Quote:
Originally Posted by hypotyposis
Ok, I understand better what you guys meant having received my first "alert" today... And I must say (respectfully) that I'm personally not in favour of implementing more options/more complications for alerts... In fact, I don't really see the points of alerts outside of calendar reminders, i.e. outside of the OF system.
Now since I don't want to be completely daft, I was wondering if those of you requesting alerts, and particularly those of you with many actions/projects, could tell me how you use them in your workflow, since I don't see it currently?
For example, how many alerts are you expecting to/would you like to/do you currently receive per day? How do you incorporate this vs. (or with) daily/weekly reviews, if at all?
Just curious and hoping to understand other workflow styles...
Thanks
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If I were King of OmniFocus for a day, here is an example of my workflow and how additional options to alarms would benefit me. First, I don't use a lot of due dates, and for a task that does have a due date, a reminder that the task is now overdue is typically too late to be of any use to me. I do however use start dates and times extensively. Some start times default to midnight of the day, but I also use start times during the day and these are the tasks that I would like to have reminders for.
As example, a west coast office opens at noon my time, and I want an alarm at that time to remind me to call them. I don't need an alarm at 8pm to tell me the task is due-it's too late to call them by then. With the old OmniFocus calendar alarms, I would sometimes fake what I needed by assigning a due time to the actual start time, but that's a bit of a kludge when I actually do have a set date and time when I need to complete a particular task.
Another example is that I do project work where I need a set length of time between the completion of one task before I can begin the next task, and I want to start that next task immediately when it becomes available to keep the project on schedule. What I do currently is go into the Clock app and set a timer or an alarm, but it's just one more step/app to use to remind me of what is already established in OmniFocus.
Give the above, I'd like to see the following additions to notifications in OmniFocus:
1) A preference setting to enable notifications for start times, due times, or both.
2) A preference to set notifications to an audible alarm/vibrate, vibrate only, or visual only (as works currently). Technically, this preference does not need to appear in OmniFocus if OmniFocus was included in the Notifications section of the Settings app. I already have 8 apps that appear in this preference-not sure why OmniFocus was not coded to do the same?
3) A preference to set a 'quiet' time period (say 11:00pm-5:00am) when alarms are turned off. This would be very important to keep all the alarms that would be triggered at midnight from going off while I'm in bed. Boxcar handless this very nicely with the notifications I get through the service.
4) Number 3 above would also require a preference in OmniFocus to set a default start time for tasks, just as the user can set the default due time. OmniFocus really needs this option anyway, and should be added even if notifications remain unchanged.
Everything above is set through a preference setting, so once the options are set they are transparent to the day-to-day use of OmniFocus. This would meet my needs while not requiring me to think about assigning notifications on a task-by-task, project-by-project basis. However, I can understand and respect fudster's thoughts to have that level of control.