Appointments
 

Is there a way to use OmniFocus for scheduling appointments?

The general approach is to not use OF, but rather use iCal (or similar). If there are a list of things that I need to do before the appointment, then I will put them in OF as actions, but the actual appointment reminder lives in iCal.

I just made a few tests, sadly you cannot even link one to the other (an ical entry to an action or vice versa).
Could be a nice feature, have to think about this...

Has this been fixed?

It's a MAJOR flaw in an otherwise great program

I would also really love this.

As it is, I want my appointments showing in my workload in OmniFocus, and I also want them in iCal, and in the calendar on my phone.

So I go through an elaborate process to get them there:

- I mark hard-date actions with a Calendar, with the Dute date set to the right date and time, plus I include the time in the action's text.
- I sync that context into an iCal calendar named, well, Calendar.
- I go into iCal and view only the Calendar calendar and show the ToDo list.
- I go through the To Do list, clicking on the items one by one. When I click an item, it pops up the day for the item. I visually check to see if it's already there, and if it's not, I drag it in and, if appropriate, add repeaters and alarms.
- As I drag each ToDo into the calendar, I delete it.

Whee! This does, admittedly, only take about ten minutes once a week, plus manually entering the occasional new-and-imminent meeting into both OmniFocus and iCal, but I'd rather not need to do it.

Gardener

I agree with the requests for iCal appointments showing up in OmniFocus. It's very seldom that I need iCal. In fact, I can go for over a week sometimes without looking at it. But I have OmniFocus up and running ALL the time.

Though the original suggestion may not have been GTD-kosher, I think the bigger point is that OF has become our "activity hub." And that hub includes not only pre-actions for a meeting, but the meeting itself.

My solution for now is to post meetings in both iCal and in OF. But it would sure be nice if I could post a meeting in iCal and then those iCal events were nicely imported into OF. It would save a decent amount of time and allow me to better "focus" on getting my work done.

I know this topic has been the subject of heated debate among GTD purists, but I would say a great way to implement this would be to have a feature where you could choose to sync an action to ical's task list... OR to ical's actual calendar, or to nothing at all. Ideally, I would like to be able to choose which OF actions show up in ical as events, and which just show up as tasks. Of course I would love to ditch ical totally as well... but I do need to be able to look at events and appointments in a calendar view on my desktop as well as the iphone, and so I am stuck with ical.

I am using OF for well... EVERYTHING in my life and work (ha ha) and don't spend a day where I don't essentially "live" in the program. Right now I enter all tasks, projects and meetings in OF, and meetings, project start and end dates, hard deadlines etc. in ical. (I also import projects into OP about once a week to send out reports to some of my coworkers.) This OF / ical arrangement works fine... until a project's many deadlines change, which requires me to carefully change project start and end dates in both programs. (PITA) Of course this is where an integration of OF / OP and ical would be ideal!

I agree with mitchellm's point of view and suggestions as well :) Personally, I don't see how choosing to sync with ical's events vs ical's tasks would change much in OF... it would just change where the info shows up in ical. So GTD folks would not have to worry about their program really changing :)

I recently thought it would be more useful if you could somehow link action groups with iCal events. So then if you changed a meeting date in iCal, it would update due dates in OF.

Here is some info I've been sending back & forth to the kind folks at Omni. They are a little resistant on this issue for some reason - can't figure it out. It's like if O.F. wouldn't let you type a "Q"!

---------

We do alot of user interface consulting, and I think your programmers may have gotten a bit too close to the project ( it's really, really easy to wind up there and that fact explains just about every awkward and confusing UI out there - you wouldn't believe some of the stuff we see that well meaning programmers honestly believe if obvious to the general public ).

O.F. does in-fact create 3 very different kinds of information - a To-Do (a task) an Event ( something that is specific in date, i.e <Mary's Birthday> ) and an Appointment (something that is specific to both time AND space : you have to be at <the restaurant> at <the date : the time> ).

Therefore:
• a <task> with no <Date> = <To-do>

• a <task> + <Date> = <Event> (or an "all day event" in iCal terms):

• a <task> + <Date> + <Time> = Appointment

Simple, clear, yes?

So, the To-do's wind up in iCal's to-do menus, the Event's wind up as all day events in iCal, the appointments would be in the calendar itself.

If you think about it, it's kinda crazy that OF doesn't do the above. Now the user has to use two different programs to achieve one task (via the GTD system anyways) You have to look and maintain your OF list, then switch over to the calendar and maintain and look at that info, how do you keep them insync? always looking at the to-do menu?).

I was just about to purchase OF as I figured it did the above - but it's a deal breaker for me - but now I'll have to wait to see if the above gets implemented.

I've been watching OF since it first came out and I've been impressed with the improvements in the overall UI - you guys do have a potential winner here - you just need the implement the above and get an API that other developers can access - link it with OmniProject - and you've got your "Word".

It may be obvious to you that those are the right things, but it's not a universal truth. My OmniFocus doesn't create events or appointments -- it tracks and manages actions. Events and appointments are something I put on the calendar. I use OmniFocus to manage the time and energy spent outside the confines of the calendar. If something on the calendar requires advance preparation, I'll set up a project to do that work, but I wouldn't put it on my calendar.

Putting things that belong in OmniFocus on the calendar, and that belong on the calendar in OmniFocus, merely clutters up both tools. See pages 142 and 143 of DA's GTD to see just how strongly he emphasizes this notion.