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-   -   How to set up "Quick Links" on iPad and iPhone (http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=27307)

Lightstorm 2012-12-05 09:39 AM

How to set up "Quick Links" on iPad and iPhone
 
Good afternoon everyone,
I find myself using my iPad for OF for most of my career-related work, and I usually have to hop back and forth among projects and folders. The 'drill down' method within OF is intuitive, but a bit slow if you have to dig for something (or if you have a large database like me).

So I decided to make a Quick Links project that contains links to frequent 'areas' of OF that I have to jump back and forth between.

PLEASE, if after reading this, you know of an easier/more effective way of doing this, please give feedback.

Set up on Mac:
1. Create a Quick Links project. You can create this anywhere, but I put it in the root. I put this project "On Hold" so its tasks don't show in your day to day (unless you have "any status" as your filter).
2. Create a task for each link you want to make. Navigate to the task/project/folder you want to create a link for, right-click that item, and choose "Copy as Link". This is your 'bookmark.'
3. Go back to the task you created, and paste the link in the Notes section of the task.

Now, whenever you need to create a link to another frequent task or project you can repeat steps 1-3.

Now, for the good part. Getting to links quickly.

I have a rather large OF database. When OF starts, it takes up to 7 seconds or so after tapping "Projects". I don't have that kinda time, do you? Well, there's a perspective for that. :)

1. On the Mac, right-click your "Quick Links" project and select "Focus."
2. Next, click the menu Perspectives --> Save Window As --> New Perspective.
3. Name your perspective (I named it simply "Quick Links")
4. I made the View Mode Context, Sidebar Filter All Contexts, Availability Any Status (this is important especially if you 'hide' the project by putting it on Hold), Status Any Status.
5. Close the perspective window.
6. Sync on the Mac
7. Sync on your iDevice to 'bring' the Perspective over.
8. Go to Perspectives on your iDevice (for iPad, choose the star to make it a favorite, on the iPhone/iPod Touch tap Edit, then choose the star).
9. This new perspective now shows in the 'root' of OF as a favorite.

Now, to get to a favorite, all you have to do is tap the Home button, hit the Quick Links perspective, choose the 'bookmark' you want to go to, and click the link in the notes field. This sounds like a lot of taps, but for me, it beats drilling down if you have a lot of heirarchy in how you set up your OF file.

NOTE: The iPad goes right to the link if it's a folder. For some reason, on iPhone once you get to the destination you have to tap "back" and the correct folder shows.

I know this may not help everyone, but I'm hoping some of you get some use out of it.

Thanks!

Welcome any feedback/improvement!

tech-geek 2012-12-06 05:04 AM

Check out the app Launch Center Pro. You can actually create a custom OmniFocus launcher on your phone to jump to any context or perspective. You can also add new items to your inbox with one tap. Here's the article that got me started: [url]http://bettermess.com/omnilaunch/[/url] Omnifocus for iPad doesn't (currently) support the ability to link to perspectives, but if you send a feature request to the support ninjas, your vote gets added to the dev support db.

Lightstorm 2012-12-06 05:23 AM

Excellent, tech-geek. Thanks. The only issue I see, for me, is that this doesn't sync across my instances of OF. HOWEVER, I do like the templated tasks that can be created so I will check it out. Thanks!


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