Re: Org-agenda: List project with deadlines

[Ihor Radchenko]

Sébastien Gendre <seb@k-7.ch> writes:

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

It is completely up to you.
It is, however, common to use either project tag to PROJ todo keyword to
mark project.
You can exclude specific tags from inheritance via
`org-tags-exclude-from-inheritance'.

> 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.

Depends. There is no silver bullet for task management.

IMHO, the benefit of grouping by class could be when you sometimes need
to suspect certain classes, excluding the related tasks from the
agendas. Then, you can trivially comment or flag the whole class heading
with a special tag (for example :HOLD:) and configure your agendas to
not lists tasks with that tag (tasks inside commented headings are
skipped by default, as defined in `org-agenda-skip-comment-trees').

However, if all you classes are mandatory, and your workflow does not
involve focusing on certain classes and temporarily hiding others,
global "Assignments" file may be more suitable.

> ** 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.

Those issues are only relevant to more complex column views, when you
utilize summary attribute (see 7.5.1.2 Column attributes).
AFAIU, your needs are simpler. So, you don't need to worry here.

> 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 ?

Yes, you can build column view from multiple files in agenda.

> ** 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 ?

You can use sparse tree from project heading.
You can also narrow the agenda scope to heading at point ("<<" in agenda
dispatcher)
If you projects are taking a long time, you can create custom agenda
views for those projects.

> 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 ?

I strongly discourage you from using many features all at once.
Start simple and add things one by one, when you have free time and
interest to improve workflow. Only add new things when you get used to
the existing simpler workflow.

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
Org mode contributor,
Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
or support my work at <https://liberapay.com/yantar92>