Setting Context when importing from OmniOutliner
 

I'd like to create some template with tasks I need to do for the courses I teach and then import them into OmniFocus. I've seen Curt Clifton's scripts for creating templates, but I'm trying to keep my OmniFocus database small since I sync with my iPhone. So it appears what I need to do is keep my templates somewhere else and then import them into OmniFocus.

I can write some scripts to create a tab-separated file with what I want which I can then import into OmniOutliner and then I can copy and paste from OmniOutliner to OmniFocus.

I have something like this in OmniOutliner (where the commas indicate columns in OmniOutliner)

write lab 1,Mac,1/11/2010,1/13/2010

When I copy that into OmniOutliner and tell it to use the second column as the context, I get a new context with the name "Import of 2009-12-19 19:54:59 -0500 : Mac" even though my OmniFocus document has a context named "Mac".

Is there a way to avoid it creating these new contexts when copying from OmniOutliner and have it use the context that already exists? Also, How would I get it to use subcontexts? I have a Print/Copy context that is a subcontext of an Office context.

Thanks,
Dave

I think you're stuck when importing with getting the new contexts, unless you roll your own import facility in Applescript. It isn't particularly difficult to go through and fix them, and one could write a script that did it, but there's an easier way: just use Curt's script. Both Curt and I do so with little or no ill effect and it's likely that you can, too. If you do much fiddling around after importing (fixing the contexts, for example), you'll end up with a bunch of extra transactions in your history until they get compacted. Your templates aren't [b]that[/b] big, are they? As long as your database is compacting regularly, the impact of having the templates in your database is probably minimal.

Thanks for the reply. I've set up templates for three of the classes using Curt's scripts - it works fine, but I was concerned about adding all these extra tasks.

I've got about 10 different classes I teach each with about 50 different tasks in them so I was trying to avoid having 500 template tasks sitting in my database.

Could the templates be kept in the "Archive" database and then brought in from that? I haven't tried moving old tasks to it because I generally just delete tasks after I complete them.

Thanks,
Dave

I easily have 1000 tasks in my various template projects. The first sync after populating a big template can take awhile (80-ish seconds), but subsequent syncs are fine. I've got a 32GB 3GS, so raw database size isn't an issue. Bill's is right about transaction counts being a bigger issue than database size, and regardless of whether you brought the tasks in from OO or using PopTemp, you'd still create a bunch of transactions.

Cheers,

Curt

I understand that no matter where they come from, it will take a while. I was just concerned that keeping that many tasks in templates would also slow down the syncing (i.e., then there are two copies of many of them - the templates and the active projects I've populated). I'll give it a try and see how it works. Thanks.

Storing them in the archive may not be a bad idea so long as you're always populating them from the machine that keeps the archive (it isn't currently synced, although there have been some expressions of interest in that from Ken). But unless the number of actions in the template is quite substantial, once the bolus has been synced over to the iPhone and the database compacted, you probably won't notice any substantial impact on your day-to-day experience. Do feel free to let me know if you find otherwise :-)