Filter bar changes coming in OmniFocus 1.8

[Ken Case]

I think the Mac gets it wrong with 'Due or Flagged' because what it implements is 'Due Soon or Flagged' and that is neither what I want nor what the documentation describes

We've cleaned this up for OmniFocus 1.8 for Mac, and documented it in the online help:

Action Filter

Click this to choose what kind of actions show in the main outline. You can choose to see actions with Any Status, Next actions (just the next thing to do in each eligible project), Available actions (things you can actually do, because they aren’t blocked by earlier actions in a sequential project), Remaining actions (anything that’s not completed), or Completed actions (things you’ve already done).

Status Filter

Click this to show projects or actions based on whether they have flags, due dates, or flags and due dates set on them. You can choose to see items with Any Status, Flagged items, Unflagged items, Due Soon items, Due or Flagged items, or Due and Flagged items. Note that flagging an action puts a kind of ghost flag on its parent project, making the project count as flagged too, and flagging a project ghost-flags all of its contained actions.

(OmniFocus 1.6 for iPhone supports all this too, it just has some compatibility code in place to read the older perspectives created by OmniFocus 1.7 for Mac.)

[ksrhee]

We've cleaned this up for OmniFocus 1.8 for Mac, and documented it in the online help:



(OmniFocus 1.6 for iPhone supports all this too, it just has some compatibility code in place to read the older perspectives created by OmniFocus 1.7 for Mac.)

Ken,

I'm going to be frank here and say that I'm not sure this is an improvement in my book. I have been or I'll be using Due and/or flagged items as a way to manage my most important tasks (i.e., tasks that are due right now or I think important enough to get done right now (even though due dates might not be today). So, if due/flagged items show all the due items, that kind of defeats the purpose (I think many others would agree with this). Now in the Mac side, you can argue that you can contract the future dates so that it doesn't come into view, but on iPhone, you can't do that (that's what I'm seeing right now), and it's rather distracting to see all the items on the screen. Furthermore, the flagged bug mentioned already makes the situation worse.

Furthermore, as mentioned by many on this forum (perhaps except one or two people who do not see it) that there is a bug with the Due Soon filter in iPhone.

Recently, I've moved away from DA's GTD to Mark Forster's "Do it Tomorrow," and I found it to be much more helpful for me personally. It seems that the new planned "improvement" seems to be making it less compatible with my current system. In other words, I need to see the closed list shown, not an open list of all the items that I have coming due in the future for me to focus on the tasks today so that I can get all my stuff done today.

Hope this helps.

[wolfneuralnet]

I would like to second ksrhee's post Ken -- I definitely need the ability to use these tools (OF and OF iPhone) to "focus" on the next 24 hours in certain perspectives. If you are discussing removing this capability from the iPhone or the Mac version I really don't understand the rationale. Just because one member thinks Due or Flagged should not be Due Soon or Flagged now, which happens to work very well to create a "Today" view that many users are struggling to create?

I really don't get this. If you could explain a little more it would be helpful! Again, great work on this release...

[Greg Jones]

I'll add my sentiments to those of ksrhee and wolfneuralnet that I don't see the rationale of this proposed change, and more explanation might be helpful. While I can understand how some users might find value in viewing all tasks that have a due date assigned, I cannot see why that should now become the new setting for the due or flagged option. I too like the functionality of a 'Today' view and I want that view to filter out noise rather than filter in tasks to create a list that is more about 'review' than 'do'.

[whpalmer4]

Apparently there is a lack of imagination here. With 1.8's revamping of the action filter, why not allow the specification of due or due soon behavior on a per-perspective basis? The 1.6 iPhone app isn't the last revision that will ever ship.

Based on the reaction to this issue, I can just imagine the complaints likely to be seen when the first 2.0 images arrive and turn out not to have implemented everyone's pet 2.0 feature in the precise manner they expected....

[ksrhee]

Apparently there is a lack of imagination here. With 1.8's revamping of the action filter, why not allow the specification of due or due soon behavior on a per-perspective basis? The 1.6 iPhone app isn't the last revision that will ever ship.

Based on the reaction to this issue, I can just imagine the complaints likely to be seen when the first 2.0 images arrive and turn out not to have implemented everyone's pet 2.0 feature in the precise manner they expected....

So, apparently some of us are not being imaginative. But I want to remind you that throughout history there are many examples of someone's imagination or creativity turned out others' nightmares. So, I would request that you might want to be careful how you frame this issue.

Now if the program allows us to do multiple things, then everyone will be happy, but the way it was being described, that did not seem to be the case.

I don't think anyone is being draconian in asking the exact feature. We are simply pointing out that there are some of us who have a different need than someone like yourself, and we want our voice to be heard.

[Ken Case]

I'm going to be frank here and say that I'm not sure this is an improvement in my book. I have been or I'll be using Due and/or flagged items as a way to manage my most important tasks (i.e., tasks that are due right now or I think important enough to get done right now (even though due dates might not be today). So, if due/flagged items show all the due items, that kind of defeats the purpose (I think many others would agree with this).

Oh, sorry, I guess it wasn't clear that the interpretation of "Due" is exactly the same as in 1.7: it means anything which is coming due soon, not anything which has some future due date.

The fundamental change is that you can now construct perspectives which show items which are "Due Soon or Flagged", not just perspectives which show "Due Soon" or "Flagged" or "Due Soon and Flagged".

(There's another very useful change as well: in "context" mode, you can now build lists of actions which have Any status, i.e. completed actions can be grouped in lists along with unfinished actions. This was only possible in 1.7 in project mode, which meant you couldn't group them by anything other than project.)

[uof]

This reshuffle sounds good to me. Looking forward to making a single list of due or flagged items, with unavailable ones hidden. That will be my main "getting things done" view...

[nawichita]

Is any way to create a perspective with "Due and Available", "Fagged and Available" and "(Due or Flagged) and Available"? On 1.8?

[Ken Case]

Is any way to create a perspective with "Due and Available", "Flagged and Available" and "(Due or Flagged) and Available"? On 1.8?

Yes, 1.8 supports all of these combinations.

[CatOne]

Is any way to create a perspective with "Due and Available", "Fagged and Available" and "(Due or Flagged) and Available"? On 1.8?

There's an app for that 2nd perspective, but it's not OmniFocus ;-)

[ksrhee]

Yes, 1.8 supports all of these combinations.

Great. Now if we can only run 1.8 on my Mac. It seems like it might solve some of the problems we are seeing in iPhone 1.6 as well.

[Greg Jones]

Apparently there is a lack of imagination here. With 1.8's revamping of the action filter, why not allow the specification of due or due soon behavior on a per-perspective basis? The 1.6 iPhone app isn't the last revision that will ever ship.

Based on the reaction to this issue, I can just imagine the complaints likely to be seen when the first 2.0 images arrive and turn out not to have implemented everyone's pet 2.0 feature in the precise manner they expected....

Bill, I wonder if it might be possible for you or someone at Omni to clarify what your role is with respect to OmniFocus and the forums? I'm unclear if you are now speaking from a user-to-user perspective, or from an official Omni presence (e.g. the 'Setting distance limit for Nearby Contexts feature' thread).

If your role is that of a user-to-user, then your personal opinions have just as much validity as any other user, and will be respected as such. I wouldn't mind at all if you say that anyone with an opinion different from yours must lack imagination.

However, if you are speaking from an official Omni presence, then that changes the game somewhat. I expect that other users would be more inclined to voice an opinion on a topic and/or feature set (pro or con) when it is an official Omni position. If you are posting from both perspectives, perhaps some means of differentiating when you are speaking user-to-user and when you are speaking for Omni would be helpful.

[whpalmer4]

Greg, I'm just another user, one who decided that the best way to fill in gaps in his knowledge of the Omni tools he used was to try to figure out the answers to questions posted on the forums (a very successful approach!) I was also one of the alpha testers for the 1.6 iPhone firmware, largely due to my ability and willingness to send in a large number of bug reports, I suspect. I get no compensation for any of this except the satisfaction of the occasional "hey, thanks!" from people I've helped with my efforts. Some members of my household think I should spend more time on their problems than yours, but that's crazy talk :-)

[nawichita]

Thaks Ken. And very nice news. Go on

[nawichita]

There's an app for that 2nd perspective, but it's not OmniFocus ;-)
Ja, ja, ja. True

[kingsinger]

That's something I would really like to see. As I understand GTD, the start date is almost more important than the due date. I know you put start dates in the future to hide things until they are ready, but sometimes you want to get a quick look at whether there is anything in that cue in the immediate future (just like due soon).

Along the same lines, I wish I could control with the sort order was descending or ascending. The same goes for the Mac client as well, but it's more of a profound drag on the iphone app, because there is no fast way to scroll to the bottom of a list, like there is to scroll to the top.

That or if there was a way to collapse certain headings, like on the mac, that might work too (So if I don't want to scroll through all my overdue entries and I just want to see the stuff from the last month, I can do that.

The screen state of the headers is something that is not respected in the perspectives on the phone right now either. If it were, it would be alleviated somewhat.

[whpalmer4]

I use a "tickler" perspective that shows remaining actions grouped by start date, with most of the groups closed. It's easy to open up the "tomorrow" and "next week" groups for a quick check if needed, or make a separate "starting soon" perspective that only has those groups open.

I agree that the lack of closed groupings on the iPhone is annoying, but not as annoying to me as not having the ability to do any sort of "start" or "tickler" list was prior to the perspectives feature, so I'm happy to do some extra scrolling to avoid having to do my old workarounds with flags and due dates which diluted the usefulness of those features for me. One comment I made during the alpha test was that some means of jumping to "today" in the long list would ameliorate the lack of grouping for many purposes.

As always, if a potential feature is important to you, send in that feedback...

[kingsinger]

Agree that a "today" button as you describe it would help a lot and is probably the easiest thing to implement.

This is a huge flaw in the iphone OS in general. It has top of page shortcut, but no bottom of page.

[whpalmer4]

What's the top of page shortcut?

Note that "bottom of page" is likely to be different from "today" for date-based perspectives. For my data, today is usually only about 20% of the way through the list!

[curt.clifton]

What's the top of page shortcut?


In most iPhone apps, tapping the status bar at the top of the screen will scroll to the top of the page.

[kingsinger]

For my data, if it's ordered oldest to newest, today could be 60%-80% down the list <g>.