Time Visualization and Calendar Preference

[vanderwal]

One missing element to kGTD is a time visualization. When I move a due date I don't have a view of other things this action may impact. I would love a view of what I have in OmniFocus by time (requires estimating time of tasks) and priority/importance with time visualization. I often have little idea of the amount of stuff I have stacking up against a deadline. I need to know when to delegate or more a task or project out a week or month.

Some of the time visualization in OmniPlan could be helpful, or a link to OmniPlan possibly (OmniPlan has different emotional meaning as it is more formal than possibly is needed). A calendar view of meeting and call actions (or whatever a user prefers).

A built-in calendar view in OmniFocus would be helpful, which could sync or publish to iCal. This view could be more flexible than standard time blocks and with some work could be used to input and flow around interruptions. I really would like a stack of time estimated tasks with their priority/importance and allow me to understand I don't have 26 hours that day to actually get all of the tasks done on that day.

[SpiralOcean]

Just want to throw in my vote for this.

[Hoff]

I agree - it would be great to be able to see some sort of calendar view of a project, but I would keep it really simple and link to Plan if more of that kind of power is needed. I'd like to think of Plan as the full project managment solution, and Focus as the task/personal solution.

My caution comes from having looked at many project management apps - hoping to use them for my GTD system. There is usually way too much overhead to use them fluidly. Gantt charts, work time estimates, resource scheduling - those are all the kinds of things that a big project needs, but not the 95% of projects (especially if "project" is defined as ">1 task") that I work on.

Though having said that - it would be very nice to have a couple simple fields to estimate time. I too would like to be able to plan my day by easily seeing the amount of time I imagine my tasks will take. It would also be great to be able to compare my estimates to how much time I actually took. I'm always underestimating time - and that might help me fine tune.

[tacartwright]

Though having said that - it would be very nice to have a couple simple fields to estimate time. I too would like to be able to plan my day by easily seeing the amount of time I imagine my tasks will take. It would also be great to be able to compare my estimates to how much time I actually took. I'm always underestimating time - and that might help me fine tune.

I would be happy with a single time estimate field. It could be optional. To further simplify, it could be “bucketized” — instead of allowing any time (in minutes) to be entered, it could be a (user-definable) drop-down of durations. Something like “Quick (minutes)”, “Medium (ten of minutes)”, and “Long (hours)” would be sufficient for me. Then you don’t have to worry as much about accuracy and recording actuals.

Thoughts?

— Tim

[pjb]

... Something like “Quick (minutes)”, “Medium (ten of minutes)”, and “Long (hours)” would be sufficient for me. ...— Tim

Me too.
-Paul

[yucca]

Me too! And before someone rains on this parade, no! iCal integration is not what we are referring to!

[Craig]

It would be terrific if, at some point, OmniFocus could (or could interface easily with a program that could) offer planning along the lines of David Seah's Emergent Task Planners (http://davidseah.com/archives/2007/01/02/emergent-task-planner-2007-updates/).

It would be an entirely new additional interface, so I imagine this is seen as beyond the scope of what OmniFocus is for. But since the time estimates and starred/flagged tasks are already being built in, perhaps it's not so farfetched an idea to have a space for dragging and dropping tasks into a daily or weekly planner.

[steve]

To add on to this thread:

I love how in itunes you can check on the length of a playlist or your library. A playlist could be 45 minutes and the entire music library could be 9.5 days.

I would be fantastic if you focus on a project and see that you had 1.5 hours left or look at all of your tasks within a particular range and see that you are estimated 50.5 hours of NA's.

For me and my geekiness, this would be a cool way to motivate myself to crank through a project. It could also be helpful when a boss wants to add on a new project to have the ability to say, "I currently estimate that I have a nine day back up before I start that new project. However, I could put the Smith project on hold in which case I would have a four day back-up."

It would also be fantastic to see this in terms of contexts. You could look at your email context and see that you have 20 minutes of emails to crank out. It would be fun to see the time get reduced every time you checked off another task.

[brooce]

I haven't re-read GTD in a while, but wasn't DE-emphasizing calendars part of the point?

;)

-bbb

[Be.]

Me too. Calendar view in OF on an approriate (adjustable) 24h scale.
Be.

[ksenia]

To add on to this thread:

I love how in itunes you can check on the length of a playlist or your library. A playlist could be 45 minutes and the entire music library could be 9.5 days.

I would be fantastic if you focus on a project and see that you had 1.5 hours left or look at all of your tasks within a particular range and see that you are estimated 50.5 hours of NA's.

For me and my geekiness, this would be a cool way to motivate myself to crank through a project. It could also be helpful when a boss wants to add on a new project to have the ability to say, "I currently estimate that I have a nine day back up before I start that new project. However, I could put the Smith project on hold in which case I would have a four day back-up."

It would also be fantastic to see this in terms of contexts. You could look at your email context and see that you have 20 minutes of emails to crank out. It would be fun to see the time get reduced every time you checked off another task.

I second that. It would be a big help in answering that inevitable question: "WHEN can you implement this request?"

[michelle]

I would be happy with a single time estimate field. It could be optional. To further simplify, it could be “bucketized” — instead of allowing any time (in minutes) to be entered, it could be a (user-definable) drop-down of durations. Something like “Quick (minutes)”, “Medium (ten of minutes)”, and “Long (hours)” would be sufficient for me. Then you don’t have to worry as much about accuracy and recording actuals.

Thoughts?

— Tim

Currently there is a time estimate field in the task inspector. There is also a column for time estimates. In the future, we'll have UI to hide this column if you don't want to see it. Right now we only allow hours and minutes in the field. If you type 3 days, it will be converted to 24 hrs (because it assumes 8 hr days). We realize this isn't ideal and we're trying to come up with a solution. Also, there is an option to sort tasks by time estimate in the filter bar. This isn't fully implemented yet, but when it is you'll be able to see all tasks that are less than one hr, less than 30 min, etc.

[mcoad]

There’s been no movement in this thread for a while, but rather than starting another on the same topic I’d like to add my vote here and maybe restart it. Yes, please, some time vizualization would be a much valued addition to OF (badly needed, I’d say). I’ve only recently taken up my alpha option for OF and am excited by it. It seems set to be by far the best personal planning and organization app out there - clean, elegant, transparent, intuitive, a joy to use, like its sister Omni apps. But for many of us time vizualization is an intrinsic part of project and task management. By this I mean something that goes one modest step beyond OF as it is at the moment but without becoming in any way a fully-fledged, multi-person, large-scale project planner and manager of the OmniPlan or Merlin type.

For example, I’m a writer. I work on my own, but have several projects on the go concurrently: a novel I’m planning, a TV project I’m researching, several others. OF will greatly help to plan and manage tasks for these, but I also want to be able to map out visually how long each will last, how I can best allocate time and manage them concurrently, work out target dates for my agent, travel, etc. For me this is all of a piece with the listing and structuring of tasks, not some great step beyond them, and there must be many other activities, professional and otherwise, for which this is true. Some calendar or minimal Gantt-type view would be of enormous assistance in doing this. I don’t need anything heavy calibre, so OmniPlan et al are massive overkill; but OF as it stands just stops short of complete usefulness. An option might be to import time periods into iCal rather than just ToDos, but its capacity for this is pretty small and the results would be second-best at most. An in-built calendar/Gantt view in OF would be perfect, and surely should be a doddle to include for the creators of OmniPlan (much less than a lite version of this).

This all seems very obvious to someone in my position, but I’ve searched far and wide and there really seems to be nothing out there that does this. There are a billion task managers (though none as attractive as OF) and large-scale project managers, but nothing that fills this niche - which surely can’t be a small one, as there must be many people out there in a similar position. The only alternative I’ve found is to use something like ChartConstructor to build Gantt charts separately, but without the huge advantages of integration with the overall planner. Add this to OF and the app would just about be perfect, for someone like me at least, without making it too bloated for everyone else.

It would be great to read other views on this and build up some momentum on behalf of those of us who need such a feature. Meanwhile, I’m going to email this to the Omni guys separately as requested.

[Foosjitsu]

Gantt integration would be AWESOME. I only would need the most basic Gantt functionality not enough to ever purchase separate Gantt software but it would be the icing on the cake for me just to be able to get an idea how much stuff I can fit in my day realistically.

[joelande]

I would be happy with a single time estimate field. It could be optional. To further simplify, it could be “bucketized” — instead of allowing any time (in minutes) to be entered, it could be a (user-definable) drop-down of durations. Something like “Quick (minutes)”, “Medium (ten of minutes)”, and “Long (hours)” would be sufficient for me. Then you don’t have to worry as much about accuracy and recording actuals.

Thoughts?

— Tim
There already is a duration field.

EDIT: Oops sorry, didn't notice that was an old post

[mcoad]

Gantt integration would be AWESOME. I only would need the most basic Gantt functionality not enough to ever purchase separate Gantt software but it would be the icing on the cake for me just to be able to get an idea how much stuff I can fit in my day realistically.

Yes, exactly. As simple as that. But it would make a huge difference for a heck of a lot of users. Seems crazy that a task management app - GTD management, if you will - should rule this out, shooting it off into the big league of project manager apps. What is seeing how your tasks pan out together in time if not a huge aid to managing them and getting them done?

[joelande]

Of course to play the devils advocate, the problem is where do you stop?

You add a calendar view. You add a Gantt view. You add action dependencies.

I do agree however, it would be useful tool to see some sort of time-visualization tool.

[mcoad]

Of course to play the devils advocate, the problem is where do you stop?

You add a calendar view. You add a Gantt view. You add action dependencies.

I do agree however, it would be useful tool to see some sort of time-visualization tool.

Sure, that is a problem. I guess a good criterion would be when the app starts to be something different from what it’s intended to be. This is subjective, of course, but what I’m suggesting is that adding a simple time visualization view would be far from this. It wouldn’t demand any more data, just an elementary timeline visualization of what’s already there and the ability to tweak it somewhat. This implies some sort of simple calendar view, of course, but in a sense this is what OF is already all about - you just can’t see it graphically. Certainly not action dependencies, though. Those would move OF into being a project management app. The ability to create links with other docs already exists, and is powerful as it is.

I agree with whoever it was in the forum who said that OF should be about managing and planning your tasks, not carrying them out. And it should be this in as lean and transparent a way as possible - which at the moment it achieves well. The point is that being able to see how your tasks pan out together in time is part-and-parcel of this, not some different sphere. Listing the tasks hierarchically and contextualizing them is part of this management, seeing how they fit together in the working day, week or months is another, directly implied by the first. It just seems crazy to me that in order to do this - and it’s really important for many - you have either to leap into the stratosphere of heavy-duty project managers, or wrestle with some separate Gantt chart builder, or something like OmniGraffle, and lose the dynamic connection with the data in the process. All very clumsy and not conducive to easing Getting Things Done.

Cheers

Malcolm

[mcoad]

As a PS to the above, if it really is thought that such a feature would take OF out of its class, one solution would be the release of a much simplified, lite version of OmniPlan which would work with OF. OF is not cheap - or won’t be once released - but I personally would be willing to pay the few extra bucks for this extra functionality. (Though I don’t think it’s asking too much at the price to build it in!)

[jafish]

I want to throw in my vote for this. I'm in a research position that requires that I work 20 hours per week. I'm also an artist who is struggling to make the time to work on my own projects, so a way to estimate and summarize the amount of time I spend weekly on projects for my research position would be indispensable. All I would need is a way to look back at the week and see the amount of time spent on actions in a given project. OmniFocus could even use the estimate field that's already there for this - all I'm looking for is a daily/weekly/monthly summary.

[ales]

my vote also for time visualisation. I don't want 60+ tasks in one day couse i know that can't be done in a work i do.

[xmas]

Contributor ptone wrote an applescript that uses iCal to partially achieve what this thread seems to want:

Script to create a calendar view of your frontmost OmniFocus window (in iCal) (http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=6435)

[williamjwoodward]

May I reiterate the need to visualise tasks in a timeline. I'm doing a phd and need to manage my own research project. Omniplan is too feature rich for me as I only have myself to manage but I do need to be able to see how all my tasks fit together and allocate time accordingly (something that can be done in omniplan). There are fields for start and end time and duration, surely these could be translated into a simple timeline (not in ical). Something similar to what can be seen in the image under the "visual timelines" heading in the omniplan webpage. The ability to edit the start and end times from the visual timeline window would also be great.
It's great to dump all your tasks into the program but the ability to visualise/time them is essential.
Could someone from omni please comment on this feature request. This thread is already 3 pages long.

[mcoad]

Absolutely. OF is excellent in so many respects, but after months using it, in beta and since, this is one of the two lacks that just get more and more frustrating. The other is the inability to assign tasks to more than one context. Both are matters that have led to long threads on the forum. Lengthy use has only confirmed to me the pressing need for both. I’m a huge fan of Omni and all its works - to me they are true stars in the Mac firmament. But there appears to be a curious dogmatism attached to OF, due unfortunately to its partial inspiration by GTD, which is a useful technique but for many seems to have acquired the status of a quasi religion. Adherents argues that if you want a graphic timeline, then you don’t understand what a GTD app is and really want a fullscale, big-bucks project planner, and that multiple contexts violate the sacred principle of cramming each topic into only one. Crazy, and extremely frustrating to many of us to see the potential of such a great app limited in these ways, but it seems to be the way thinking is at the moment...

[Toadling]

OF is excellent in so many respects, but after months using it, in beta and since, this is one of the two lacks that just get more and more frustrating. The other is the inability to assign tasks to more than one context. Both are matters that have led to long threads on the forum. Lengthy use has only confirmed to me the pressing need for both.

Just to offer a differing perspective, I've also been using OmniFocus for many months, but I don't particularly miss either of these features (time visualization or multiple contexts). That's not to say they wouldn't be fine additions to an already excellent application, but rather that I don't think they're glaring omissions.

I'm certainly not a GTD zealot, but in following true GTD-style, I use very few due dates. So time visualization would probably offer me little.

As for multiple contexts, I've encounter a small number of situations where it would have been useful. But I've generally been satisfied with the simplicity of just choosing the single, most appropriate context and then displaying multiple contexts in Context mode to broaden my scope.

It'll be interesting to see what happens in v1.5 and v2.0. Maybe these features will be added and I'll look back and wonder how I ever managed to get along without them. ;-)

[Brian]

Could someone from omni please comment on this feature request. This thread is already 3 pages long.

I think the only thing we can say is that we've heard the request, but we don't know how we'll ultimately respond to it. Some folks find timelines essential; others don't.

Adding features that some folks use is good for those folks, but is a net loss for folks that don't use the feature - it's more complexity to wade through to find/use the features that they want.

I can't tell you whether we'll ever do this; plans change over time. I *can* say that there are other features - machine or phone synching, for example - that we think more of our users would get value from, so we're working on those right now. Down the line, anything's possible.

[yucca]

Visualizing a project time line is a feature that is offered by all project management applications, and I would suggest that you look to these sorts of applications for immediate relief. Probably not what you wanted to hear, but at least a solution is available. Omni will point you to OmniPlan (which I use and like), but there are other alternatives if you google around.

Likewise, if you can't live without context tagging, you should checkout Things . . . apologies in advance if I've got the apps name wrong.

[mcoad]

Visualizing a project time line is a feature that is offered by all project management applications, and I would suggest that you look to these sorts of applications for immediate relief...

Likewise, if you can't live without context tagging, you should checkout Things . . . apologies in advance if I've got the apps name wrong.

Thanks, yucca. You’re right, these are the alternatives, but at the risk of repeating what’s already been said ad infinitum in this and other threads, this is just the problem. Those of us asking for a timeline are always recommended to go to OmniPlan or similar. Our point is that these are total overkill for what we need, which is the simple ability to see tasks and dates set out graphically in a basic timeline to see at a glance how they all jive together and thus organize time better (ie get things done). We don’t need the bells and whistles of a full-scale, multi-person project planner (never mind the far bigger bucks for the myriad other features we would never use). This feature would be a natural addition to the app, fully in keeping with its lean style and philosophy, and far from bloat.

As for Things, well, yes, I’ve looked at that and personally find it cluttered and plain awkward compared with the smoothness and clarity of OF. Actually, you can already tag in OF, kind of, by using the notes feature. For tagging on a grand scale, Things may be the way to go, but what I and others have been asking for is not that but the simple ability to assign a task to more than one context. This would help organization and getting things done greatly in many circumstances, but it offends the most rigid interpretation of GTD (not David Allen’s own, it should be said) which insists that all tasks must be given one context and one context alone. The fact that it would be perfectly possible for those holding this view to continue doing this cuts no ice, as doctrine insists that we must all tow the line for our own good. Unfortunately, despite the brilliance and vision that generally characterizes the Omni folks, this appears to be orthodoxy among them too, so for now at least we are stuck.

[Brian]

Unfortunately, despite the brilliance and vision that generally characterizes the Omni folks, this appears to be orthodoxy among them too, so for now at least we are stuck.

I can't speak to the reasons why OmniFocus works the way that it does, but it's safe to say that characterizing motives here doesn't actually help your cause.

[mcoad]

I can't speak to the reasons why OmniFocus works the way that it does, but it's safe to say that characterizing motives here doesn't actually help your cause.

Hi Brian. Point taken, and I’m sorry that’s how my comments came over to you. I’ve always made it clear what an admirer I am of Omni and its products (I use most of them) and, if you go to Version Tracker, you’ll find that I wrote the most enthusiastic early review for OF as well as recommending in the entry for a certain other app that its frustrated users emigrate to OF forthwith. However, as you know there’s been a very long discussion of multiple contexts on the forum and the truth is that the only argument against the idea has been the one I mention: that a single context is best GTD practice and that we should all therefore learn to be satisfied with it. There hasn’t been much participation by the Omni folks themselves in the discussion, but to the best of my recollection, this was the true of them too. Apologies if I’m misrepresenting you and I know that you have many feature suggestions to consider and juggle. But this one is widely desired, so it would be good to know if there is a chance of it being considered in the future or whether you truly do rule it out on conceptual grounds.

[Toadling]

...I know that you have many feature suggestions to consider and juggle. But this one is widely desired...

I'm not taking a side in this, but do we really know that this feature is widely desired? Some users have been vocal about it, as is evident on the forum, but are those opinions truly representative of the entire OmniFocus user base? Do they even represent a significant percentage?

I'm not sure. I think it's entirely possible that most OmniFocus users are satisfied with the current single context implementation. But who knows?

I would think Omni Group has a better sense of this than anyone else.

[mcoad]

I think it's entirely possible that most OmniFocus users are satisfied with the current single context implementation. But who knows?

Maybe. As you say, who knows, and I agree that the Omni folks will have the best sense of what people want and priorities for development. It’s worth pointing out, though, that some form of multiple contexting is taken for granted in other popular GTD-type apps, such as LifeBalance and Things, presumably for a reason.

In just about every other respect, though, OF is far superior, imho, and a superb tool, so I shall be staying with it enthusiastically, despite the gripes, and keep on recommending it. Enthusiasm and vigorous argument for improvements (a subjective thing, obviously) can go together...

But this is supposed to be a thread about timelines, not multiple contexts, so that said I’m out of here...

[Toadling]

It’s worth pointing out, though, that some form of multiple contexting is taken for granted in other popular GTD-type apps, such as LifeBalance and Things, presumably for a reason.

It is a common feature, I agree. And I wouldn't complain if it were added to OmniFocus. But there are other, more pressing issues that I'd like to see addressed first (like search performance across large databases with all items displayed).

In just about every other respect, though, OF is far superior, imho, and a superb tool, so I shall be staying with it enthusiastically, despite the gripes, and keep on recommending it. Enthusiasm and vigorous argument for improvements (a subjective thing, obviously) can go together...

I wholeheartedly agree. OmniFocus is not perfect, but all things considered, it's the best option available. And I applaud your desire and effort to make it even better. In my mind, that's really the whole point of these discussions and Omni Group's openness.

[mcoad]

Absolutely!

[Brian]

it would be good to know if there is a chance of it being considered in the future or whether you truly do rule it out on conceptual grounds.

We generally don't like to rule anything in or out absolutely - plans always change over time. We always listen to what folks want our apps to do, but keep in mind that we have to balance the needs of folks that want thing X, the folks that like our app because it excludes thing X, and the folks that don't know or care about thing X one way or the other but just want an application without a lot of extra features they don't care about or use.

If we're flat-out not going to do something, we'll say so, if only because we know folks will keep asking about it. That's a pretty small category, though.

(Will we do any more work on our port of Oni? No. That's the only one I could think of, though.)

If we haven't said anything, it generally means that we're thinking about the problem but haven't decided what course of action to take; that's all.

[mcoad]

Thanks, Brian, and fair enough. Hope springs eternal, and meanwhile gratitude and kudos for the superb products as ever.

[mjstarks]

I too am stuck in the nether world between omnifocus and omniplan. Particularly I would like to be able to set up dependencies across many projects. As in I can't start project y until project x is complete even though they are completely different, due to "necessary work space" issues for example.

Things work fine on sequential actions if it is contained within a projects action list, but it is much more difficult to have a secondary project become active after, say, the 3rd item is complete from a different project list.

With development of the iPhone omnifocus, and logically when the entire mac platform goes to touch - it would be fantastic to be able to just "touch" grab and project and drop it onto a step in a different project to create a "has to be done before" or "can't be completed until" dependency much like what is possible in omniplan.

For those who say I should do this (with a mouse) in omniplan, the problem is I cant transfer omnifocus files back and forth between the 2 and keep any relevant information!

I guess that is where things need to start - allow omniplan cross transferable manipulation of omnifocus data for those who have paid for the higher end functions. It is really frustrating to not be able to use the same data across both programs. Dual Entry, even when minimal, sucks.

[williamjwoodward]

Thanks, yucca. You’re right, these are the alternatives, but at the risk of repeating what’s already been said ad infinitum in this and other threads, this is just the problem. Those of us asking for a timeline are always recommended to go to OmniPlan or similar. Our point is that these are total overkill for what we need, which is the simple ability to see tasks and dates set out graphically in a basic timeline to see at a glance how they all jive together and thus organize time better (ie get things done). We don’t need the bells and whistles of a full-scale, multi-person project planner (never mind the far bigger bucks for the myriad other features we would never use). This feature would be a natural addition to the app, fully in keeping with its lean style and philosophy, and far from bloat.

I can't agree more. Hopefully this a feature that will not add to much more complexity to the program (for people who like the simplicity of OF) and will be a good point of differentiation from the competitors. It could at least look fancy.
If "Things" was to add this feature I would consider switching to it although it lacks the depth of features that OF offers.

[Brian]

I guess that is where things need to start - allow omniplan cross transferable manipulation of omnifocus data for those who have paid for the higher end functions. It is really frustrating to not be able to use the same data across both programs. Dual Entry, even when minimal, sucks.

We have definite plans to attack this issue, though it would be in OmniFocus/OmniPlan 2.0 at the earliest.

[Brian]

Those of us asking for a timeline are always recommended to go to OmniPlan or similar. Our point is that these are total overkill for what we need, which is the simple ability to see tasks and dates set out graphically in a basic timeline to see at a glance how they all jive together and thus organize time better (ie get things done). We don’t need the bells and whistles of a full-scale, multi-person project planner (never mind the far bigger bucks for the myriad other features we would never use). This feature would be a natural addition to the app, fully in keeping with its lean style and philosophy, and far from bloat.

A couple things that bear mentioning:
As I mention here (http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=3734), the only feature requests that are guaranteed to make it into our bug tracking system are the ones that come to omnifocus@omnigroup.com.

Our bug system currently has over 150 open feature requests with more user votes attached than the one for Gantt charting has. The #1 request is machine-to-machine synching. It has over 20 times as many emails attached to it.

If we add stripped-down gantt charting to OmniFocus, folks will inevitably want 'just this one feature that OmniPlan has' added to OmniFocus. Except every person will want a different one feature. Interested readers may want to check this article out:
Bloatware and the 80/20 Myth (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html)
It explains the phenomenon I'm describing in more detail. You start with stripped-down Gantt charts in OmniFocus, but it will not end there. I promise you.

'Bloat' is a very pejorative term, but the features being discussed here involve adding completely new view modes to the app. It's a lot of code, and you can't just copy and paste it over from OmniPlan or iCal, even to do the stripped-down charting or calendaring which is just the first step down either road.

Assuming the features I mentioned in my last post - remember, OmniFocus/OmniPlan 2 at the earliest - it is more than likely that we'll stick with a 'export data from OmniFocus to OmniPlan' approach.

Remember - even without an OmniPlan license, you can open an OP document of any size. You just can't edit the document. So, if you really don't need the features of OmniPlan enough to make a license for both apps worth it, you could still edit in OmniFocus, export to OmniPlan, and use that info to make further edits back in OmniFocus.

Is it ideal for you guys? No. But given the demand we're seeing for this feature, the ideal solution requires a lot more work to make a small portion of our user base happier.

An additional problem with this: how it would affect folks that are new to our product line. We have a minor problem now with folks not understanding how OmniOutliner, OmniFocus, and OmniPlan differ from each other. Adding Gantt charts to OmniFocus would muddy that water even further.

So, to be very clear: is the specific solution being requested here possible? Yes.

Is it likely to be implemented in the way this thread requests? No, for the reasons I've explained.

Is it likely that we'll do something to satisfy folks that want this? Yes, because we have existing work planned that covers most of the request. We want to make our users as happy as we can possibly make them.

[mcoad]

Brian, thanks for such a very full and revealing post - one of the most complete I’ve ever seen from a developer in a forum and much appreciated. It’s encouraging and helpful - and fascinating - to be given such a frank insight into things from your point of view, and certainly adds to the sense of a community of developers and users. I can well understand the issues you have to deal with, especially the problem of dealing with less pressing requests and priorities (maybe we should organize a mass email write-in to back our request and bring it up the list!).

Your OmniPlan suggestion is an interesting, if somewhat clunky, workround. At the risk of sounding pompous, I hadn’t looked into this much as I had no plans to buy the app and always feel iffy about using non-freeware without stumping up, but if it’s okay with you.

Otherwise, what you say about future prospects is tantalizing, to put it mildly. Nothing Gantt but maybe a “while new view mode” - highly intriguing. Will be on tenterhooks waiting to see how it pans out. Meanwhile, thanks again and power to you.

[joelande]

... (maybe we should organize a mass email write-in to back our request and bring it up the list!) ...

This is what I just sent in thanks to Brian's great post on enhancement request best practices:
I want to make a formal request for a Calendar-like view feature to be added in the next version of OmniFocus-

I don't like to have to jump back and forth between my calendar and OmniFocus, and often-times the current "timeline tools" ("move to context view, sort by start date/due date, expand rows") just doesn’t convey the same type of data psychologically as traditional calendar views.

I could see having monthly, weekly, and daily views; with a section of the weekly/daily views showing next actions that have no specific date information in them.

It would also be convenient if it could pull data from iCal, so I had a "unified" calendar view (meetings, etc that are not in OmniFocus).

I DO NOT need ghant views, or other similar higher-end features that are available in OmniPlan, and I don't think I even need to see the ability to transfer data between OmniFocus and OmniPlan (I already own OmniPlan by the way, so that is not a factor).

[Brian]

Otherwise, what you say about future prospects is tantalizing, to put it mildly. Nothing Gantt but maybe a “while new view mode” - highly intriguing. Will be on tenterhooks waiting to see how it pans out. Meanwhile, thanks again and power to you.

Clarification: Gantt charting or calendaring would be a whole new view mode to add to the application, which is a LOT of work, and thus something we don't enter into lightly. I'm not saying that we're having internal discussions about adding a new mode.

Sorry for the confusion; I'll edit my post to make that clearer.

[yucca]

As I recall, the trigger for folks wanting gantt charting is to avoid overcommitting on projects at work. Your approach to dealing with this should really have very little to do with OF. If you are project driven, you should aready have a handle on your time commitments to existing projects; you are either tracking or reporting status on this already. It is just a matter of keeping a running tab. Presumably, you are doing so either as a part of your business' time accounting and/or project management systems.

I realize that many businesses chronically run in unplanned crisis mode. If this is your situation, I'm sorry; but your problems are bigger than OF and GTD. That said, there is nothing stopping you from trying to bring some order to the chaos; but just be aware that it is likely that someone above you in the food chain actually wants the chaos. Tread carefully.

With this in mind, alternatives to gantt charting in OP:

1. Excel (there a many "googleable" WBS examples that should be adaptable to your situation)

2. Your time accounting application may support forecasting. If so, this is probably your best option for estimating your time commitments.

3. iCal. If you know that certain parts of your day are (or should) be reserved for certain activities, block them out. This will give you a better idea of just how much project time you actually have each week.

4. OmniOutliner (you may need the pro version). There is an example template for a budget. Treat the dollars as hours (or change the data type if you are not as lazy as I have been), and you have a very simple forecasting system that is in a format you may already be comfortable with. I use this for projects around the house . . .

[Melan]

I'd like to chime in as perhaps a "joe public" user who isn't so involved in the "OG community" and mention that I definitely would get a lot of use out some way of visualising the deadlines. A calendar view is quite an undertaking, but a way to sync actions with deadlines to ical and have them produced as 10 minute events at the time they're set to would give me all the functionality i need. As things currently stand I end up adding deadlined events to iCal and then to OF as a token gesture to my system, and iCal ends up being far more useful than context mode in deciding what to do next.

[mcoad]

As I recall, the trigger for folks wanting gantt charting is to avoid overcommitting on projects at work.

Nope. Just want a simple way of viewing stuff in easy, horizontal, timeline form so as to see how it all pans out together. That would fit hand-in-glove with OF. Anything else requires bigger guns and - as has repeatedly been said on the thread - would be overkill.

[Melan]

Here's a quote from another thread of someone I agree with:
Another option that would add a great deal of power to OF would be to be able to choose where/how an OF item is treated within iCal - as a task OR as an event.
Some of us work better with task lists as iCal presents them, and some better in events. I happen to use both, but lean more heavily on events. Generating enormous iCal task lists doesn't do me much good.
My 0.02 for Omni

[Brian]

I would ask folks that are interested in seeing this happen to please send email to omnifocus@omnigroup.com; while posts here are good for discussing ideas, it's a lot easier for us to record your feedback into the development database if it comes in via email.

[Brian]

Updating this thread, since I'm about to direct a poster in another thread to have a look at it.

The development team has held extensive discussions about syncing OmniFocus actions to the calendar database instead of or in addition to the ToDo database; for the foreseeable future, we feel it's not the right thing to do. If that changes, we'll certainly make that known.

We feel that actions which have very specific times associated with them - say a meeting that's from three to four PM next tuesday - should defitnitely go on a calendar. Fixed start time, fixed end time. Calendars are really, really good at tracking information like this; they better be, because they've been doing it for centuries. :-)

In addition to the well-defined ones that go on your calendar, there's a second class of actions: these are the ones that OmniFocus is particularly good at helping you with. As an example, one of these actions would be to prepare for that meeting I mentioned in the previous example. That action has a firm end time - when the meeting starts - but doesn't have a firm start time. It could begin in five minutes, or it could begin tomorrow, or it could begin five minutes before the meeting. :-)

Actions like that are the ones that OmniFocus is particularly good at helping you with, but they don't translate well to the calendar. Given the ways that iCal presents event information, we can think of several ways to add items like this to the calendar; none of them would work in every case. That means we probably need to add them all, which means more "stuff" folks using the app have to wade through, and that they'll have to figure out why the choices they made didn't produce the results they expected. (Another alternative would be that we allow you to sync some actions to the calendar and forbid others, which will also confuse and annoy folks.)

After considering these and some other factors, the team feels pretty strongly that using OmniFocus and a separate calendar is the way to go. (Essentially, we recommend adopting the workflow that Yucca advocates in his post.) The calendar provides information about the hard landscape, and OmniFocus helps you fill in the gaps by holding a stack of actions you can pull from as you're able.

Trying to mix the two would be a lot of work and would likely produce results that weren't as satisfying as folks expect from us. In our opinion, it's simpler and more effective to track the things that a calendar is good for on the calendar, track the things that OmniFocus is good for in OmniFocus, and use the two together to be most productive.

Yes, your information is in two places, but that's because the two apps are actually tracking different kinds of information. (There are rare cases where the information needs to be entered in both applications, but we don't advocate double-entry on a regular basis.)

[focusedphil]

ah well .. back to LifeBalance ! They seem to be able to do this quite well (try the demo). Or perhaps Things, if they're smart!

[Greg Jones]

I don't see Brian's message as one of what Omni is, or is not, able to do, rather it is a statement of direction for OmniFocus. Personally, I applaud the decision to keep OmniFocus as a GTD-inspired task manager used in conjunction with, rather than a replacement for, a calendar. Things and THL have a similar philosophy, at least for now, so only time will tell if that changes, but I'm sure that they, like Omni, could integrate a calendar if they chose to do so.

Life Balance (and I have not looked at it for several years, so I could be mistaken) has its roots more in the Covey/Smith model of time management as opposed to task management. It's understandable, given that model, that Life Balance would include a calendar. But I do have a question; if Life Balance does what you want quite well, I'm curious why you left it in the first place?

[TimothyRobinson]

In the absence of a Time Management feature in OmniFocus, is there a way to "set the clock forward" so to speak? OmniFocus shows me what tasks are due or pending today, is there any way to jump forward two weeks and see what tasks will be due or pending then?

[joelande]

When you are viewing sorted and grouped by due/start dates, the display will show you due next week, two weeks from now, one month from now, etc

[focusedphil]

I don't see Brian's message as one of what Omni is, or is not, able to do, rather it is a statement of direction for OmniFocus. Personally, I applaud the decision to keep OmniFocus as a GTD-inspired task manager used in conjunction with, rather than a replacement for, a calendar. Things and THL have a similar philosophy, at least for now, so only time will tell if that changes, but I'm sure that they, like Omni, could integrate a calendar if they chose to do so.

Life Balance (and I have not looked at it for several years, so I could be mistaken) has its roots more in the Covey/Smith model of time management as opposed to task management. It's understandable, given that model, that Life Balance would include a calendar. But I do have a question; if Life Balance does what you want quite well, I'm curious why you left it in the first place?

LifeBalance works quite well for GTD systems ( you have to change a couple of settings). So not sure about your point there.

LB's interface is quite old (very mouse driven a la OS 7) and the sync'ing is more machine specific as opposed to MobileMe focused, a couple of other minor issues - I hoped that OF would be the best of both worlds.

LB's built in calender is not really that effective but it's iCal syncing (both appointments, all day and multi-day events) works perfectly, so not sure why the Omni group has such trouble with this issue - the problem has already been fixed - perhaps just a fundamental mis-understanding of the GTD system - it's a book that really needs 3 careful readings to get it all (a yellow highlighter is really helpful).

I've tried all the Task management / GTD programs out there - so far no one has really knocked it out of the park yet.

[Greg Jones]

LifeBalance works quite well for GTD systems ( you have to change a couple of settings). So not sure about your point there.

As I mentioned, it has been years since I took a look at Life Balance. At that time, it was very entrenched with creating large daily to-lists that were sorted by user-assigned (A-B-C) priorities-very much not GTD in its implementation. I would assume that the program has evolved since I looked at it if it can now be made GTD friendly.


LB's built in calender is not really that effective but it's iCal syncing (both appointments, all day and multi-day events) works perfectly, so not sure why the Omni group has such trouble with this issue - the problem has already been fixed - perhaps just a fundamental mis-understanding of the GTD system - it's a book that really needs 3 careful readings to get it all (a yellow highlighter is really helpful).

I think the Omni folks 'get it all' with respect to GTD. Brian's post above clearly mirrors David Allen's philosophy of separating (with hard edges) time/date-specific actions that belong on a calendar and next action items that do not belong on a calendar. OmniFocus is all about dealing with the latter and everything else belongs on a calendar.

[wilsonng]

I agree with Brian about using different programs for different things.

I keep my calendar stuff on my calendar. These are the hard deadline items.

Then I keep my Project stuff (Visions, Outcomes, etc.) in OmniOutliner Pro.

I keep my reference stuff in DevonThink Pro Office.

Each tool is specifically tailored for a particular function.

Keeping OmniFocus as my catch-all for current tasks and someday/maybe tasks works better for me.


Yes, there have been opinions voiced about making OmniFocus a swiss-army knife and being a calendar and task manager. But this could make OmniFocus harder to use when the calendar mode is introduced.

I've been waiting for a calendar program called Now NightHawk (public beta to be released Feb. 26). It will show tasks on the monthly calendar view.

So I was thinking of using OmniFocus to sync my tasks to iCal. Then NightHawk will also sync to iCal, read the OmniFocus tasks and then place them into the NightHawk database. NightHawk will be able to show tasks directly on the monthly calendar.

I think this is what Apple had in mind when it came to sync services. Using iCal as a system-wide depository to share information between different programs.

Yes, some people may cringe at having multiple programs for multiple functions. But it may work out yet!

[TimothyRobinson]

Thanks

[ksrhee]

I agree with Brian about using different programs for different things.

I keep my calendar stuff on my calendar. These are the hard deadline items.

Then I keep my Project stuff (Visions, Outcomes, etc.) in OmniOutliner Pro.

I keep my reference stuff in DevonThink Pro Office.

Each tool is specifically tailored for a particular function.

I've been waiting for a calendar program called Now NightHawk (public beta to be released Feb. 26). It will show tasks on the monthly calendar view.

So I was thinking of using OmniFocus to sync my tasks to iCal. Then NightHawk will also sync to iCal, read the OmniFocus tasks and then place them into the NightHawk database. NightHawk will be able to show tasks directly on the monthly calendar.



There is a program called Soho Organizer (http://www.chronosnet.com/Products/sohoorganizer.html) that does what you want right now. It syncs with iCal both calendar and task and also sync with Apple Address Book. It also has a nice note program called Soho Notes that comes with the organizer which can also used separately. Notes can also sync with MobileMe so that I can have access to note in multiple Mac Laptops.

I believe NightHawk is the next iteration of Now Up to Date program, which was nice calendar program, but not sure how it's going to fare.

I like the interface of Soho, but when it comes to task management, it is often easier to crank up OF and use it than use other programs.

However, it is often nice to use Soho to get the full landscape view.

Hope this helps.

[wilsonng]

Yes, I have seen SOHO Organizer but I have been wary of the company's reputation. When Chronos released SOHO Organizer, they bombed big time. They pulled the forums when users blasted the developers for charging what basically amounted to a beta. Then the developers had the audacity to charge for "upgrades" to an incomplete package. The program was riddled with bugs. Heck, they didn't even have a monthly calendar view until the second or third release. It was agonizing to see this unfold.

Now NightHawk hasn't fared too well either.... Potential users have been impatient in getting a look-see at NightHawk. They're finally getting around to a public beta release on February 26th but we'll see if it's too little too late.

I was thinking of using OmniFocus purely for tasks and then NightHawk for my calendar and contacts. Then I sync OmniFocus -> iCal -> NightHawk to show when completed tasks are done in my monthly calendar view. I mostly use the calendar view to show when tasks are completed and to look for hard deadline events (which usually aren't tasks but are more like appointments).

OmniFocus just beats the crap out of SOHO Organizer and Now Up-To-Date for task management.

Omni's tech support beats Chronos. Now Software's development team has been responsive in their forums but it's still vaporware (at least until Feb 26).

All I want now is a "Today" feature showing Due, Due Soon, Overdue, Today, and flagged tasks.

The only thing that OmniFocus can do is to create a program called "OmniCal" or "OmniPIM". Then it'll have task manager, calendar, and contacts all in one package!

[tbell]

Being a student, OF 1.6 is missing a critical function for me: the ability to sync "hard-due-date" actions found in projects as events in iCal, say, under a red "Deadlines" calendar.

Basically, what I'm looking for is a way to synchronize the actions in my "Things Due" project (which amalgamates all "hard-due-date" actions from different contexts, like Classes, Networking, Law Review, etc.) with my iCal calendar (labeled "Deadlines") as events. For example, my upcoming Con Law paper would sync with iCal as an event starting and ending at 9:40 AM on April 15, and it would show up on my red-colored "Deadlines" calendar. The Con Law paper is found under my "Things Due" project in OF, but it's just one of many actions within my "Law School" context that may or may not have hard deadlines (thus, no use to sync the entire Law School context).

See what I'm getting at?

This is my most-wanted feature at the moment, and I'm wanting it badly!

[cez1]

This is my most-wanted feature at the moment, and I'm wanting it badly!

Agreed. I understand that keeping your "hard deadline" timetable (iCal) and your GTD workflow separate is useful (and essential in most cases), but I spend so much time in OF that it seems almost wasteful having to add hard deadlines to iCal when they can just be "assigned" in OF.

[Lucas]

Basically, what I'm looking for is a way to synchronize the actions in my "Things Due" project (which amalgamates all "hard-due-date" actions from different contexts, like Classes, Networking, Law Review, etc.) with my iCal calendar (labeled "Deadlines") as events. For example, my upcoming Con Law paper would sync with iCal as an event starting and ending at 9:40 AM on April 15, and it would show up on my red-colored "Deadlines" calendar. The Con Law paper is found under my "Things Due" project in OF, but it's just one of many actions within my "Law School" context that may or may not have hard deadlines (thus, no use to sync the entire Law School context).

See what I'm getting at?


OF is designed to pick out these actions that have hard due dates out of contexts that are mixed between having due dates and not having due dates. Why not set up a perspective to order or group by due date in context view?

[Hope]

Agreed. I understand that keeping your "hard deadline" timetable (iCal) and your GTD workflow separate is useful (and essential in most cases), but I spend so much time in OF that it seems almost wasteful having to add hard deadlines to iCal when they can just be "assigned" in OF.

The "hard landscape" items which are best kept in a calendar are things which you know that you will be doing at a certain time, not by a certain time. That means that appointments, meetings, performances, parties, and so forth should go in the calendar (and probably not also in OF).

Actions that need to be completed by a certain time, but which do not dictate a particular time at which you must work on them, can be placed in OF. These are not considered to be "hard landscape" items, and do not need to be in a calendar, unless you need a calendar to visualise due dates. If you choose to put them in a calendar, it would be a conceptually different calendar from those which contain true "hard landscape" items. If you keep these out of the calendar, you could use OF's view bar to group and/or sort by Due in order to get a sense for approaching (or past!) deadlines.

[joelande]

Still, there is something to be said for having a mechanism whereby you could view hard landscape and other tasks you would like to get done on that day in one application.

It is the reason that every calendar also has a tasks feature.

It is such a common tool that sometimes it can be hard to work without it.

I know that GTD breaks away from some of these practices, and for good reason.

But there can still be power in displaying the hard landscape and additional tasks in one, easy, quick tool.

[Phi]

Just throwing in my vote for this. Have also emailed support.

[amelchi]

sorry Brian,

I wasn't able to find "...the workflow that Yucca advocates in his post..." could you address me there?

thanks

Alessandro

[whpalmer4]

It's the May 4 2008 post by Yucca earlier in this thread, I believe.

[amelchi]

thanks
but it doesn't seem to be a workfow... thanks anyway!

[ncrown]

Me too! Please, please do something like this.

[queenofspades]

please count me in

[thehappymediumm]

I agree completely... I would love to see "Milestone" support or at least see projects (rather than tasks) incorporated into the calendar view.

It would be VERY helpful for me to be able to get a visual understanding of all my projects and tasks. Otherwise I'm forced to think about things in a very linear way -- yes, the whole point of OF and the GTD system is breaking down large things into small things, but I think it's a mistake to lose track of the overall scope. At least for me.

[jltdm]

After considering these and some other factors, the team feels pretty strongly that using OmniFocus and a separate calendar is the way to go. (Essentially, we recommend adopting the workflow that Yucca advocates in his post.) The calendar provides information about the hard landscape, and OmniFocus helps you fill in the gaps by holding a stack of actions you can pull from as you're able.

Agreed, but it would be most useful if OmniFocus would have the possibility to remind the user that he has to make a phone call, or email, or start to work on a task or project at a specific time and date, reminding the user with an alarm and message box. I'm a new user, so if this is possible I would really appreciate to know how because i'm ripping my hair out try to find out how.

[whpalmer4]

Agreed, but it would be most useful if OmniFocus would have the possibility to remind the user that he has to make a phone call, or email, or start to work on a task or project at a specific time and date, reminding the user with an alarm and message box. I'm a new user, so if this is possible I would really appreciate to know how because i'm ripping my hair out try to find out how.

Those are all hard landscape items. If you have to do something AT a certain date/time, use your calendar. iCal has plenty of options for reminding you that an event is starting or about to start. If you have to do something BY a certain date/time, use OmniFocus.

How are you going to describe to OmniFocus that you have to start working on a project that takes 4 hours and starts at 10AM? It's not due at 10AM. You could say that it starts at 10AM and set a start date, but now you need to differentiate that task from all the other tasks with start dates that simply describe when you could first start working them, not that you must start working them.

You can have OmniFocus put up reminders, though it may not be possible to get them when you want them without doing some fudging of due dates. If you install Growl (http://growl.info) OmniFocus will put up notifications on your screen (or via email or even SMS) of actions/projects becoming available, due soon, and overdue. You can configure Growl to make those notifications stay up on your screen until you dismiss them (by default, they go away after 10 or 15 seconds, I think). Gets back to my point about the semantics of describing a hard landscape task to OmniFocus, however...

[elrjax]

Hi.

I wonder if we are stumbling into the space of "how people best work" differences. As a technology manager, I am surrounded by folks who can read and visualize list-based information better than graphical information. There are a few of us, at least where I work, that have lobbied successfully to have some visual graphics for each project included in the work package. This helps me get up to speed much quicker than looking down long lists.

The same is true for my use of omnifocus. I struggle with its slavish adherence to the list world and wish it would at least give me some kind of calendar view where I can visualize how badly behind my month or week is going to be. It would be nice to drag an iconic representation of the task, with its metadata, to another day/week/month and have omnifocus do the right thing.

I don't understand the resistance/reluctance to viewing this as a reasonable accommodation for those of us who are mentally impaired regarding lists. I have implemented dozens of Curt's and other's suggestions and have benefited greatly from them. But omnifocus is a cold and sterile environment for me. I thought tags would help, but I now realize that the few synapses of my right brain that still work are dying for a graphical representation of tasks (those that have dates assigned to them) and the ability to drag and drop those around a calendar with ease, or add in tasks that don't have date assignments. I will still look at the lists, and organize with them at the project and category/context level, but even the little bit that Microsoft Outlook (windows) provides at the bottom of the calendar is better than anything I have found so far to visualize omnifocus.

(please don't send me to import/export hell just to visualize my tasks :-).

-Ed

[Lucas]

The same is true for my use of omnifocus. I struggle with its slavish adherence to the list world and wish it would at least give me some kind of calendar view where I can visualize how badly behind my month or week is going to be. It would be nice to drag an iconic representation of the task, with its metadata, to another day/week/month and have omnifocus do the right thing.

I think the OmniFocus view is that your week or month will be as bad as you want to make it. I don't think that it is so much an adherence to lists; I think it is more likely that a design assumption is that it wasn't setting out to schedule the exact time that something is going to get done. I'm not saying that's better or worse (as you say, people like things the way they like them); but more in the hope that suggesting that way of thinking about it will make it easier for you to be successful with.

[whpalmer4]

GTD in general isn't aimed at scheduling your work in advance, so a tool largely inspired by GTD isn't likely to be built with scheduling as a major goal.

Do you put duration estimates on your tasks? How far out do you need to look? Would a widget that showed a bar chart of how many hours of effort you had coming due each week in the next month be useful? One has to be a bit careful when repeating actions or projects are involved, as OmniFocus only has the current one at any given time, and creates the next one when the current one is completed. If you have some lengthy task repeating each week, it would appear that future weeks were less busy than the current week.

[Brian]

I think folks posting here will be interested in some of the OmniFocus for iPad screenshots we'll be posting before too much longer.

Lest I create the wrong expectations: we aren't adding anything that looks a calendar.

We are experimenting with ways help folks do date-based scheduling and load-balancing in OmniFocus, though. And now I shall disappear, wondering if I have said too much already. :-)

[atreinke]

Brian, you didn't say too much at all... I only wish you could say more. The anticipation grows....

[nichescape]

After considering these and some other factors, the team feels pretty strongly that using OmniFocus and a separate calendar is the way to go. (Essentially, we recommend adopting the workflow that Yucca advocates in his post.) The calendar provides information about the hard landscape, and OmniFocus helps you fill in the gaps by holding a stack of actions you can pull from as you're able.

Brian, could you point me to that post by Yucca?

Thanks,
John

[whpalmer4]

Most likely this one: http://forums.omnigroup.com/showpost.php?p=36274&postcount=44

Stuff that has to be done at a certain time goes on the calendar, and OmniFocus helps you effectively utilize the time that is left over.

[magickiosk]

"Sync to iCal as Events for Due Dates?"

I've spent the last several weeks during the holidays looking for a program just like OmniFocus (not knowing about OmniFocus, of course) and didn't have any luck until last night.

tahdah... After reading a Twitter post sent from @apple_live [TUAW] The best Mac and iOS apps I used in 2010: Following up on my article about the best Mac apps I used in 20..., by TJ Luoma, I became excited. Finally, a task management program (for the Mac) that will work perfectly for me as it takes into account all of my task/project needs as a design consultant.

I watched the beautifully produced videos and fell in love with OmniFocus. But before I bought yet another program I wanted to make sure that this one would work for me, entirely. So I went to the discussion groups to see what was written about OmniFocus supporting iCal events. This is where the dark cloud of gloom swept in from the north. I found the question asked by group member, @tah, and addressed by OmniGroup staff.

I need to add my frustration that parallels @tah almost exactly. I believe she hit the nail on the head. I, as she, is a consultant. I've been in the design business since 1983 and live the pressures that comes with being an independent consultant with incredible deadlines. The one thing that OmniFocus is missing is the ability to add tasks, projects, etc., to iCal as events. I too need to look at the big picture and digest my week/month at a glance; being able to do so in calendar mode and sync back to the program, and vise versa, is crucial. I need the ability to include my work (tasks/projects, etc.) along with my life events (take dog to vet) and make it all work out right. It's the big picture that is really important. Once this is done I can then begin to work.

Needless to say my search continues. I'm extremely disappointed that OmniFocus will not work for me... Nor, will it work for the many others with the same need.

It would be interesting to know the percentage of Mac users (vs. Microsoft Windows users) that live their lives similarly.







Updating this thread, since I'm about to direct a poster in another thread to have a look at it.

The development team has held extensive discussions about syncing OmniFocus actions to the calendar database instead of or in addition to the ToDo database; for the foreseeable future, we feel it's not the right thing to do. If that changes, we'll certainly make that known.

We feel that actions which have very specific times associated with them - say a meeting that's from three to four PM next tuesday - should defitnitely go on a calendar. Fixed start time, fixed end time. Calendars are really, really good at tracking information like this; they better be, because they've been doing it for centuries. :-)

In addition to the well-defined ones that go on your calendar, there's a second class of actions: these are the ones that OmniFocus is particularly good at helping you with. As an example, one of these actions would be to prepare for that meeting I mentioned in the previous example. That action has a firm end time - when the meeting starts - but doesn't have a firm start time. It could begin in five minutes, or it could begin tomorrow, or it could begin five minutes before the meeting. :-)

Actions like that are the ones that OmniFocus is particularly good at helping you with, but they don't translate well to the calendar. Given the ways that iCal presents event information, we can think of several ways to add items like this to the calendar; none of them would work in every case. That means we probably need to add them all, which means more "stuff" folks using the app have to wade through, and that they'll have to figure out why the choices they made didn't produce the results they expected. (Another alternative would be that we allow you to sync some actions to the calendar and forbid others, which will also confuse and annoy folks.)

After considering these and some other factors, the team feels pretty strongly that using OmniFocus and a separate calendar is the way to go. (Essentially, we recommend adopting the workflow that Yucca advocates in his post.) The calendar provides information about the hard landscape, and OmniFocus helps you fill in the gaps by holding a stack of actions you can pull from as you're able.

Trying to mix the two would be a lot of work and would likely produce results that weren't as satisfying as folks expect from us. In our opinion, it's simpler and more effective to track the things that a calendar is good for on the calendar, track the things that OmniFocus is good for in OmniFocus, and use the two together to be most productive.

Yes, your information is in two places, but that's because the two apps are actually tracking different kinds of information. (There are rare cases where the information needs to be entered in both applications, but we don't advocate double-entry on a regular basis.)

[nutellacrepe]

Dear Brian,

You wrote: "Yes, your information is in two places, but that's because the two apps are actually tracking different kinds of information."

Sorry to be unfriendly, this feels condescending. As does your teaser "Check out the VERY INTERESTING last post"...just say: We won't add this feature.

Users -keep- asking for this feature, and you talk a lot but never do it. I don't want to install more widgets and pretend like the setup is useful. It's not.

I gave up using OmniFocus, and I wish I could get my money back. :-\

[timnorman1]

One of the features in OF for ipHone I like is the 'calendar events' in Forecast view. I can't seem to find this in OF for Mac. Is it there?

Would be good to be able to drop tasks onto this sort of timeline?

Thanks

Tim

[rbeverly]

Either a calendar feature or more complete iCal syncing would help a lot. (Current iCal sync through WebDav only shows things that are due in the next week). Not because we users necessarily want to use OmniFocus as a calendar, but because in the event that tasks do need due dates or start dates, we need a visual way to see that they do not overlap in impossible ways.

The last thing you want is to be broadsided by 2 things coming due in a week that can't possibly be done at the same time. That's what a calendar view saves you from. You won't assign an impossible due date if you can see when the other thing is due.

Some people, I think, have a fairly small number of tasks to do. For them, maybe reviewing every single task every day can work. Others may own more than one business. We're also pretty driven and probably somewhat competitive. It's good, because we get a lot done. But it also means we find ourselves in business "race" conditions, trying to finish projects before someone else can. And we're up against client deadlines too, and personal ones, and government ones.

So the point of a calendar view isn't to use it as a calendar.

That's right, I don't need the calendar to be a calendar.

I need it to be a visual representation of the tasks or projects I have committed to deadline.

Why, you ask. Because I need to make quick decisions. I have used Omnifocus for a little longer than the trial period now (bought it of course). Already I have 47 tasks across 9 projects. No worry, I always have at least 9 projects. I'm getting lots of things done, probably more than I was pre-Omni. But I'm also in a predicament.

If I need to assign a due date to a task, or a start date, I have to read through all those other tasks and their due dates (if they have them) before I can assign the due date or start date. Everyone has their limits, and mine is holding more than about 4 dates in mind at once. However, a calendar VIEW does not ask you to understand dates and times all at once, thus taking up your verbal and math resources. A calendar view lets you look at the distance between two objects and say "those aren't too close together. I can fit one here." That task is much easier when done spatially than it is when done with a list of numeric dates.

To be clear, the tasks and projects I'm talking about are generally NOT things like "buy cat litter" or "attend the meeting." They are more like "Edit volume 2 of 'Insurance Practices for the Risk Manager.'" They are ongoing tasks. When you edit a book, you spend many days doing it, and you also have to do other things on those days, and you also will surely have a deadline.

One or two posts made a statement that sounded like "anything with a deadline should go on a calendar." But editing a book doesn't fit well on "just" a calendar. You might need to look at a calendar view to see if you can edit a book in a given period of time, but a calendar would be useless for managing the task of editing a book. A calendar doesn't tell you what to do next. And so, ironically, that's one reason why OmniFocus needs to have, or integrate with, a calendar. It is because there are many tasks and projects which OmniFocus is suited for, and which calendars are unsuited for, yet which need to be cross-referenced with calendars and the things that calendars have on them. And to do that cross-referencing, it is easier and less error-prone to allow people to use the visio-spatial capacity of their brains, by showing everything on a calendar view, thus understanding date conflicts as shapes and patterns and distances, not as lists of numeric dates on one side and a calendar on the other.

And if you don't like calendars or don't want to make one, it wouldn't take much at this point. Currently you have iCal syncing through WebDav. Just add the option to see *everything* that has a dues date assigned, rather than only the things with due dates in the next week. That way, when we find we need to assign a due date, we can flip over to the calendar (or iCal) and see that the week or month we're shooting for is not saturated with one or more other due dates.

I hope that makes some sense. Thanks for reading, and I'll also send an email through the feedback feature in the application.

[joelande]

Either a calendar feature or more complete iCal syncing would help a lot. [...]

Well said, and you bring up some good points.

I like the iPads "Forecast" feature tremendously, as it helps with many of the issues you bring up.

But it also is incomplete, or at least has some limitations in its current implementation. For example, it really is a tool to look at the immediate window of time, and it doesn't give an indication of tasks that have earlier start dates that need to be looked at.

I hope they do build some calendaring into future versions of the product.

[amelchi]

I agree with rbeverly!
otherwise I leave OF.

amelchi

[whpalmer4]

it doesn't give an indication of tasks that have earlier start dates that need to be looked at.


The problem is distinguishing between tasks where start date differs from due date because the expectation is the task will take more than one day, and those where it will not. A task with a start date of Monday and a due date of Friday might equally well be a task which will require 5 days' effort, or 5 minutes; all we can determine is that it is not available prior to Monday, and it should be completed by Friday.

OmniFocus (and GTD) excels at keeping track of your commitments, but it makes no attempt to assess the feasibility of meeting those commitments, nor to suggest the proper plan to most efficiently meet them. If you're trying to accurately track what you will be working on in the future and when you will be doing it, I submit that OmniFocus is not really the best tool for the job, and a tool such as OmniPlan which does describe availability, schedule, etc. might be more suitable. Sharpening a screwdriver does not make a good chisel :-)

Maybe one of these days Omni will finish up the very intriguing work to tie OmniPlan and OmniFocus together, so that one could do the overall planning in OmniPlan, with the actual day-to-day execution being done through OmniFocus. Had the iPad not come along, perhaps we'd already have it by now!

[joelande]

The problem is [...]
I don't view this as a problem. There are many potential ways to build tools to work with this.

For example, the current iPad "Forecast" view currently groups due and start items for each day. There could be an additional group for tasks that have been previously started.

But the iPad Forecast view isn't really a calendar either, and does not address all of the items we are looking for. I was merely mentioning how useful the Forecast view is, even with its limited feature set, viewing both calendar appointments and tasks for the current week.



OmniFocus [...] makes no attempt to assess the feasibility of meeting those commitments
Wanting a calendar view does not suggest that it has to assess feasibility. But it can be a more powerful tool for me to assess the feasibility if I can view start/dues tasks, tasks in progress, and calendar appointments in one view.


If you're trying to accurately track what you will be working on in the future and when you will be doing it, I submit that OmniFocus is not really the best tool for the job, and a tool such as OmniPlan which does describe availability, schedule, etc. might be more suitable.
I don't agree.
OmniPlan is a great tool for working on long, complex projects (I have it and I use it).
But that isn't what we are looking either (not to mention the fact that OmniPlan doesn't really integrate my calendar into the view either, nor does it show me what I may have in OmniFocus, which you mention).

I still feel that it would be useful to view OmniFocus data in a calendar view, integrating my personal calendars as a layer in that view. I know that just by the fact that every day I have to keep glancing back and forth between OmniFocus and my calendar.

Calendars are also much easier to visually get a feel for schedules and time frames as opposed to a table-like view of tasks.

[eurobubba]

A task with a start date of Monday and a due date of Friday might equally well be a task which will require 5 days' effort, or 5 minutes; all we can determine is that it is not available prior to Monday, and it should be completed by Friday.

Well, that's not really all we can determine if this functionality is important enough for the user to do a little extra estimation and data entry. Don't forget that OF tasks do also have a duration field.

[whpalmer4]

Well, that's not really all we can determine if this functionality is important enough for the user to do a little extra estimation and data entry. Don't forget that OF tasks do also have a duration field.

While that's true, you can only edit or directly view that field if you've got the Mac edition in the mix...

[rbeverly]

I don't think anyone is saying that the calendar or any other view should assess feasibility. These are views, which means they are for looking at. It is the user who assesses feasibility. Different views just make it easier for the user to do that.

@whpalmer, the feasibility assessment you mention sounds more like something that a sophisticated decision-making AI would do. I'll wager we can all agree that we don't need OmniFocus to make decision for us. We just need information presented in a way that makes our own decisions a bit easier.

By the way, the very courteous service team at Omni sent me an email in response to my "send feedback" through OmniFocus. They said some of the things I mentioned a few posts back are in their "open requests" list, and they added my vote. It sounded encouraging at least :) I just thought I would point out that if you haven't contacted them through Help --> Send Feedback, you might want to do so. They do read your messages, and send back intelligent suggestions, and let you know when they're working on things, etc. Overall I am quite impressed with their level of service.