Prioritized feature list?

[brooce]

Hi!

I'd appreciate seeing a prioritized feature list for what's still to come in OmniFocus.

Not that you have to listen to us, but it'd be nice to be able to provide some guidance on where you spend your development time...

[Athanasius]

That's a good suggestion. Maybe an alpha roadmap, beta roadmap, 1.0 road map and ultimately a post-1.0 roadmap.

[LizPf]

I'd love this too ... but I worry that the folks who only read half the info provided will begin yammering if a feature is 10 minutes late. Or if feature #2 gets implemented before feature #1. [I won't out the guilty, but I have seen some of this here.]

And again, it would take time away from the actual development.

So I'll happily keep downloading my updates, sending in my feedback forms, and waiting. Though, OmniFolk, if you do have a spare moment ...

--Liz

[michelle]

We're definitely listening to customer feedback. We have over 2000 customers providing us with feedback right now. Many bugs and features have been re-prioritized based on the feedback we have received. We can't provide you with a specific road-map right now, but keep sending us feedback!

Michelle

[Ken Case]

I'd appreciate seeing a prioritized feature list for what's still to come in OmniFocus.

Sorry I didn't comment on this sooner! Before we offered our first downloads, we posted our "Known issues" and "Coming soon" lists near the top of the download page (http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnifocus/download/).

What would be most useful to us is for all of you to tell us how those lists should change: what features are missing from our "Coming soon" list that you consider essential for 1.0? In your opinion, what bugs and other issues absolutely need to be addressed before we can ship 1.0, and which ones can wait until later?

Thanks!

[HiramNetherlands]

I'd like to see task aliases (called 'cloned tasks' in another thread (http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=3871)), i.e. tasks that are part of more than one project. They'd have to be 'hard links', in the sense that editing (and checking off, and even deleting) them edits (checks off, deletes) all their other instances.

Such task aliases would be useful simply because often enough, one particular condition needs to be met for several (unrelated) projects to proceed.

[Ken Case]

I'd like to see task aliases (in another thread called 'cloned tasks'), i.e. tasks that are part of more than one project.

I certainly see how cloned actions would be useful, but they have all sorts of UI ramifications that would introduce a bunch of new work. (For example, an action can be "available" in one project and "not available" due to dependencies in another, so which one is right? In context view, do we list each clone of the action separately, or do we modify the project column to somehow handle multiple project assignments?)

So we won't be doing cloned actions for 1.0, though we'll certainly consider them for future releases.

[brab]

What would be most useful to us is for all of you to tell us how those lists should change: what features are missing from our "Coming soon" list that you consider essential for 1.0? In your opinion, what bugs and other issues absolutely need to be addressed before we can ship 1.0, and which ones can wait until later?
I'd love to see a "Review Mode" built upon the review frequency and last review (I don't really understand how they are updated right now, and how to use them).

Similarly I'd love a view where I can see the oldest available tasks, to make me decide what I should do about them.

[Ken Case]

I'd love to see a "Review Mode" built upon the review frequency and last review (I don't really understand how they are updated right now, and how to use them).

You can do this now in Project View by grouping your projects by their Next Review date. This will show you all the projects which you need to review in the next week, month, etc. Select a project, review it, then select "Mark Reviewed" from the Edit menu (Shift-Command-R) or toolbar (if you've added it to your toolbar), or use the Project inspector to enter a specific future review date (and update interval).

You can save this view as a Perspective to easily get back to it later.

Similarly I'd love a view where I can see the oldest available tasks, to make me decide what I should do about them.

In Context view, try grouping your actions by their Added or Changed date. Again, you can save this view as a Perspective to get back to it easily later.

(We do plan to improve Perspectives between now and when we ship, letting you change their titles, switch to perspectives in existing windows rather than always opening new windows, delete individual perspectives rather than deleting all of them at once, etc.)

[LizPf]

Sorry I didn't comment on this sooner! Before we offered our first downloads, we posted our "Known issues" and "Coming soon" lists near the top of the download page (http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnifocus/download/).

What would be most useful to us is for all of you to tell us how those lists should change...

Ken --

I'm not concerned with suggesting new features — I trust you folk already have a great 1.0 feature set mapped out for us.

What I'd like to see is regular updates as to what we'll be seeing in the next few days. This would probably be in the Message of the Day, as in "We're currently working on the iCal synch problems. When we're done with that, we'll work on resizing column widths, then adding to the Preferences."

Exact dates aren't necessary and probably shouldn't be around at all. But a road map (if you drive from San Diego to Seattle, you go through L.A., then San Francisco, then Portland, in that order) would be very, very nice.

And I'm curious: of the ninjas who respond on the forum, who does what?

--Liz

[markbrown00]

You can do this now in Project View by grouping your projects by their Next Review date. This will show you all the projects which you need to review in the next week, month, etc. Select a project, review it, then select "Mark Reviewed" from the Edit menu (Shift-Command-R) or toolbar (if you've added it to your toolbar), or use the Project inspector to enter a specific future review date (and update interval).

This is how i've been doing my reviews. However, would it not be a simpler solution to be able to filter out the un-reviewable projects (the ones whose review date has yet to arrive) rather than group by Next Review date? In addition to "all, remaining, available, etc" you'd have "reviewable".

[curt.clifton]

Ken,

I see "Mail integration" on the list of features to be added. I'm curious as to how you plan to go about this.

I have some scripts that work quite well for generating actions from Mail. But linking back to Mail messages is very cantankerous. Mail's Applescript interface is a real kludge.

Any insight you can provide on what "Mail integration" might include and how it might work would be valuable.

Thanks!

Cheers,

Curt

[pjb]

...tell us how those lists should change...Thanks!

Perspectives are at the top of my list.

Deciding on how to manage single tasks is next. Having another header under Inbox and Projects is one way, but I'm intrigued by the idea of having a whole separate view for review and seeing them there (and in Context view, of course).

I find that I keep the inspectors open all the time so I can review the info related to the selected item (mostly just to see if it's been set properly). Do you expect it to work that way? if not, then I'd like to see more gui queues like the paper clip appearing in the main window.

Perhaps Omni-official Mail integration should wait until Leopard Mail.

[HiramNetherlands]

I certainly see how cloned actions would be useful, but they have all sorts of UI ramifications that would introduce a bunch of new work. (For example, an action can be "available" in one project and "not available" due to dependencies in another, so which one is right? In context view, do we list each clone of the action separately, or do we modify the project column to somehow handle multiple project assignments?)

So we won't be doing cloned actions for 1.0, though we'll certainly consider them for future releases.

I understand that, and I'll happily wait for a post 1.0 release to include this feature, but without wanting to press the issue, let me try to answer the questions you raise.

Can dependencies arise in one project, where there are none in another, for the very same action, provided the action is well defined, specific, 'atomic', GTD-kosher, so to speak? I think an aliased/cloned action, if it is available in one project, is of necessity available generally. Even if 'Replace tire on car' is not available in sequential project 'Move Furniture', because 'Call friends to ask for help moving furniture' comes first, having the tire replaced as part of a different project won't hurt the 'Move Furniture' project, and it is entirely possible to replace the tire without calling those furniture carrying friends first. Am I overlooking something?

In Context view, I can imagine aliased actions having 'Multiple' as their listed project, while mousing over the word 'Multiple' would reveal all the projects the task is part of.

[ksenia]

What would be most useful to us is for all of you to tell us how those lists should change: what features are missing from our "Coming soon" list that you consider essential for 1.0? In your opinion, what bugs and other issues absolutely need to be addressed before we can ship 1.0, and which ones can wait until later?

I'd like to see some kind of tagging, like iGTD does, or just a text field for meta information. I think adding this will solve the problems in the situation when an action can have multiple contexts or can belong to multiple folders / projects.

[Paul Hoadley]

What would be most useful to us is for all of you to tell us how those lists should change: what features are missing from our "Coming soon" list that you consider essential for 1.0? In your opinion, what bugs and other issues absolutely need to be addressed before we can ship 1.0, and which ones can wait until later?
FWIW, from the "Coming soon" list, I consider "Improved support for tasks without a project" to be essential, and "Integration with Mail" to be desirable. They would be my top two from that page.

[curt.clifton]

Perspectives are at the top of my list.

Mine too!

I find that I keep the inspectors open all the time so I can review the info related to the selected item (mostly just to see if it's been set properly). Do you expect it to work that way? if not, then I'd like to see more gui queues like the paper clip appearing in the main window.

Along this line, I'd love to see a small icon next to the paper clip for repeating tasks. Clicking the icon would bring up a small window for entering the repeat settings. The icon would be a darker shade of gray for tasks with a repeat interval assigned.

Perhaps Omni-official Mail integration should wait until Leopard Mail.

I can certainly live with that. However, I think there might be marketing implications in releasing OF without built-in Mail support. Some people might use the lack of such support as an excuse to not purchase.

[wwwzzz]

I would like reset/repeating to have its own column (similar to the estimated time column) for fast input and review.

[Weasel]

I'd like to see some kind of tagging, like iGTD does, or just a text field for meta information. I think adding this will solve the problems in the situation when an action can have multiple contexts or can belong to multiple folders / projects.

I'd love to see this, it might also be a work-around for the missing priorities.

Along this line, I'd love to see a small icon next to the paper clip for repeating tasks. Clicking the icon would bring up a small window for entering the repeat settings. The icon would be a darker shade of gray for tasks with a repeat interval assigned.

Yes, please, that icon would be a great improvement!

[s0niqu3]

I agree with Curt, out of the box integration with mail is one of the features i'm most looking forward to as 90% of what i need to do begins with my email, and and like Curt said, without it, i'd probably hold of purchasing the 1.0 version of omnifocus.

In this respect, has there been any development for integrating omnifocus with mail 3.0 in the newest WWDC 2007 build of leopard? I ask because bundles for mail 2.0 do not work with 3.0.

[michaelklouda]

I'd love to see this, it might also be a work-around for the missing priorities.



Yes, please, that icon would be a great improvement!

I'll third these requests (tagging and a visual to pick up repeating tasks).

And how about iPhone support! :-) I'd love OF to run on my (future) iPhone or integrate with it. So that if I am out I can quickly add items or review "errands" , etc.

[brab]

Thanks Ken about your post on reviewing and old tasks. It definitely does the job (in fact I should not have tried it, it's a bit scary ;-) ), but I think a "one-push button" solution could help here.

[jamesa]

I agree with Curt, out of the box integration with mail is one of the features i'm most looking forward to as 90% of what i need to do begins with my email, and and like Curt said, without it, i'd probably hold of purchasing the 1.0 version of omnifocus.

I agree with the sentiments on Mail integration, however I'd also like to see intelligent support for web urls as many of my tasks come from Safari or have related info on a web page.

I'd particularly like to see urls/links being detected in incoming actions and for them to be clickable. I also wonder if OF should store a "main" url in a separate field from the notes field to allow better integration with iCal which supports a url field but not rich text notes. This would also allow a quick link button on the task (and keyboard support) to allow opening the url without having to open up the notes and click the link. If there is no link defined (it wasn't entered or created as part of the task) OF could populate it from the first link in the notes field, if the notes section contains links.

The only remaining issue is a lack of support for rich text fields in iCal. Here OF could do something clever when syncing: i.e. merge the richly formatted version with any updates from iCal so the best of both worlds is delivered.

One thing about urls is they can link to anything (emails, contacts, files, etc.) so good support for urls makes things pretty powerful. However it would be nice to have specific intelligence to provide for recognition of contact names which would create a link to the person in the address book e.g. using Phone/eMail/Mail/Contact xxx would provide a link to xxx in the address book. The link could even create the mail or display their phone no.s etc.

Apologies for the long rambling post. I hope some of the suggestions here are useful to others.

[GeekLady]

From a usability point of view:

1. I would really like to see the Inbox severed from the Projects View and given it's own view (and the shortcut Cmd-3). The more I use OF, the more the current method annoys me.

2. Tagging. It doesn't need it's own view like context, but it needs to be searchable.

3. A much improved QE. I want to be able to tab over to that paperclip and hit space so I can put contextual information in with a task right away instead of just dumping it in the task name. QE uses the keyboard, having to use the mouse to get to the note area is not useful.
3a. If tagging gets implemented, QE will need a place to add tags.
3b. It would also be nice if, when you highlight a task with a note, it would automatically show the note, and hide it again when it's not selected.

[curt.clifton]

A much improved QE. I want to be able to tab over to that paperclip and hit space so I can put contextual information in with a task right away instead of just dumping it in the task name.

Currently in the main OmniFocus window you can press the (numeric keypad) enter key to toggle note editing. That's faster than tabbing to the paperclip. I really wish the enter key worked in QE. (Currently I just type longish topic text and then edit it in my inbox when processing, but that's extra work.)

[kmarkley]

Currently in the main OmniFocus window you can press the (numeric keypad) enter key to toggle note editing. That's faster than tabbing to the paperclip. I really wish the enter key worked in QE. (Currently I just type longish topic text and then edit it in my inbox when processing, but that's extra work.)
The other note editing shorcut (cmd-') does work in QE. I'd prefer all the same keystrokes work in the same way, but at least it is accomplishable without resorting to the mouse.

[curt.clifton]

The other note editing shorcut (cmd-') does work in QE. I'd prefer all the same keystrokes work in the same way, but at least it is accomplishable without resorting to the mouse.

Excellent! Thanks for pointing that out.

[GeekLady]

Currently in the main OmniFocus window you can press the (numeric keypad) enter key to toggle note editing. That's faster than tabbing to the paperclip. I really wish the enter key worked in QE. (Currently I just type longish topic text and then edit it in my inbox when processing, but that's extra work.)
That's interesting, I didn't know you could do that. I also wish it worked in QE, thank you.

And thank you, Kmarkley, for pointing out the other keyboard shortcut!

Still, you should be able to tab to the paperclip and hit space, if only because that's how everything else in OS X works. Shortcuts might be faster, but I like the tab-space because it's (normally) consistent across applications, and the keys are friendlier to my fingers when typing.