Problem with iCal sync in 2.0.2
 

I am having a problem with iCal sync in OmniPlan 2.0.2 that is driving my crazy.

I have my project laid out. A really important workflow for me is to have my project time laid out in iCal, populated by those tasks in OmniPlan that span across that Working Time - and we're very nearly there, but it doesn't seem to be quite right.

I am using "Sync tasks to/from iCal events" to do this and it largely works. The problem I have is that I only want the Working Hours for me as a Resource occupied by blocks in iCal. Again, this works fine, except for one when one task starts mid-way through one Working Hours block and its duration takes it beyond into the next block in iCal. When this happens, unfortunately the iCal appointment stretches all the way to the next Working Hour block, bulldozing its way through the rest of my calendar appointments.

Rather than sync to iCal, if I export the project to iCalendar I at least get the "One per work period" keeps my OmniPlan stuff only within the Working Hours I have set as a Resource. Why doesn't this happen in syncing?

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

This is exactly what I would like to achieve, any update?!

Yes, please fix this! If I can automatically generate useable iCal files for my staff I will buy 2.0. Right now, the calendars look like a mess and are not readable via the sync method.

Forget it - iCal export sux
 

I think OMNI is too focused on iPad and iPhone to worry with people who have already bought their software...

They need to hire a someone to pay attention to these posts its called SOCIAL MEDIA fellas. Get in the game or go home!

just a WIKI would be better than this...

Hi folks,

Thanks for the bug reports. I'd like to talk just a moment about the difference between "sync" and "export", because I think you may be better served as the latter.

With "export", we can blat the tasks out into your calendar and never have to look at them again. We don't have to match calendar events up with OmniPlan tasks and try to figure out how to make sense of whatever ungodly thing iCal might have done to them in the OmniPlan world. Sync, of course, is a bidirectional channel.

In this case, if we split a task into working period and you drag them around in iCal, there are many, MANY things you can do that won't make any sense back in OmniPlan, or will be very difficult for OmniPlan to interpret in a way that actually makes sense to you. You could make two parts of the same task overlap, or move them into "non working" hours, or separate the pieces so that OmniPlan would have to "split" the task when it was synced back. So we've found it necessary to impose a couple of limitations that, I must admit, make the iCal sync feature less useful than we might like.
[LIST=1][*]There is a one to one mapping of tasks to iCal events[*]We sync the start date, but ignore the end date.[/LIST]
I expect you would all be better served by creating an "export" publishing phase rather than a sync. Export as iCalendar events, one per work period. This will create a .ics file that you'll want to. If you will be regularly performing this task, you'll probably want to put them in a separate calendar and delete all the tasks from it each time you reimport the .ics file, otherwise you'll see duplication. That's all automatable, but it's hardly a good workflow. If you like, I can try to whip up an AppleScript publishing phase that does it.

So, yes, this is something we're trying to figure out how to improve and we have a few irons in the forge.

Two additional notes. We publicly committed to a goal of releasing OmniPlan for iPad in 2011. We've failed to meet that goal precisely because we believe it's more important to support people who have already bought OmniPlan for Mac, and have taken resources away from the iPad effort. Secondly, the forums are a place for our users to talk with each other about Omni and Omni's products. If you are looking for direct support from us and expect a reply, please see our [URL="http://www.omnigroup.com/company/"]company contact information[/URL], or select "Send Feedback..." from the Help menu in one of our applications. We try to participate in these forums as time allows, but it is not a primary support channel. See this post: [url]http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=87[/url]

-Tom