Request - Mulitple Contexts & Multiple Locations for a Context
 

Here's the email I sent into OmniGroup via the Help menu's "feedback" page. This request applies to both the iPhone app, and the computer app. If you like this idea I hope you'll send them feedback about this idea, too. I'm posting here to spark others thoughts on these possible features;

[COLOR="Navy"]
I know I've been bugging you guys but now with the iPhone App I'm using OmniFocus more than ever.

I have a significant suggestion that was largely inspired by your iPhone app and another location aware app I own called ShopList. The suggestion is:

• Allow an action to have more than one context
OR
• Allow a context to have more than one location (in the iPhone app)
OR
• Both of the above!! (the best idea!).

Here's where ShopList comes in: this app allows me to create a shopping list and associate each item with more than one location. This makes sense because I prefer Trader Joe's for wine and other goodies but have to do most of my shopping at my local big box supermarket. But if I need a gallon of milk I can get that at either one - so wether I'm at Joe's or the big box I have "Milk" on my list. I can also have the shops plotted on a map

Well the same would make sense with OmniFocus on the iPhone. Now that I can carry my list with me and have it sorted by location I've decided to get more precise in my contexts. So the other day I put an action in a new "Post Office" context and associated my local post office's address with it. But then I started thinking, what about the post-office near my work? If I'm near it and looking for an action to take care of on my lunch hour, wouldn't I want to be able to see that Post Office context there, too? I'm sure you can think of many other similar scenarios. I think the most obvious scenario would be banking - how nice would it be to have the context "bank" associated with all the branches near your home, your work, your gym, your kid's school, etc?

I would think the multiple context request is common and doesn't require explanation (e.g. I can buy a money order at the grocery store or the bank so I would assign it to both contexts). It would also be a quick way to take care of the first request but not as neat and clean - I wouldn't want a list of contexts that included a separate context for every branch of my bank in town.

BTW, I tried doing a shopping list in OmniFocus but the lack of this flexibility caused me to go on the hunt for an app that allowed for multiple stores to one item.[/COLOR]

When editing a context on the iPhone using the Business search, simply separate the locations you want using "OR" (uppercase is required).

This should achieve what you want.

Maybe you should have a read of the (extremely long, and sometimes heated) thread in the main Omnifocus forum where the issue of multiple contexts has already been discussed at some length?

If you enter "Post Office" as a business search, the Nearby view will always grab the nearest one, whether you're at home, your kids' school, or visiting your sister in San Francisco. Same thing with "Bank". Or maybe enter your specific bank's name, so it doesn't direct you to a competitor's branch that charges you an ATM fee.

[QUOTE=Lizard;44518]If you enter "Post Office" as a business search, the Nearby view will always grab the nearest one, whether you're at home, your kids' school, or visiting your sister in San Francisco. Same thing with "Bank". Or maybe enter your specific bank's name, so it doesn't direct you to a competitor's branch that charges you an ATM fee.[/QUOTE]

I think, the point is, that there are some contexts like "online" or "email" that could be assigned to different locations (for me it's my home office, my office itself and the office at my clients) but where business search won't work. It would be nice to be able to assign more than one address to a context.

Additionally, it would be great to have a location "everywhere", because there is at least one context (phone) that's always with me .. at least when I'm using OmniFocus for the iPhone.

Thank you for OF! I'm using it a lot and I'm very happy with it.

Regards
Boris

Didn't realize 'or' was case sensitive. Thanks for the tip!

[QUOTE=JRArseneau;44366]When editing a context on the iPhone using the Business search, simply separate the locations you want using "OR" (uppercase is required).

This should achieve what you want.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Lizard;44518]If you enter "Post Office" as a business search, the Nearby view will always grab the nearest one, whether you're at home, your kids' school, or visiting your sister in San Francisco. Same thing with "Bank". Or maybe enter your specific bank's name, so it doesn't direct you to a competitor's branch that charges you an ATM fee.[/QUOTE]

I wish it was that easy. There are multiple threads on similar topics and while it's mostly Google's "fault", the search-based locations aren't as accurate as we like.

Example: In my neighborhood a local elementary school has partnered with the Barnes & Noble book store chain in some sort of reading initiative. This leads OmniFocus, when doing a Google search, to find this school and send me there if I have a search established for B&N, merely because the school has plastered B&N's name all over their website.

My Google-Fu is relatively good, and even so I cannot create searches via OR (or other parameters) - as seen in this (misspelled) thread:

[URL="http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?p=115910"]http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?p=115910[/URL]

The Google service we were using for location searches stopped working, so we've had to switch to another service. We're a bit disappointed with the current results and looking for ways to tune our queries or a better service to use.

In the meantime, you can help us with our testing. If you're willing, when you find inaccurate results, please email us with the search terms you were using and your approximate location (eg zip code or city name). We can use these queries to compare the various search engines available to us.

[QUOTE=Lizard;116187]The Google service we were using for location searches stopped working, so we've had to switch to another service. We're a bit disappointed with the current results and looking for ways to tune our queries or a better service to use.

In the meantime, you can help us with our testing. If you're willing, when you find inaccurate results, please email us with the search terms you were using and your approximate location (eg zip code or city name). We can use these queries to compare the various search engines available to us.[/QUOTE]

I'm absolutely willing, while I have the time, to submit query results. Do you have a specific email address you'd like these to go to?

Also, are you able to disclose by what means you're getting current results? As discussed here and elsewhere, I've been trying to tweak results based on relative Google searches (from their main search page) and they don't line up. If we had a bit of information on where the searches were being parsed it might help us.

Finally, I know that the whole Google vs Apple mapping SNAFU is a big deal right now, but perhaps integrating with Apple's native mapping program could be a testing option as well. I believe that Apple is dedicated to improving the mapping search results with all of their developmental powers right now and when they work, they absolutely work (and seem to work rather well when searching for well-known business entities).

I've been testing briefly with a with a few searches that I've been having extreme difficulty with in OmniFocus (Lowe's Hardware, Walmart, Home Depot) and when you're specific the results are spot on (in the Apple maps app), while even in a Google Map search via the web, it pulls up other shops or entities (as in the case of Walmart it's vision or pharmacy departments instead of the store itself). Pros and cons to all suggestions, as I'm sure you guys already know.


Merely suggestions. Thanks for the communications!
Andrew

Go ahead and send them to [email]omnifocus@omnigroup.com[/email], and put something about "map testing data" in the subject line.

We're currently using Google's Places API, which as you noted, doesn't completely match up with Google's web browser results. I'm not sure if there's a way to directly access Places results via a web browser to do your own testing.

[QUOTE=Lizard;116198]We're currently using Google's Places API, which as you noted, doesn't completely match up with Google's web browser results. I'm not sure if there's a way to directly access Places results via a web browser to do your own testing.[/QUOTE]

That should be a good enough start to do some data mining. My biggest question was that of search parameters. Something I can answer on my own, but feel free to add to as well, does the Google Places API allow the same search modifiers as Google's [I]normal[/I] search?

I'll see what I can find out and go from there. I assume it does, and if so that'll aid in our ability to tweak the search results that we are getting.

[QUOTE=Lizard;116198]Go ahead and send them to [email]omnifocus@omnigroup.com[/email], and put something about "map testing data" in the subject line.

We're currently using Google's Places API, which as you noted, doesn't completely match up with Google's web browser results. I'm not sure if there's a way to directly access Places results via a web browser to do your own testing.[/QUOTE]

Liz,

Been digging around in the Google Places API and it seems to be almost contradictory to what we are asking for from OmniFocus location searches. Google's new Places API seems to be doing [I]too much[/I] of the work for us and via it's own specific ordering of results.

Found a few articles regarding how Google Places works and it seems to place a lot of the onus on the business to make sure they're a part of Google Places (instead of scraping the Interwebs for addresses, locations, etc as we would expect). In short it's more like Yelp, Google style.

The best example I found of this comes from Andrew Shotland at [URL="http://searchengineland.com/google-places-ranking-factors-the-phd-version-114839"]Search Engine Land[/URL]:

[I][B]Top 3 Factors To Improve Ranking For Pages In Integrated Results[/B]
[LIST][*]Places page category matches a broader category than that of the search (search for “pizza”, Places category = restaurant). This only applies of course if there is a broader category. This applies for both primary and secondary Places page categories.[/LIST][LIST][*]The search category appears in the business name (“Rocky’s Pizza” for a “Seattle pizza” search).[/LIST][LIST][*]The search category appears in the “at a glance” section.[/LIST]
[B]Top 5 Factors To Improve Ranking For Pages Not In Integrated Results[/B][LIST][*]Having 5 or more Google reviews.[/LIST][LIST][*]Location term in “at a glance” section. (Seattle in “Seattle pizza”)[/LIST][LIST][*]Category term in Google review content. (pizza in “Seattle pizza” is in the contents of the Google reviews)[/LIST][LIST][*]Category term in business description.[/LIST][LIST][*]Category term in “at a glance.”[/LIST][/I]

Google is prioritizing the search results via their own agenda, not ours.

Perhaps a better way for us to conduct these searches would be to allow one or all of the following:

[1] Ideal: an option to select which service we'd like to use (Yelp, Google Maps, Google Places, Google Search, etc)

[2] Have the OmniFocus staff test results from various services to see where the "best" default results come from

[3] Use a "straight Google search" to allow us on the user's end to customize our search results with standard web search syntax (OR, "quotes", etc)


Currently, search syntax doesn't work because Google Places doesn't parse like a standard search. We're hamstrung!


Merely more suggestions. Thanks again for the review of them.

I'm struggling myself with Business Search off the iPhone. It works great in some cases, but in others the results make no sense. For example, near my house are several mainline and specialty supermarkets. When I just put in Grocery or Supermarket I get one wholesale African foods place. Instead I had to go very specific and search on "Grocery AND (Cub OR Aldi OR Trader Joe's OR Festival OR Rainbow)" to get it showing what I wanted. Not perfect as there are many others that would also work, but since the broader category only showed a single not useful choice, I was forced down this path. I'd love to hear other suggestions on how to get more hits on a broader category.

Closing this thread (and similar ones in the other OmniFocus forums) in favor of [URL="http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=28176"]the consolidated thread for this topic[/URL].