Feature Request: Better Integration with Calendar (iCal)
 

(Yes, I'm aware of the long-standing request to submit feature requests via email - I've done so, but getting some comment or amplification from fellow users seems like it might help...)

This is perhaps minor, or easy. Please correct me if I'm way off:

I schedule blocks of time during my day to work on tasks using Calendar/iCal. As of today, I can't easily reference the OF action using Calendar. I'd like to request that this be improved, based on how certain other OS X apps work.

I'd like to be able to drag an OF action into the "url" field of a calendar entry. When I do this now, I get what appears to be a link in the field with the text of the action title - but it doesn't seem to really be copied, in that if I click anywhere else in the field the text and link disappear. Right now, I can do much the same thing by copying an OF action as link, and then pasting it in the field, but I only get the URL itself, rather than the text, and when I view the Calendar entry, there's just a link like omnifocus:///task/Dei30x2a21 rather than a hyperlink that displays "Sprint - Calls at desk". The link does open properly, but I have to actually open the action to remember what which specific entry it is.

This would help in making it clear what OF tasks were the subject of what blocks of time. Again, I don't know if this is of general interest or significant complexity to implement, but I'm curious whether anyone else would like to see this...

Thanks!

The snag is that the URL field in the calendar only holds URLs, which don't include a label, just the destination. Omni could in theory provide a URL for an action which gave you a human-readable string (the action name, for example) but iCal doesn't really display the URL very nicely (at least for reading purposes) if it is of any appreciable length. Also, the URL would probably have to contain some gibberish (like the current internal ID that you get in a link to an OmniFocus action or project) so that OmniFocus could handle discriminating between two identically named items and handle the case where you edit the name of the item after pasting the link.

Isn't the title of your block of time a suitable place to describe what you are going to do?

I think I remember a script floating around that made calendar events out of actions. If not, I don't think it would be terribly difficult to construct. Select an action in OmniFocus, run the script, calendar entry constructed, with link back to the OmniFocus entry.