Tags are possible in OF, and quite easy
 

I just finished (finally) reading Kourosh's "Creating Flow with Omnifocus".
[URL="http://www.usingomnifocus.com/"]http://www.usingomnifocus.com/[/URL]

I considered myself a fairly strong power user, but picked up some wonderful tips in this book nevertheless. One of the many tips is, in fact tags, in this case Appendix A, "Search and Using Tags".

The revelation (ok, revelation is a strong word...but...) from this appendix is simply the fact that when creating and then saving a new Perspective, whatever is in the Search field can also be saved as part of the Perspective! Wow...I never realized this!

I don't want to spark the tags vs. contexts debate, I am mostly in the single contexts camp, hence why I'm here :). But, I do see situations, where tags would come in handy, for me at least. Example, my Contexts of @errands, @calls, etc work great, but it would be nice to filter, on say, see every task I have related to my kids in one "area" (calls to make for them, errands to run for them, house chores related to them, etc.). Having a Single Action List named "Kids", wouldn't work either, as most of these tasks for my kids fit better into other Projects.

So, using Kourosh's example, I now place a #kids string and the end of the task title (Kourosh puts in the Notes, I like it better at the end of the title). Now, I go to my Contexts, and enter #kids in the Search field, get my views/filters set, create the new Perspective, keeping the #kids search term when I save, and walla, I have a Kids Perspective. Very comparable (arguably better) then "saved searches" in other apps. In fact, this is just a great way to implement saved searches in OF, they just become Perspectives. This is a very non-intrusive way to maintain tags, yet allowing the Context to be the main driver for you "doing" perspectives, per GTD. Also solves the problem of getting crazy with nested contexts in some cases.

Just the realization that Perspectives can contain search strings just changed my game again. Some here probably knew this already, but just sharing in case others didn't know.Thanks Kourosh!

-gandalf44

If you use the iOS apps, your approach is better that Kourosh's approach, because the iOS apps do not include the contents of the notes fields in searches!

When I've done this in the past, I used something like Tag: instead of just # to indicate that the string following was a tag. Less chance of an accidental match, and it also allows for a search which turns up all actions with tags (I have many actions which contain a # somewhere, so just searching for that wouldn't be useful).

Yes, in the iOS apps the search doesn't include notes, but for some reason it *does* work when the search is performed as part of a Perspective. I'm doing the same thing since a few weeks to mark stuff that I really want to get to this week, without making my Flagged list too long.

BTW, the suggestion to put a #tag in the title is a good one, often that's just a bit quicker than having to open the Note field and adding it there.

Interesting. I stopped doing that in part because it didn't work on iOS; I wonder when it started working. All the more annoying that the iOS app won't permit searches in the notes field, when we have a proof by demonstration that it is possible. Perhaps it is thought to be a performance issue. I supplied an algorithm that greatly improves the responsiveness of search (and should alleviate performance concerns with searching the notes) years ago, but of course it hasn't gotten enough votes to be implemented.

thanks gandalf... this changes everything for me.

i've read hours of complaints due to lack of tags, and nobody from omnigroup with intelligent response.

now i just click perspectives and there is my tags,
even more powerful in many ways.

wtf??? maybe omnigroup never realized this either???
why isn't this part of the "basic o.f. training" or is it???

thanks again!

Similar to you, I used to use a solution that relied on Perspectives.

In my case, I have a work Context called "Work" (very imaginative naming, right?) & "Home" for home. Nested underneath each of those contexts, I used to have an "Online" context ("Work > Online" and "Home > Online").

Some tasks, like personal blogging, were only meant to do at home, and others like "weekly time entry" were aimed at doing while in the office. I created a Perspective called "Online" that included both my work and home "Online" Contexts so that I could see all of them if I needed.

In practice, however, I found myself seeing tasks that I was technically able to do, but distracting me from the context I was in. Seeing my blogging tasks while at work tempted me to write quick snippets when I should be focused on working, and seeing work tasks at home kept me dedicating more time to my job than I wanted.

I ultimately stopped using the "Online" Perspective because it was /decreasing/ my focus, which is counter to the overall goal of the app, and GTD.