[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by f0rd42

1.
I need to sync manually (on my mac), this is not done automatically, i.. every 10, 20 or 60 minutes?

That's correct, the iCal sync does not happen automatically. There is some support in the Applescript dictionary for triggering an iCal sync, so in theory you could write a little script to be fired off at the appropriate interval from an iCal repeating event. If you aren't editing today's tasks, however, I question how much utility you would really get from syncing every 10 minutes.

2. Tasks get in the tasks list (which I'm not using) and not in the calendar itself. can I change this?

Yes, that's also correct. A bit of history is helpful to understand why the feature is how it is. The iCal sync support predates OmniFocus for iPhone, and was intended as a way to get context-based actions onto mobile devices that supported syncing with iCal. That way, you could pull up a calendar for the context you were in and see the available tasks for that context.

It doesn't use the calendar events because for most people, OmniFocus isn't a calendar, and actions are not strictly scheduled. A task that has a start date of tomorrow, and a due date of a week from Friday but is only going to take an hour or two to do — how do you meaningfully represent that on a calendar? Remember, an OmniFocus start date represents the earliest time at which you could work on that item, which is not necessarily the time at which you will start working on that item.

3. It's all based on the due date, any way to change this, i.e. available date)?

No options for using other dates.

4. It get's synced to ical without a notification setting (e.g. 15 minutes before, etc.). Where can I change this? I want to get alarmed on my mac

No direct support for this with iCal sync, but see below for alternatives.

5. how does all this play with iphone, especially with IOS V4?

If you have the iPhone OmniFocus app, it plays much better! Which is good, because the iPhone calendar doesn't show the task list that OmniFocus iCal sync populates...

With the OmniFocus iPhone app, or the OmniFocus desktop app as of 1.8 (not yet released, but you can run the "sneaky peek" version from http://www.omnigroup.com/omnifocus/download/sneakypeek if you are eager to get this functionality) there is a feature which populates a calendar called OmniFocus Reminders with zero-length events corresponding to the due dates of actions in the next two weeks or so. These events will generate notifications from the iPhone calendar, and you have a number of choices of how far in advance the notifications should be, although they are unfortunately "one size fits all" in that you don't get to have 5 minutes warning for one, an hour for another, etc. Again, you don't get notifications for start dates, only due dates. You need to be using the OmniFocus syncing to some sort of webDAV server for this functionality to work, as it creates and maintains a calendar there.

There is also an option for using the new local notification service provided by iOS 4. I haven't used it, so can't say much about it, though there have been some forum threads where people who have describe their experiences.

On the Mac, if you have Growl installed (http://growl.info), OmniFocus will send notifications to your screen of actions/projects transitioning from unavailable to available, becoming overdue, etc. It is possible to configure Growl to leave those notifications on the screen until you click on them to dismiss them, and as a bonus, clicking on the OmniFocus icon in the notification will take you to OmniFocus and show you the item in question. I like to have the notifications for "due soon" and "overdue" items stay on my screen, with the others disappearing after a few second.

As always, if there are features you would like added or changed, use Help->Send Feedback to get the request to the developers, as forum posts are not an effective way of doing so.