A Perspective Containing a Focus *AND* the Inbox [Feature Request - email support]
 

I'm open to alternative ways to manage this, but just now what I'm trying to do is:

- create a perspective with a focus (I have a "work" and "home" folder structure, so imagine this is for "work")
- other normal perspective criteria (flagged, due soon etc)
- i find at this stage the context-based perspective gives me a great list of what I need to be working on now
- but I would also like to see the Inbox contents

Why would I like to see the Inbox contents? Well I pick up a lot of actions through the day that I hammer in with quick entry, I don't want to spend the time categorizing them as I go, but some need to be *done*, the rest get categorized and sweeped at the end of the day. Even if I flag actions as I enter them (easy enough with keyboard shortcut), because of the focus ignoring the Inbox, they don't show up in the Perspective flagged criteria.

If I remove the focus from the perspective I can basically get what I want but now I have my work/home separation messed up.

Any ideas (*) are welcome, thanks!

(*) for instance if I quick entry all items into a pseudo-inbox within the focus, it all works fine, but this is inelegant and inconsistent as I need to remember to do it.

I assume this is a Project mode perspective, right? If so, it's a piece of cake: you just need to set up your focused window, then cmd-click on the Inbox in the sidebar to add it to the view, and save the perspective. Make sure sure you have Restore Focus and Selection checked in the Perspectives window. An example:

[URL=http://img207.imageshack.us/i/screenshot20110114at103.png/][IMG]http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/9639/screenshot20110114at103.png[/IMG][/URL]

If you want a context mode view instead, you can accomplish that similarly. You'll want to make sure both the No Context and the Contexts hierarchy are selected in the sidebar (assuming you want all of your Inbox items to show up—many probably won't have a context set).

@whpalmer4

This looks great - the Project CMD-Click works a treat but I have a Context-based perspective.

> [I]If you want a context mode view instead, you can accomplish that similarly. You'll want to make sure both the No Context and the Contexts hierarchy are selected in the sidebar (assuming you want all of your Inbox items to show up—many probably won't have a context set).[/I]

When I try your suggestion there, the Inbox items do not get added (they have no context), perhaps because "No Context" has already been "focused"?

OmniFocus was originally coded up to treat the inbox as a place for items you wanted to remember, but hadn't actually decided for sure that you wanted to work on. Hiding those actions in context view was regarded as a feature, in other words, because it prevented distraction from the tasks you had decided you wanted to work on.

We've been backing off of that gradually over time, but it looks like this is one case where it's still being enforced - if a view is focused, Inbox items won't show in Context view.

We've got a feature request filed on changing that - interested parties should email our [EMAIL="omnifocus@omnigroup.com"]support folks[/EMAIL] & ask to be attached to that request. (Items with more customer interest tend to get higher priority.)

[QUOTE=Brian;91713]OmniFocus was originally coded up to treat the inbox as a place for items you wanted to remember, but hadn't actually decided for sure that you wanted to work on. Hiding those actions in context view was regarded as a feature, in other words, because it prevented distraction from the tasks you had decided you wanted to work on.[/QUOTE]

Yup, makes perfect sense, I'm a bad GTDer and need to process (and not forget actions between review cycles). I can see how it would be a good design decision originally.

Optional inclusion would be fine - the project focus+inbox technique was kinda cool (if hidden).

These days (OF 1.8.2) OF includes actions from the Inbox in context mode views unless you set an option to make it otherwise(*), and as it turns out, I use that option. Rather than turn it off, I made a quick test case with the default database in a new account to verify that you could do the context mode case as I claimed. Unfortunately, while I managed to get the Inbox showing up, I didn't notice that I lost the focus and got all of the other data, as would have been more apparent with my own database. Sorry about that!

(*) See here: [url]http://forums.omnigroup.com/showpost.php?p=76509&postcount=13[/url]

If you don't need to do the focus thing, though, you can get the Inbox contents in your context mode view now. One quick hack you could do if you really want to hide the other folder's worth of stuff: mark the folder(s) you don't want in view as dropped.

Focus and Inbox weirdness
 

a) In [B]project[/B] mode when focussed, items in the inbox remain visible.

b) In [B]context[/B] mode when focussed, items in the inbox (i.e. with No Context) don't show up - even though "No Context" is visible at the top of the context list.

I'm trying to make sure that all my perspectives (both project and context) always show inbox items - filters permitting, but in context mode I just can't get this to work if I have any focus set. I can see a case for allowing/disallowing focus to include the inbox but this isn't quite doing either.

When setting focus In project mode, when you focus on a project and the inbox it lets you, but you can't focus on the inbox alone. The inclusion of the inbox when setting focus has no effect, since it's always visible anyway.

Is this a bug or a feature?

[quote]
a) In project mode when focussed, items in the inbox remain visible.
[/quote]
That is only true if the Inbox is selected in the sidebar.

While I would be the first to agree that there are a number of spots where the Inbox seems to not be treated quite as I would expect, if viewed from the notion that context mode is intended for working on the tasks you've already processed, the absence of the Inbox tasks in your scenario is perhaps understandable. Of course, this breaks down if you don't go along with the GTD notion that you shouldn't be working out of your Inbox...I'll confess to occasionally doing a bit of that, but the "handle" I use to grab those tasks is a due date, so they show up in Forecast view on iOS, or my Urgent perspective on the Mac, which includes all actions grouped by due date, including those with no context set. That perspective when synced to iPad turns up a different view of the issue: even though I've included the No Context bin in the perspective, the actions in the Inbox don't show up.

I run with "require both project and context" on my Inbox settings, and always have; it's possible that some of these issues aren't relevant if you use other settings.

OmniFocus 2 will be all shiny, and we won't care if stuff like this is still present, right? :-)

If you select the inbox and several projects in the sidebar, the text in the
View -> Focus
menu item includes the project names but omits the inbox. I'm interpreting that to mean that the behavior was intentional at the time this was coded up.

That said, I'll make sure a feature request gets filed on this so the team knows you'd like to see the app handle this differently, psidnell. Thanks!

Aha, and an existing feature request links back to a previous thread on this subject. Adding psidnell to that feature request and merging threads...

[QUOTE=Brian;119158]
That said, I'll make sure a feature request gets filed on this so the team knows you'd like to see the app handle this differently, psidnell. Thanks![/QUOTE]

Thanks!

My preference would be that the inbox behave like any other project, and No Context like any other context: then they can be used as part of your workflow more flexibly.

My preference would be that it be an option to keep Inbox items from showing up in the rest of the world. Just because it has been captured doesn't mean it is going to be kept and acted upon. Do, defer, delegate or discard are the four paths out of the GTD inbox. Items in the Inbox are not yet commitments; they become commitments when processed.

Nothing in this post should be interpreted as opposition to psidnell's request to rationalize the behavior of the Inbox — I'm in favor of that, and do not believe it is incompatible with my desire to keep the Inbox contents walled off when not wanted.

Psidnell, can you give us more information on how the ability to see the inbox at the same time as some focused or selected projects is useful to you? Specifically, how do you use this and what is it let you do in your workflow?

It is true that current versions of OmniFocus present the inbox and your project list in the same window, but the Inbox isn't "just another project". It's actually a totally different thing that just appears happens to appear in the same window as your projects. Different fields, different behaviors, but our presentation of that difference isn't clear at all.

FWIW, people consistently tell us that OmniFocus for iPad is easier to use and less confusing, and it already enforces this separation. You can see your inbox or your projects, but not both on the same screen. Future versions of the Mac app may handle this differently so we can make the conceptual/functional difference between the two lists clearer there, as well.

That all said, we'd love to hear more about how you use this in your workflow so we can consider that info as we think about what to do here. Thanks!

[QUOTE=Brian;119357]
FWIW, people consistently tell us that OmniFocus for iPad is easier to use and less confusing[/QUOTE]
I bet if you polled a large section of the population, you would get a substantial agreement with the proposition that a 4 function calculator is easier to use than a typical scientific/programmer calculator. Just about everyone who shelled out more than $7 so they could own one of the latter would be really, really unhappy if 4 bangers became the only option. I personally get very nervous listening to all the talk about making the Mac app as friendly as the iPad app; much of the reason why the iPad app is easier to use and less confusing is that there's substantially less functionality! It's okay for someone using both iPad and Mac apps to have the iPad be OF Lite if the Mac app can still handle the heavy lifting. It's not okay if the Mac app turns into OF Lite!

I have one particular project I do for work and when I'm ready to sit down with that project I work out of a focused Project Mode with the Inbox in view. There are often many items that have accumulated in the inbox that need to be brought into the project. While working on that particular project on my laptop it is very helpful to see the future items and all the various contexts like Waiting For... at the same time. Clearing the inbox, reviewing the project, and acting on remaining actions can all be done in one sitting and in any order that seems convenient at the time. Of course I could not use Omni focus on the iOS in this way but in this particular case that is not a problem because this project requires the use of several applications that run on the laptop OS. Historically (yes, I've been using this app along time) I came to this method of working because I could see the inbox at the same time. If I did this the traditional way, by clearing the inbox first, I would still have to move the actions around among the action groups within the project itself before changing the focused view from Project to Context and this method saves me some of that tedium.
This is the only time I use OmniFocus in this way—otherwise I work out of Context mode and do not expect immature actions that are still in the inbox to appear.

[QUOTE=Brian;119357]Psidnell, can you give us more information on how the ability to see the inbox at the same time as some focused or selected projects is useful to you? Specifically, how do you use this and what is it let you do in your workflow?[/QUOTE]

Sure.

I spend most of my work day at my desk with a focus set on my work folder.
I usually have two windows open:
[LIST][*]A big context window with all available actions (focussed on work).[*]A small context window with all due/flagged actions (focussed on work).[/LIST]
I often use OSX/IOS quick entry (and now the new mail/sync service) to get things into my inbox while I'm on the desk phone or in a meeting (with my iPhone). The vast majority are work related and small tasks.

Consequently I'd like them to appear in my work focussed available context window (above) under "No Context", as they would if I wasn't focussed.

Obviously I could select a project/context on entry (if using the right "clean up inbox items" setting) but that would be less "quick".

I don't know what the technical feasibility of this is (although I have peeked at your db schema and generate reports from it with python:-)) but there would seem to be no usability penalty for the inbox to be a project that can't be deleted/renamed. Then when you create a focussed perspective you could choose to include/exclude it to get any behaviour you want - including the current behaviour (although a tad more consistent).

Hope that made sense.

Very helpful - thanks! Passing the info along to the rest of the team.