OmniFocus and time zone changes
 

I have noticed that Omnifocus does not handle Timezone changes well as it does not translate event times to the new time zones I am traveling in. This means that my task entries are always in my old time zone vs. the new one. Is this correct behavior?

Thank you for your help!

-Bob

Yes, OmniFocus keeps track of dates and times in universal time, and makes no attempt to adjust a task to your current time zone. It'd be fairly difficult to do so in a manner that would make everyone happy without needing to specify for each and every item whether the time should follow the time zone or not. If I need to have a report submitted by 5 PM PST, it doesn't matter which time zone I'm in. Other tasks I might want adjusted to fit the current time zone. Unlikely in my opinion that they would ever all fall into the same category.

What you are seeing is the expected behavior at the moment. If you'd like to make a feature request, use the Contact Omni option in the gear menu.

Out of curiosity, when you are travelling, how many tasks do you typically have that you would want adjusted to match your time zone? If you had a button that you could tap on each of those tasks that adjusted it, would that be enough, or would you be better off having to set something (once) for each action you created specifying whether the date/time should auto-adjust as you move across time zones?

[QUOTE=whpalmer4;113958]

Out of curiosity, when you are travelling, how many tasks do you typically have that you would want adjusted to match your time zone? If you had a button that you could tap on each of those tasks that adjusted it, would that be enough, or would you be better off having to set something (once) for each action you created specifying whether the date/time should auto-adjust as you move across time zones?[/QUOTE]

I would like to see any all work off the current time zone as adjusted by my iPad for where I am. This keeps the correct time - whether it is for repeating, new, or existing actions. Just like what happens to my calendar entries as well in the apple calendar.

Thanks for your help!

-Bob

I would recommend:

1) Add timezone to the "start" and "due" fields
2) Adjust any display and alert to the current timezone (by translating current to Zulu, since it sounds like you store in Zulu)

Really not difficult and there are many examples...

[QUOTE=whpalmer4;113958]
Out of curiosity, when you are travelling, how many tasks do you typically have that you would want adjusted to match your time zone?[/QUOTE]

Almost all of my recurring tasks need to float so that the start/due times remain the same regardless of the time zone I am in. What makes this truly obnoxious is that with the current behavior, when I complete a recurring task, OF Mac, iPhone, and iPad all set the start/due time for the current time zone. Which means my start/due times for recurring tasks I completed in a different time zone are wrong when I get back home.

I've contacted OF support through feedback several times, and they say they've added this to their feature request DB. But this is becoming enough of an annoyance for me that I thought I'd try a more public approach to get it implemented sooner. Those of us who need time zone support can't possibly be a minority among OF users. I'm not sure why this would be complicated to implement. Most calendar applications (including iCal and Calendar) support timezones, and in the case of tasks that need floating times (as I describe above), a simple checkbox should work from a UI perspective.

I only now discovered this problem as I rarely travel. I too want all my tasks to stay at the same relative time due or repeating. So if I have something due at 5:00pm then I don't care whether it's 5 pm in the place I originally set the time to 5 pm where I am now I still want it to happen at 5 pm local time.

I too have run into the timezone issue while travelling. I wouldn't want all my actions with start and due dates to migrate automatically though. Most of my due dates refer to actual deadlines, so I wouldn't want those to change just because I happen to be in a different timezone.

I do have one bigger issue with timezones in OmniFocus, however. The start/due date input fields don't allow me to specify a timezone, forcing me to look up and manually introduce the offset.

Here's an example: I live in Lisbon, which is in the WET timezone. If I want to add a start/due date for some event in NYC, I have to worry about calculating the offset between EST and WET. Even worse, the clock changes for daylight saving times happen at different dates. If I want my start/due date to be precise, I might also need to look up the exact days when clocks change in each location and adjust my offset accordingly.

It would be fantastic if OmniFocus could allow me to specify the timezone and take care of all this offsetting for me.

It would be even better if it were possible to differentiate between universal and roaming start/due dates.

As someone who also travels every week i too would prefer that my times adjust by time zone. To me the ideal way would be to have a default time zone I prefs that shows on the date tab. That tab would still allow changes however and as someone else said, store all in Zulu

I'd prefer start/due times to be 'floating' based on time zone as well. About six months ago I moved one time zone west - and I'm still finding tasks that are off by an hour. A lot of times it's items with start dates but the default start time of midnight, which is late enough that I don't typically see it before going to bed. But now those tasks become available at 11PM the day before, right when I do not want to be thinking about what I need to do tomorrow. A deadline that is actually tied to an absolute time or a specific timezone would be exceedingly rare for me - maybe once or twice a year.