Not Loving Context Sorting [A: Adjust using View button in v1.13.1 or later.]

[Baarogue]

I use OF for my nightly tasks at work (gy shift) and used the way OF smart-sorted tasks with a due-time to the top of the list to cause my important tasks to be prioritized, regardless of project they're in.

For instance, I have several projects named TA1, TA2, TA3, T2, T2-2, and Misc Work, in that order, all with context: Office. I would give important tasks a due-time to cause them to be sorted to the top of the list by due-time in context view, regardless of which project they were in. So for instance, while most of the tasks in Misc Work wouldn't be sorted above any tasks from the other projects, the two important tasks in that project that had due-times would be.

NOW that OF has stupid-sort, stubbornly adhering to the task order w/i the project, and the project order w/i the context, it's practically useless to me.

I'm talking about over 200 tasks here on a nightly basis, that I now have to scroll up and down through to find the ones of importance as they come up - a tedious method that was the very reason I purchased OF for in the first place. I might as well return to a paper checklist and egg timer.

The only solution I can think of would be to put all my important tasks into one project and somehow marking them with a note which REAL project they're from. That's still over 100 tasks I have to edit in order to make it work again when it was NOT broken before.

Thanks Obama!

[Christian]

I understand you want to use this as a tool for hour nightly shifts. Consequently I take it your tasks that you assigned due dates to are due on various times the very night you want to use OF to display them.

If that is the case, did you try the "due" perspective? It will list all due tasks, hence those which you prioritised. It will still sort by project but since it's only the important ones that should be no problem.

Alternatively, do you have access to a mac?

[Baarogue]

I understand you want to use this as a tool for hour nightly shifts. Consequently I take it your tasks that you assigned due dates to are due on various times the very night you want to use OF to display them.

If that is the case, did you try the "due" perspective? It will list all due tasks, hence those which you prioritised. It will still sort by project but since it's only the important ones that should be no problem.

Alternatively, do you have access to a mac?

I don't see any such "due" perspective. In view options there's "Next Action", "Available" (selected), "Remaining", and "All."

There used to be "due soon" and "overdue" categories but those were removed a few updates ago and replaced with "Forecast" - and I did miss them when they vanished. Forecast does not do what I need.

No, I don't have a Mac.

[Christian]

If you go to you OF home screen there should be a section called "perspectives" (all the way down the list). Press it. Select "due". See of that does what you need.

[Baarogue]

If you go to you OF home screen there should be a section called "perspectives" (all the way down the list). Press it. Select "due". See of that does what you need.

OF home screen has, in order, Inbox, Projects, Contexts, Map, Forecast, Flagged, and Search. Along the bottom are the buttons Home, Sort, Sync, Inbox, and Settings.

I appreciate you trying to help, but before you go further how about we check we're on the same page. I'm using OmniFocus for iPhone, 1.13 -- Nov. 10, 2011

[Christian]

Im on 1.12.1 (iPhone 4). Now that I looked for it I found the settings for perspectives are actually gone. Didn't notice them disappearing as I still have the original perspectives themselves. Maybe that has been done when forecast was introduced. In a way forecast does what the "due" perspective used to do: show you which tasks are due today. Why does that not work for your specific needs?

[Baarogue]

Im on 1.12.1 (iPhone 4). Now that I looked for it I found the settings for perspectives are actually gone. Didn't notice them disappearing as I still have the original perspectives themselves. Maybe that has been done when forecast was introduced. In a way forecast does what the "due" perspective used to do: show you which tasks are due today. Why does that not work for your specific needs?

Because in 1.13, Forecast now shows every task in every Project that's due today, which in my case is every task, sorted by start time. Which still sorts my "important" tasks below "normal" tasks.

[Christian]

Ok that makes sense. What could be a solution would be to email support and ask them to add a custom perspective to your database that does exactly what you needs. They store your data unencrypted and from what I have heard they are able and willing to assist with such for users who do not own a mac.

[Baarogue]

Ok that makes sense. What could be a solution would be to email support and ask them to add a custom perspective to your database that does exactly what you needs. They store your data unencrypted and from what I have heard they are able and willing to assist with such for users who do not own a mac.

It appears I lied just above about how Forecast works now. It /does/ only show those tasks with an end time, not my "normal" tasks - much like the old "due soon/overdue" perspectives. But my original objection with Forecast back when it was introduced still stands - that it has the big honking un-hideable (as far as I've found) calendar along the top, taking up nearly half the screen in landscape view. First World Problems, I know, but there it is.

And then there's the irksome matter that I'm having to adjust how I use the app, again, due to an arbitrary change that reduces its usefulness. If they'd added a setting to change how it sorts tasks between the old smart way and this new dense method, I'd be perfectly happy because yay choices! But instead it appears they nuked the old sorting code from orbit, I assume to make room for the Siri glitter.

Thanks for trying, but I think it's just too much trouble when they're indicating with this change that they're more interested in adding new shinies like Siri integration when they already HAD calendar integration than keeping the old features like the smart-sorting that I bought the app for. And I kinda need it working properly by Monday, which definitely won't happen. No, I think this weekend will just have to be spent finding a new taskmaster app for my Kindle Fire and entering my schedule for next week.

Thanks again Christian, and good luck.

[bertilak]

While I love the Siri integration included in the most recent update, I detest the new sorting for contexts.

I used to be able to sort my library and actions by due date in OF on my Mac, sync, and then on my iPhone view a neat and concise list of next actions sorted context and then due date (i.e., by tapping the Contexts option on my iPhone). Now that contexts are sorted by project, I need to scroll through each context list to determine which actions to work on. Additionally, since I have so many projects, there doesn't appear to be an easy way to view my most "urgent" next actions sorted by context. In my view this is a mess.

Is there a simple perspective I can create that will enable me see next actions sorted by context and then due date? I created separate ones for each context on my Mac, but it's not nearly as elegant as the default functionality prior to the upgrade. Hopefully this all makes sense.

[jdh]

Wow, just noticed that myself. I'm sort of wondering what the logic for that was, since context lists don't otherwise provide any meaningful view of project information -- it's not like there are project headings and groupings to go by.

I would normally expect that when working in context view the most urgent actions should normally filter to the top -- that would be flagged actions and those with due dates, and I would especially expect this when the view is set to "Next Actions," since the most important next actions are those with dates attached to them.

Perhaps I'm missing something obvious that isn't part of my own workflow, but I'm not even understanding in what ways the new sort order would even be useful. My project sorting and organization in OF is somewhat arbitrary and certainly not based on any kind of priority model.

[jbrown]

Sorry for the confusion here. Normally, perspectives on the iPhone app are only available if you're syncing with the Mac version. However, you can turn on perspectives by tapping the link on this page:

http://people.omnigroup.com/kc/debugomnifocus/EnableiOSPerspectives.html

You should now see a Perspectives row in the sidebar. The Due perspective gives you a list of your actions sorted by their due date. Hope this helps!

[SFF]

I agree--this change threw me for a loop. I totally understand why someone would want their actions within a context sorted by project--in fact, I had already created a perspective to do just that. However, that's why I was a little annoyed at the change. The new default context view essentially duplicates a perspective that I already created, and "overwrote" what I was using Context view for--which was to view all my tasks within a context automatically sorted by due date.

Assuming you have OmniFocus for Mac, the solution is simple--just create a new perspective in Context view and sort your actions by "Due". Save the new perspective and sync, then sync the iPhone and you should be good to go.

[jdh]

I'm not sure a new perspective really solves it appropriately, however... Unlike on the Mac, perspectives on the iPhone are single-level lists with no hierarchy to use for "drill-down" filtering. So to make this work with the same way with perspectives I would need to create an individual perspective for each context that I want to have sorted differently (which for me would amount to at least a dozen new perspectives).

I guess everyone's workflow is different, but I'm personally still not seeing what advantage there is to sorting by project in the context view. Context view is for doing things, and I would think that those tasks that have a higher priority due to due dates or flags should naturally be prioritized at the top so that one doesn't risk missing them.

With this change, it feels like the context view has just become another "planning" view.

[Ken Case]

Thanks for the feedback! I've filed this as bug #76573 (Consider restoring flagged & due sort ordering in context lists, or providing a sorting option) and added all your comments as votes there.

If anyone else would like to vote for this, please email our support ninjas at omnifocus@omnigroup.com and reference the bug number. Thanks!

[SFF]

Context view is for doing things, and I would think that those tasks that have a higher priority due to due dates or flags should naturally be prioritized at the top so that one doesn't risk missing them.

With this change, it feels like the context view has just become another "planning" view.

I totally agree with this statement. It seems counter to canonical GTD to have the list of actions within a context sorted in any fashion but due/flagged at the top.

I'm sure Omni had a good reason for changing the sort order--I'd love to hear what it was!

[Ken Case]

I'm sure Omni had a good reason for changing the sort order--I'd love to hear what it was!

Sorry, we didn't think it would be a controversial change. We noticed that the iPhone had a completely different context list ordering from the iPad, and we thought we should make them consistent. (Nobody had complained about either order as far as I know, so we thought nobody had a strong preference between the two.)

Once we decided to make them consistent, we were left deciding which behavior to keep. We decided to keep the iPad behavior of sorting items by project when in context lists because we already had the Forecast and Flagged lists for when those are your interest. ("If we leave them in the order they appear in your library, then they feel more stable with the way you created them. I think this is especially important when you have multiple actions from the same project; their order may be important and unless you request it, we should not be reordering them on you.") I think we figured that the iPhone ordering was a holdover from the pre-Forecast era.

We did note internally that it would be fairly easy to provide an option for the old behavior (a hidden option if nothing else), and wondered whether anyone would want that. I think we'd gotten used to thinking that if someone did care, we'd get feedback on that sort of change during our beta cycle—not remembering how much more limited our beta pool is for our iOS apps (since we can't just make them publicly available for download on our website like we can with our Mac apps).

So, my apologies! We should have realized how that change would affect some of your workflows, and even if we decided to go ahead with it we should at least have explained why we were making the change. Ideally we would have also given you some advance warning and opportunity to send us your feedback—before it shipped, rather than after.

[jdh]

Sorry, we didn't think it would be a controversial change. We noticed that the iPhone had a completely different context list ordering from the iPad, and we thought we should make them consistent. (Nobody had complained about either order as far as I know, so we thought nobody had a strong preference between the two.)
Fair enough... At least I understand the logic behind it, even if I don't necessarily agree with it (I was just afraid that I'd missed some tenet of GTD workflow somewhere along the way :) ).

In all honesty, I've never really used the context view much on the iPad, probably because it's always been more of a planning tool for me than a doing tool -- if I'm on the go, my iPhone is the go-to device for accessing my contexts, and if I'm at my desk, I'm using the Mac version. As a result, I don't think I even realized that this was the way the iPad sorted contexts until you pointed it out. :)

Now that I see it there, I'm not sure I like it that way on the iPad either, but I also don't necessarily care as I don't really use it. However, it's also worth noting that the iPad does have one small advantage over the iPhone version in the ability to use perspectives with collapsible contexts. It's still not as useful as the ability to drill down through multiple levels from the built-in Context view, but at least it's a bit easier to focus on a specific context within a perspective than it would be on the iPhone.

We decided to keep the iPad behavior of sorting items by project when in context lists because we already had the Forecast and Flagged lists for when those are your interest.
The problem is that both the forecast and flagged lists are general views of everything, which may include tasks due in contexts that are otherwise unavailable. If I'm in a situation where I'm only able to focus on a single context, the additional "noise" of things I can't do right now gets in the way.

Don't get me wrong -- the Forecast is a fantastic feature, and I use it several times a day as an overview, but it doesn't help me focus the way that the context views do. Perhaps part of the issue is the lack of a "focus" feature on the iPhone and iPad versions, but at the same time I feel that trying to manage that would add an additional layer of complexity due to the different user interface.

I think this is especially important when you have multiple actions from the same project; their order may be important and unless you request it, we should not be reordering them on you.
I do see some validity to that point, and I had sort of assumed this was part of the logic. However, in many cases dependent items are going to be hidden anyway in sequential projects and I'd argue that a due or flagged item, even if it's further down in a parallel project should still be sorted with a higher priority. Perhaps that may leave some users scratching their heads to the sequencing, but I don't think it's too difficult to understand that a due or flagged task gets a higher priority, even if it's further down in the project.

The biggest risk, I suppose, is that dated tasks still sort to the top regardless of whether they're "due" or not, so a task in a project that has a due date of several weeks away still seems to be moved higher up the list than the three or four tasks before it that may be undated. I can see how this would be a problem, to be fair, although I still personally prefer the old behaviour even in this case as such a task should be hidden until the dependent tasks have been completed anyway.

It's also worth noting that I use a number of single-item lists, in which case the sort order is completely irrelevant compared to the flagged and due status -- new items get dropped at the bottom of the list and I rarely bother sorting them otherwise as (until now) it's never mattered :)

Anyway, I suppose a configuration option is always the best way to go about it, and it would probably make sense to simply drop it on the existing view options menu that is available in each context. This would also have the advantage of allowing it to be easily toggled on-the-fly for those who may want to view their contexts in a project-oriented order.

[Ken Case]

Anyway, I suppose a configuration option is always the best way to go about it, …

Well, only if there's no consensus: every visible configuration option we add has an associated cost in perceived complexity. (OmniFocus can already be pretty intimidating—something we're trying to address.)

But if everyone agrees that the earlier behavior of sorting by Flagged & Due is better, we'll just do it that way. (Perhaps we'll extend the behavior to the iPad app as well to improve consistency—unless it would be inappropriate there due to different usage scenarios.)

[jdh]

Fair enough and that's certainly valid.... No need for additional options that nobody really needs :)

My vote is simply to revert back to the old way of doing things on the iPhone app and make the iPad app match as well. As I said, I don't really use the iPad app in that mode, but I can't see how the current project-based sort order for contexts on the iPad would be all that practical.

[Baarogue]

Sorry for the confusion here. Normally, perspectives on the iPhone app are only available if you're syncing with the Mac version. However, you can turn on perspectives by tapping the link on this page:

http://people.omnigroup.com/kc/debugomnifocus/EnableiOSPerspectives.html

You should now see a Perspectives row in the sidebar. The Due perspective gives you a list of your actions sorted by their due date. Hope this helps!

Restoring the Due perspective has helped greatly. The persistent date-bar across the top is irksome but far less intrusive than the one in Forecast so I can live with it. Thank you. This saves me quite a bit of time switching to another taskmaster app. Will I have to save that link to restore Perspectives when I update the OF app again or will this change persist?

Thanks for the feedback! I've filed this as bug #76573 (Consider restoring flagged & due sort ordering in context lists, or providing a sorting option) and added all your comments as votes there.

If anyone else would like to vote for this, please email our support ninjas at omnifocus@omnigroup.com and reference the bug number. Thanks!

If it gets changed back, huzzah, but I didn't bug-report it myself because the release notes implied this was an intentional change. But if it is a bug, that changes my attitude significantly. Thanks!

[SFF]

Just wanted to chime in one more time and say thank you to Ken for personally replying to this thread and explaining the reasoning behind the change (One of the reasons why I chose to give my money to Omni over other GTD/task managers was the great support and personal attention I got for my questions during my free trail period).

I'll just say that jdh and I are very much aligned. My preference would be for a user-defined option on how things should be sorted on the iPhone app, but if that would add too much cost/complexity, then I much prefer the old way of sorting actions by due/flag (which feels much more in line with GTD teachings) within a context rather then by project. If someone has a need to sort by project, that person can always create a perspective to do that.

[whpalmer4]

The iPad behavior (which appears to be identical to that of the Mac's built-in Contexts perspective) has a very nice feature — it saves one from having to enter due dates for everything in a sequential project or action group where the actions are all in the same context. You just have to put in the due date for the final item or the group and you'll get them displayed in the order they need to be done. Otherwise, you get the behavior where only the ones you've assigned dates to are sorted to the top, and if they are within the Due Soon window, you have the styling which would otherwise suggest that they are not yet available overridden by the Due Soon or OverDue styling, and you go off and do some action without proper sequencing.

The iPad behavior isn't perfect, but it is less imperfect than the old iPhone behavior!

[bertilak]

Just wanted to chime in one more time and say thank you to Ken for personally replying to this thread and explaining the reasoning behind the change (One of the reasons why I chose to give my money to Omni over other GTD/task managers was the great support and personal attention I got for my questions during my free trail period).

I'd like to second this notion. There are a lot things that Omni does right in my opinion - and genuinely caring about their customers' concerns is tops for me.

Thanks very much Ken.

[Greg Jones]

But if everyone agrees that the earlier behavior of sorting by Flagged & Due is better, we'll just do it that way. (Perhaps we'll extend the behavior to the iPad app as well to improve consistency—unless it would be inappropriate there due to different usage scenarios.)

I typically work from my own perspectives as well as the Forecast view, but when I do use the context view it is helpful to see items sorted in the new behavior for the reason that whpalmer4 listed.

However, one of the things I find most frustrating with OmniFocus is when the views that I use less frequently do not match up across the 3 platforms (which is one reason why I rely more on my own perspectives). In other words, count my vote as wanting consistency, even if the resulting view is less perfect than what I would have preferred.

[jbrown]

Restoring the Due perspective has helped greatly. The persistent date-bar across the top is irksome but far less intrusive than the one in Forecast so I can live with it. Thank you. This saves me quite a bit of time switching to another taskmaster app. Will I have to save that link to restore Perspectives when I update the OF app again or will this change persist?

You shouldn't have to use that link again unless you have to reinstall the app.

[jdh]

The iPad behavior (which appears to be identical to that of the Mac's built-in Contexts perspective) has a very nice feature — it saves one from having to enter due dates for everything in a sequential project or action group where the actions are all in the same context.
I guess that's where the difference in workflows becomes somewhat apparent :)

I personally never use the "Remaining" view when I'm looking at my contexts in any of the three apps, and therefore don't care if it's sorted by project as the blocked tasks will simply never appear, due date or not If something's not available to be done, I don't want to see it in my context views. For me, that's what the project views are for.

As for the Mac version's built-in context perspective, I changed my sort order to due/flagged at the top a long time ago for the same reason, so I can't really remember what the original or "default" sort order is. Again, however, I almost never work in "Remaining" view even in the Mac app.

Were it not for the risk of adding more confusion for new users, I'd almost think the sensible compromise would be to sort by due/flagged when viewing by "Next Action" or "Available" and sort by natural project order when viewing "Remaining" or "All." Sadly, however, I think that would be much more confusing and complicated than just dropping a sort order option into the "View" menu. It does, however, seem to illustrate the two very different ways in which Context views appear to be getting used.

[Baarogue]

Le *sigh*. So "Due" doesn't work like I need it to after all.

It's stuck in Remaining view, instead of Available like I need it to be, with no option to change it. SO I'm stuck scrolling past dozens of tasks that won't become Available for hours, to get to the few I need to be working on.

I spent a lot of effort learning exactly how your app sorted tasks and customizing my schedule in OF so it would behave just how I needed it to. I raved about it to every co-worker and friend. Thanks for the good run, I guess. Keep the change.

I'm done.

[jdh]

There's another ongoing thread about it over here (http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=22686) where Ken explained Omni's logic for making the change (basically matching the iPad version), and indicated he didn't think it would as controversial.

I think the general consensus in that thread is that many others (myself included) want it changed back, or in the very least made available as an option. Hopefully this will be fixed in the next version, as it's made my context views similarly useless in the iPhone app.

[Dayala]

Just been using OF for the past 3 days. Got a question, I just opened a context "@errands" with "available" as the sorting order. The tasks listed are listed in no apparent order unless I'm missing something. They're not alphabetical, they are not listed by date, which I would prefer with due soonest first and they are not grouped together by folders or projects. Just curious if I'm missing something.

[gameboy213]

Just been using OF for the past 3 days. Got a question, I just opened a context "@errands" with "available" as the sorting order. The tasks listed are listed in no apparent order unless I'm missing something. They're not alphabetical, they are not listed by date, which I would prefer with due soonest first and they are not grouped together by folders or projects. Just curious if I'm missing something.

Nope. That is the current sorting method. There are a few threads on this. I think they rethinking of adding options to sort and I hope they do.

[gameboy213]

Totally agree. Hopefully options for sort appear soon.

[whpalmer4]

It's stuck in Remaining view, instead of Available like I need it to be, with no option to change it. SO I'm stuck scrolling past dozens of tasks that won't become Available for hours, to get to the few I need to be working on.


So if you could have a version of the Due perspective that showed available tasks instead of remaining, you would be okay? Call up Omni support and have them help you construct one. If they won't do it, I will, just send me email at gmail.

There's another ongoing thread about it over here (http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=22686) where Ken explained Omni's logic for making the change (basically matching the iPad version), and indicated he didn't think it would as controversial.

I think the general consensus in that thread is that many others (myself included) want it changed back, or in the very least made available as an option. Hopefully this will be fixed in the next version, as it's made my context views similarly useless in the iPhone app.
What settings would you use on the Mac, if you could put it in your pocket? Or are you saying that you found the old behavior more useful than anything you could do with the Mac version?

[jdh]

On the Mac, I always sort my context view by due/flagged. I don't hang out in context view unless I'm actually looking at what I need to do, and I almost never show anything other than "Available" in that view.

The problem is that the Mac version is much more customizable than the iPhone version in terms of how you want to see things, even without using custom perspectives. On the iPhone, the "Context" view is basically a fixed presentation with no customizability.

More importantly, the pre-defined Contexts view is the only view that actually allows you to filter by individual context, by presenting them hierarchically -- a custom perspective doesn't provide a multi-level hierarchy -- it simply shows you ALL of your selected contexts in a single listing.

[whpalmer4]

On the Mac, I always sort my context view by due/flagged. I don't hang out in context view unless I'm actually looking at what I need to do, and I almost never show anything other than "Available" in that view.

The problem is that the Mac version is much more customizable than the iPhone version in terms of how you want to see things, even without using custom perspectives. On the iPhone, the "Context" view is basically a fixed presentation with no customizability.

More importantly, the pre-defined Contexts view is the only view that actually allows you to filter by individual context, by presenting them hierarchically -- a custom perspective doesn't provide a multi-level hierarchy -- it simply shows you ALL of your selected contexts in a single listing.
Instead of getting the old iPhone functionality back, wouldn't you rather get the Mac functionality on the iPhone/iPad?

[jdh]

Of course, but let's stick to goals that are attainable in the short term :)

One suggestion in the other thread was to add a sort control on the view options, which would essentially provide Mac-like functionality in one form (since you can sort the default context views on the Mac). However, Ken expressed some reticence to that idea for fear of adding unnecessary complexity.

Another solution, of course, would be to add a multi-layered view to the perspectives feature -- effectively turning just about every view into a customizable perspective in much the same way as the Mac version now works. To me, that's the ideal solution, but I don't think it's something that's achievable in the next update.

The problem is that the most recent change has broken the existing context view for many of us, creating a more immediate problem that is going to need to be solved. I'm not exaggerating when I say that this change has rendered OmniFocus on the iPhone to be significantly less useful for me.

For me, Context view is a "doing" mode. It is counter-productive to have to scroll down through dozens of tasks that are much lower priority just to check if I have a flagged or due/overdue task buried in there somewhere. The built-in Forecast and Flagged views don't serve as useful of a purpose, since that essentially goes against the context ethos of GTD -- the ability to focus on only those thing that I can do in my current context without needing to clutter my mind with all of the other things that, while possibly important or even urgent, are simply not possible at a given moment.

To work around it, I've had to create more than a dozen custom perspectives (one set for single contexts and a separate set for combinations of sub-contexts), but that's been a nuisance to maintain and more difficult to navigate than the old context view was.

Again, however, ultimately yes, the correct solution would be the same level of customizability as the Mac version, either directly on the device or inherited from the way views are configured on the Mac side (I personally don't care which, but I imagine there's room for a lot more debate on which approach is preferred). It would be fantastic if that type of solution can be delivered in the next near-term update, but I remain somewhat skeptical that this is going to be nearly as simple as returning the current context view to something that's actually useful for getting things done.

[Ken Case]

One suggestion in the other thread was to add a sort control on the view options, which would essentially provide Mac-like functionality in one form (since you can sort the default context views on the Mac). However, Ken expressed some reticence to that idea for fear of adding unnecessary complexity.

It seems clear there are good uses for both ways of sorting, so we're looking at providing a sorting option for context lists in our next update.

[Dayala]

Thanks!

[jwicks]

I am pretty sure that the order they automatically appear in is not arbitrary, even though it seems like it. I believe they are listed in the order in which they were individually added to OF. You can view tasks sorted by due date in the Forecast view, but that seems to be it. I actually think it lacks this sort of sorting capability because they wanted it to, but I could be wrong.

[Brian]

Merged the three threads on this topic.

[jwhitetoo]

It seems clear there are good uses for both ways of sorting, so we're looking at providing a sorting option for context lists in our next update.

FWIW and specific to OmniFocus built-in contexts on all platforms, I'd like to see at least a four level sort preference/setting (Preferences in OF Mac, Settings in OF iOS). I believe this would allow most users to set the sort as they see fit using whatever combination of flag, name, due and start dates they wish.

Kindly,

James

[Brian]

Version 1.13.1, available today, makes this a configurable option. Open the Context screen, then tap the View button (it looks like an eye) in the toolbar.

[bertilak]

I just downloaded the updated OF for iPhone and context task sorting is now an option.

Thank you Omni Group! I'm one *very* satisfied customer! You guys are awesome!