5.2.2 TODO keywords as types

The second possibility is to use TODO keywords to indicate different types of action items. For example, you might want to indicate that items are for “work” or “home”. Or, when you work with several people on a single project, you might want to assign action items directly to persons, by using their names as TODO keywords. This type of functionality is actually much better served by using tags (see Tags), so the TODO implementation is kept just for backward compatibility.

Using TODO types, it would be set up like this:

(setq org-todo-keywords '((type "Fred" "Sara" "Lucy" "|" "DONE")))

In this case, different keywords do not indicate states, but rather different types. So the normal work flow would be to assign a task to a person, and later to mark it DONE. Org mode supports this style by adapting the workings of the command C-c C-t³⁷. When used several times in succession, it still cycles through all names, in order to first select the right type for a task. But when you return to the item after some time and execute C-c C-t again, it will switch from any name directly to ‘DONE’. Use prefix arguments or completion to quickly select a specific name. You can also review the items of a specific TODO type in a sparse tree by using a numeric prefix to C-c / t. For example, to see all things Lucy has to do, you would use C-3 C-c / t. To collect Lucy’s items from all agenda files into a single buffer, you would use the numeric prefix argument as well when creating the global TODO list: C-3 M-x org-agenda t.