Repeating actions...repeating actions...

[Kelsangnorbu]

Hi Omni and everyone

Q1. Can you set tasks to auto repeat on a daily, weekly, etc... basis in the alpha. I can't find a way. This seem a very fundamentally Important feature.

Q2. While were at it do we have/have we found solutions in the alpha for sometime/maybe, tickler, reference (via linking to OOutliner?)

Cheers for any thoughts

[whalt]

I agree that I would like to see this functionality but I would also hope to see it done right which in most programs so far it hasn't been. What I really don't want to happen is that when I create a repeating action, say "Pay Rent" repeating monthly, for a new task to pop up immediately after I check the current one.

What I mean is that if I've just paid my rent for May and I check it off in OmniFocus I don't want to have "Pay Rent" for June immediately pop up on my task list.

I would like to be able to set a time window for when the task reappears. For instance I could set the task to recur every month but not show up until 3 days before the due date.

[michelle]

This feature is not in the current Alpha, but we consider it very important and hope to implement it soon!

[Hoff]

Someday / maybe items seem to be mostly taken care of already for me. I made a project called someday/maybe, and I put it "on hold". It's all captured, but doesn't show up unless I want to delve into it.

The tweak I'd like is to be able to put folders "On Hold" as well as projects.

[SpiralOcean]

Yep... this is an extremely important function for me as well. Just wanted to throw in my..

¢¢

[Kelsangnorbu]

Thanks for your responses, I'd like to second the solution offered by Whalt above regarding a set timeframe for the new task to reappear. We need our little feelings of accomplishment and if the task immediately appears... well it just plain depress you.

Any thoughts on the tickler system and referencing (maybe via outliner). To be prefectly honest I'm a bit rusty on the GTD tickler system and why we need one - but I feel we do need one!? Any masters wish to say there pennies worth?

[brianogilvie]

To be prefectly honest I'm a bit rusty on the GTD tickler system and why we need one - but I feel we do need one!? Any masters wish to say there pennies worth?

I'm no master but the idea behind a tickler system is that once I decide on May 18 that I don't need to think about something in my inbox until August, I want a trusted system that will keep it out my sight until August and then brings it back into view. Otherwise I'm confronted all the time by tasks or projects that don't need my attention, which distracts me from those that do.

For recurring projects, Life Balance (which I used for a few years) solves the problem by allowing one to specify the frequency of recurrence (e.g., MWF or every 4 days) and the "lead time" for a task. If I have a task due every seven days with a lead time of 1 day, Life Balance would hide it from the task list after it was checked off, then start showing it again 2 days before it was next due. At 1 day from due it would change color, and when it was overdue it would turn red. It's a useful scheme. The same was true for tasks or projects that had a single due date: based on the lead time, tasks wouldn't show up in the task list until shortly before they were due.

I'd still be using Life Balance if the interface weren't so maddening.

[LizPf]

Ethan had a nice system in Kinkless, though it was somewhat confusing. I expect Omni will take Ethan's system and improve it.

I consider OmniFocus only about 2/3 of a package right now — it's missing a lot of features Omni has said will be in the final. I'm willing to use the alpha, incomplete and slow as it is right now. It will only get better!

--Liz

[SpiralOcean]

I can't really test out the alpha, yes I got a golden ticket :-), until this feature is implemented. I have about 2k tasks in my current system, and many of them are repeating events. Once OmniFocus has repeating events, I can begin to move all my data over and stress test the sucka'. :-o

If there is any way to get the repeating tasks sooner than later, I would vote for that priority.

Hmm... even if repeating tasks were in OmniFocus, I would be dealing with the speed issue... ah well... baby steps to the beta... baby steps to the release.

Thank you.

[jlindeman]

If there is any way to get the repeating tasks sooner than later, I would vote for that priority.



I agree completely with this. I'm still living in kGTD until repeating/recurring tasks are implemented in Omnifocus.

[bushford]

same here: I have many recurring tasks currently in kGTD, and it sort of works for the moment.

On the topic of not wanting new ones to be created as soon as you tick off the current one: they wouldn't be immediately in your radar/in your face if you were looking at your actions through a smart folder that only shows you stuff up to a certain number of days in the future.

So bring on those smart folders ...!

[rish]

I can't really test out the alpha, yes I got a golden ticket :-), until this feature is implemented. I have about 2k tasks in my current system, and many of them are repeating events. Once OmniFocus has repeating events, I can begin to move all my data over and stress test the sucka'. :-o

If there is any way to get the repeating tasks sooner than later, I would vote for that priority.

Hmm... even if repeating tasks were in OmniFocus, I would be dealing with the speed issue... ah well... baby steps to the beta... baby steps to the release.

Thank you.

There is a start and end date text box in the Inspector, is that for recurring events?

[Athanasius]

I agree completely with this. I'm still living in kGTD until repeating/recurring tasks are implemented in Omnifocus.

Same here. Please implement these asap - it's a basic feature.

[brooce]

Niggling detail for "recurring tasks" implementation: Give me a pref for when the tasks recur; midnight? 15 minutes before I clicked complete for the last instance of the task? Once another dependency is cleared ("at least a week after last time, and not until XYZ has occurred").

[bongoman]

Why do you want to include date-based actions in your next-actions list manager?

I would have thought anything with a date goes into your calendar as it is hard-landscape?

[brianogilvie]

In response to bongoman: because the next action might itself be date-based. One of the great advantages of a computer application over paper lists and files is that the list manager can also serve as a tickler file that automatically moves items into the action list when they become relevant.

From a GTD perspective, there's a difference between things that can ony be done on a particular date and things that are not actionable before a particular date. And in the real world, when we plan (or brainstorm) projects we often think of tasks that are necessary but not yet. OmniFocus (or any other program that can accommodate future start or due dates, such as Life Balance) allows the next-actions list manager to also serve as a tickler, which dramatically reduces the number of systems one has to consult to make sure that everything is collected so it can be acted on.

[Athanasius]

You got it, Brian.

[wkoffel]

I agree completely with this. I'm still living in kGTD until repeating/recurring tasks are implemented in Omnifocus.

As am I.

Incidentally, I really like the idea listed above of "lead time" on a task. Right now in kGTD, I can't really have both a due-date and a recurring task in one. I need to put in the recurrance timing, so it pops up in time for me to act upon. I'd love a clever system that accommodated both.

[BwanaZulia]

I agree completely with this. I'm still living in kGTD until repeating/recurring tasks are implemented in Omnifocus.

Second that..

Once OmniFocus gets the basics that kGTD and removes the ObjectMeter (probably beta) I will move over full time.

This would, of course, save me a lot of time since I am jumping back and forth so much which David would frown on... :)

BZ

[SpiralOcean]

You gys n gls at Omni are doing a tremendous job on the response & bug fixes! Any hope of a repeating task coming soon? :-)

[BwanaZulia]

Bump for an answer from Omni. Just to confirm recurring (like kGTD) will be in 1.0.

BZ

[jlindeman]

Everything else about OF seems to be coming together pretty well. Repeating/recurring actions would be REALLY nice though.

[Ken Case]

Bump for an answer from Omni. Just to confirm recurring (like kGTD) will be in 1.0.

Yes, they're coming. From our Download / sneaky peek FAQ (http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnifocus/download/) page's "Coming soon" section:


Repeating tasks
Rich text in notes
Optional columns for start date, end date, estimated time
Printing support
Sequential/Parallel task groups


Hmm, I guess those last three are actually in there now, maybe we should update that page. But in any case, yes, repeating tasks are still planned.

[chuckbo]

Ken,
thanks for the update on repeating tasks; I'm looking forward to playing with those.

Let me ask you, please, whether you intend to cover both types of repeating tasks. One would be what I see described -- like the 1st of every month to pay bills or every Wed to send out a meeting note.

But what I especially hope for is repeating tasks in a call file. Examples:

1) at home, to change all of the air filters 3 months after they were last changed. It's not the 1st of every quarter, because if I slip one time, the filters are still good for 3 months and can be changed later. My target might be the 1st of the quarter, and that's when it shows up on the list, but it's not a hard date. If they get changed on the 5th, then the next target would be for the 5th, 3 months in the future.

2) networking. I have a couple of hundred people in my network that I regularly contact, and each has their own periodicity. So after I contact someone, they should be reslotted on the list based on the completion date and the periodicity. Along those lines, when a task is repeated, do you plan for any comments that have been recorded as part of that task stay with the task? That is, when I contact someone and they write back, I'd like to record some notes about what we discussed. Now that task would be considered "completed, " I imagine, and it gets rescheduled for the future. If I look at the comments for that task, will it be able to carry forward the notes from the task the last time it was done? (And I'm saying "task" though I haven't seen whether this is better set up as a task in the networking folder or as an action in the networking task. I'm leaning to the latter but would like to hear what others think.)

chuck

[johnrover]

Chucks comments are brilliant. That is exactly what I need. I've been developing workarounds in task managers for years to accomplish those 3 different types of repeats.

1) The rent is due on the first every month, no mater what. start date and due date are the first of every month.

2) The air filters are ready to be changed 3 months after I last changed them. Start date is 3 months after last completion date. Due date is about 3 weeks later. If I don't finish it by then, the kid's allergies will act up.

3) The professional "keep in touch" call happens a while after the last one. But if I don't get to it that's okay. Start date is 4 months after the last completion. There is no due date.

This is the holy grail. Can you do it? I'd pay double for OmniFocus if you can.

[Wild Rye]

Agendus Pro has a pretty nice way of handling repeating tasks. You have the option of setting them as repeating on the same date, same day (ie 1st Monday of every month) or at a regular interval, say every 12 days or 12 days after task is completed.

You can also set up how much lead time you want.

What I don't like about Life Balance is that it won't let you schedule repeating tasks for just weekdays.

[jginsbu]

Chuck and johnrover are absolutely right about the importance of accommodating these different types of repeating tasks. Once app I've seen for them is Sciral Consistency (http://www.sciral.com/consistency/) (mentioned by mprewitt above). I doesn't seem have been updated recently, but it is definitely worth playing with the demo.

The visual representation of such tasks it offers is particularly nice (see the page linked above for a description)
http://www.sciral.com/consistency/screen_shot.gif

I would love to see this sort of functionality, and a nice visual representation of it, in OF!

[BwanaZulia]

I think what Chuck wants is the difference in kGTD in renew vs recur.

In kGTD (and thus I expect OF) if you give something a date and say "recur in 2 weeks" when it is completed it will create another task in two weeks from that date it was due. This would be your "pay bills on the first" example.

The other one is called "renew" and when you give a task a date and "renew in 2 weeks" it creates a new task two weeks after it was completed. So If it was completed two days before or two days after the due date, the new due date is exactly two weeks from the completion date not the due date.

In kGTD you can do days, months, weeks (not sure about years).

Bills: Due March 1st, 2007 - Recur in 1 month
Contacts: Due March 1st 2007, Renew in 3 months

It is VERY handy and I am sure at the minimum those features will make it into OmniFocus through the inspector.

The nice feature in kGTD though was this was written in the note field so you could enter it on your Treo and it would flow back to kGTD.

BZ

[AmberV]

One thing I do hope for is some sort of syntax for typing them in, in the due field. I'd rather not mess with Inspectors unless I must, and if I could just type something like 'tod +2w' to mean, "Do this today, and every two weeks afterwards", or 'tom ~200d' to mean, "Do tomorrow, and then every 200 days afterwards, but if you do it three days from now, do it 200 days from then, instead." And of course date based ones too.

Oh, and out of everything I've ever used to set dates and intervals, Remind takes the cake.

[jtauber]

I second the desire for recurring functionality like that in Sciral Consistency. I care less about the UI but it is an excellent way of supporting a class of recurring action that no other approach seems to handle.

I actually ended up implementing my own little version of Consistency that orders actions as follows:

Every action, like in Consistency, has a minimum and a maximum interval before repeating.

For each action, I calculate a score as follows:

score = MAX(0, 1 + last - minimum) / (1 + maximum - minimum)

where last is the interval since the action was last done.

This is simply a refinement of what Consistency seems to do. They colour based on whether the the score above is 0, between 0 and 1, 1 or above 1.

But calculating an actual score allows my program to order actions and it works *very* well for recurring tasks.

I would *love* to see this in OmniFocus.

[Weasel]

If anyone's happening to be counting, I second the renew/recur appropach.

[cyleigh]

This is a combination of a feature request and asking what the current implementation is like (have the alpha, but haven't had a chance to test this functionality yet). I have sent this via Send Feedback also.

I have a cleaning schedule which is based loosely on the www.flylady.net Zone idea; I have separated my house into areas and I clean them in a round-robin fashion, spending a week in each area and then on Sunday move to the next area. Within each area is a list of tasks that are parallel (some may be made up of sequential components but we can abstract that for the moment) and don't really have a priority per se, and if I don't finish all the tasks in the week it isn't a huge deal.

My envisaged set-up in OF is to make each area a project, and make the project repeating. My first question is: if I set the start day to be (say) Sunday and the due-date to be (say) the next Saturday - will the tasks become inactive at the end of the week? Basically, when I move onto the next area I don't want to see what I didn't get finished the week before. I would then set the repeat on the task to be 6 weeks (since I have 6 areas).

My feature request (since I don't think this is implemented yet) is related to the tasks I didn't get finished in each area. While it isn't a big deal that I didn't get them done, it would be nice if they appeared at the top of the list the next time that project became active. Since the tasks are parallel it doesn't matter if I do them in a different order each week.

[AmberV]

From what I have seen so far, setting up a rotating task like this shouldn't be a problem. I would use a task group for each room, and assign the dating mechanisms to the task groups. This way, you can have a group of regular tasks in rotation, and if you need to ever change that rotation, you can easily change all sub-tasks at once. The nice thing about this is that while a task group is inactive, so are its children tasks.

So say you have three rooms in the rotation. You set up the start and due dates so that each set falls one after the other. Then give each one a repeat of 3 weeks in duration. When Sunday rolls around, you can tick off the task group for the room you've finished with, and it will automatically create a new task group set 3 weeks into the future. Where you might run into difficulty is if the start date is no longer set to one week in length. I haven't completely tested how this is set; but it doesn't seem to increment both start and due dates equally by the repeat amount.

Since the old room is checked off, it will no longer show up in Availability views, only the current week's group will.

[curt.clifton]

Where you might run into difficulty is if the start date is no longer set to one week in length. I haven't completely tested how this is set; but it doesn't seem to increment both start and due dates equally by the repeat amount.

I have email confirmation from Omni that the current behavior with setting start and due dates of repeating tasks is buggy. The dates will increment by the same amount when this is fixed.

[AmberV]

Good to know; and that makes sense because it seems awfully close to random. ;)

So, it looks like you'll have to pay attention to your repeating tasks until the bugs are fixed, but the basic mechanism is in place. Just make sure the dates go where they should when you check something off.

[dhm2006]

I have a cleaning schedule which is based loosely on the www.flylady.net Zone idea; I have separated my house into areas and I clean them in a round-robin fashion, spending a week in each area and then on Sunday move to the next area. Within each area is a list of tasks that are parallel (some may be made up of sequential components but we can abstract that for the moment) and don't really have a priority per se, and if I don't finish all the tasks in the week it isn't a huge deal.

My envisaged set-up in OF is to make each area a project, and make the project repeating.

Have you considered making the zones = contexts? Then, for example, in week 1 of the month, you could look at the Zone 1 context and see all of the tasks for that area.