Alarms Feature? [A: Yes, if Growl is installed.]

[SamT]

I have searched but have been unable to find if it is planned to be able to add alarms or reminders to tasks/projects....

Anyone know?

[coconino]

Unless I’m misunderstanding how a GTD system should work, I believe alarms, being time-specific, should be confined to your calendar (probably iCal) and reminders are inherent to the entire system. What is a next action if not a reminder? If you are talking about reminders about time-specific tasks then I believe they belong in your calendar.

[rllewis@mac.com]

can I set alarms or reminders in omnifocus?

[Lizard]

As previously discussed (http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=9305), the short answer is "no". The longer answer is "install Growl".

[jmorrison0722]

I want to create to-do items, assign a due date and have my computer, phone or iPad alert me on screen when that item is due...much like a calendar event will in iCal, Entourage and Outlook. Now before anyone jumps in with a "Those are calendar apps and OF is a ToDo app", I realize this. To do items often have due dates. Why can't they too have alarms, set to go off X number of minutes or hours before they are due?

1. Before I invest a load of cash in OmniFocus for all my platforms...does it offer this functionality?

2. Assuming the answer to 1 is no, do they plan to add it?

I know that some believe a to do app doesn't need this feature, I would suggest however that their is a market for this. I'm seeing tons of posts about this type of thing offering work arounds using Applescripts and iCal.

[CatOne]

You can do this on OF for Mac as long as you have Growl installed.

You can do it on OF for iPhone by exporting to a .Mac based calendar. And perhaps local notifications on a 4.0 based phone will make it possible without doing the same steps. With the current OS version this is really the only way to fire an alarm on the phone, short of making actual calendar events in iCal.

[jmorrison0722]

You can do this on OF for Mac as long as you have Growl installed.

You can do it on OF for iPhone by exporting to a .Mac based calendar. And perhaps local notifications on a 4.0 based phone will make it possible without doing the same steps. With the current OS version this is really the only way to fire an alarm on the phone, short of making actual calendar events in iCal.

Isn't this the sort of thing that iPhone notifications would be utilized for? Wasn't that added in version 3 of the iPhone OS? I'm sure I'm missing something but I know I have other apps that send up alerts.

[CatOne]

Isn't this the sort of thing that iPhone notifications would be utilized for? Wasn't that added in version 3 of the iPhone OS? I'm sure I'm missing something but I know I have other apps that send up alerts.

These are push notifications, and they have to be sent by a server. There is no mechanism for a non-Apple application to pop up an alert on the phone.

So OmniFocus allows you to publish to a remote calendar which will fire notifications to the iPhone. I don't believe these can work if the phone is off-network.

iPhone OS 4 allows for local notifications, so it should no longer be necessary to go through the same hoops. I haven't looked at the SDK so I don't know all the specifics, but I think without MobileMe you might not be able to get any notifications until you have a phone running iPhone OS 4.

There's nothing Omni can really do about the situation more than they've implemented, right now, I don't think.

[Brian]

The calendar approach allows customers with an iPod Touch, who may not have consistent network access, to reliably get notifications.

With the calendar approach, network access is required during the sync process that updates the calendar, but once the calendar app on the phone grabs the updated calendar, the alarms go off regardless of whether there's an active network connection.

The push approach depends on constant access to the network; a server sends a message to the phone at the appointed time. That won't reach someone with an iPod touch in a timely manner unless they happen to be near a free WiFi network.

(According to Apple, about 40% of the devices out there running iPhoneOS are iPod Touches.)

We're definitely excited about the local notifications, by the way. I don't have any specifics for you yet, but having to rely on an external server for these notifications was always a last resort.