Inbox item count
 

Don't know if this has been discussed anywhere else on the forum, but here is a tentative suggestion:

Could there be a little icon or button or something in context view that lets me know how many items are in my inbox. I live in context view, and I worry that i will forget about items sitting in my inbox, unassigned... being constantly aware of your inbox status seems like an important part of a 'trusted system'.

[QUOTE=markbrown00]Could there be a little icon or button or something in context view that lets me know how many items are in my inbox. I live in context view, and I worry that i will forget about items sitting in my inbox, unassigned... being constantly aware of your inbox status seems like an important part of a 'trusted system'.[/QUOTE]

I second that. In fact I think the Inbox should appear at the top of both context and project views, and that it should have a number next to it (like the unread count in Mail.app) that indicates how many items are in it. Midnight Inbox, for all its faults, does this well.

Thirded to number beside Inbox.

That would be nice indeed. And a "Show number of Inbox items on icon" option would be great too!

Just so long as I can hide the inbox in all views and turn off the item count. I don't want to be interupted by items in my inbox when I'm "doing". The inbox for me is a place to toss things so they are out of my sight and out of my mind until it is time to review them.

Mark, I agree. On April 5th Michelle from Omni posted this message: "How do you use your inbox?" I think she got a lot of good feedback. But, to your point, below is some of my response to that original message.

Thanks for your suggestion, thus raising the issue again. If some sort of inbox item count feature hasn't already been added, perhaps this thread will get some attention from Omni.

Regards,
John

[QUOTE=keone]Yes, preferably in the toolbar, perhaps as an icon of an ordinary desk inbox tray. And like the Apple trash icon, if it contains an item it would have some "papers" on the top of it; no papers = empty. Additionally, [B]I would want to know how many items are in there, so perhaps either an item count in a small circle right on the front of the tray, or revealed via a mouse rollover.[/B] Double-clicking it (or using a command key combination) would open it for me.

An inbox nag. This would, of course, be controlled by user preferences: some would love it, others not so much. But [B]if I checked the appropriate preference, then whenever I quit the app, if I still have items in my inbox, a window would pop up advising me of this.[/B] I could then choose to ignore it and quit anyway, or click on an inbox button in that window which would immediately open up my inbox for me.[/QUOTE]

John,

I quite like that idea of an icon with 'papers' when not empty. In fact, having just that without an item count would give one a lot of incentive to keep the inbox empty

I just wanted to jump in to say that I, too, would like a count for the inbox. It creates a positive pressure to move things into the system.

I actually suggested that they put it in the bottom status bar, kind of like how Excel does it.

1 of 2,256 Tasks

40 of 49 Projects

That way when you are in "Focus" mode you can see what is the universe size.

This would be a great start to the stats that I have been bugging them about.

BZ

Excellent idea!