe I need to do like with a bullet journal, with an Org-mode file
instead of a page and don't try to use too much features.

Do you have any suggestion ? Do I forget something ? For what I have
suggested, am I completely wrong ?



Best regards