[Lizard]

As some of you may have already noticed, a Sneaky Peek of OmniFocus 1.10 is now available.

Please remember: Sneaky Peeks are not as fully tested as our released software. Make sure you have good backups and don't start using one right before that really important deadline.
Right now this feature is Mac-only, so some task due dates could get confused if you use this feature and sync to an iOS device. More details below.

If you understand this might eat your data, and still want it, the download is here: I understand the risk.

Okay, now that we're past that disclaimer… what's the new shiny?

Repeat every weekday.
Or repeat every weekend day.
Or every Tuesday and Thursday.
Or …?

If you set up a "repeat every" action and choose a week-based interval, you can now pick which days of the week it should happen on.

We want to add more repeat options in a later release. Rather than wait until we could do ALL of them, though, we realized that we could do this one and it would help a lot of people out right now.

We will be updating the iPad and iPhone editions to understand this repeat schedule soon. In the meantime, it should be safe to use all your devices for viewing any actions. It should also be fine to edit projects and actions that do not have one of these weekday repeats on any device. However, if you edit or complete an action with a weekday repeat action on a device that hasn't been updated, it will probably forget what weekdays you picked. If this sort of misbehavior would ruin your weekend, please don't start using this feature until we get our iOS updates released.

This Sneaky Peek is not intended to address any real, imaginary, or NDA'ed compatibility issues with Mountain Lion.

[Mitch Wagner]

Thanks for the "Repeat Every Weekday" feature -- looks handy.

But how about taking it one baby-step further? Repeat every workday? A user would input vacation days and holidays and tasks would not repeat on those days.

[Lizard]

What about picking an iCal calendar to indicate vacations & holidays? (Why re-enter all that data you've probably already got elsewhere?)

The new weekday thing is definitely just a first step, not the full repeat functionality we think would be useful.

[Dogsbreath]

Long overdue, but I am pleased to see it nonetheless. Thank you.

[michaelaye]

Originally Posted by lizard

what about picking an ical calendar to indicate vacations & holidays? (why re-enter all that data you've probably already got elsewhere?)

the new weekday thing is definitely just a first step, not the full repeat functionality we think would be useful.

+1

[ztj]

Does this enable the possibility of "The Last Friday of Every Month" by chance?

If not, let this be a vote for that in a future version :)

[torchy]

It sounds like a lot of people want this. I was hoping for something simpler (I think) which is essentially to define a task as either 'work week', 'weekend' or 'any' and even if start/due dates become available, they would or wouldn't show based on those criteria. That is to say these are single, not repeating tasks, but I only want to do work stuff during the week, and personal stuff during the weekends.

Can this be done?

[Jim Correia]

Originally Posted by torchy

It sounds like a lot of people want this. I was hoping for something simpler (I think) which is essentially to define a action as either 'work week', 'weekend' or 'any' and even if start/due dates become available, they would or wouldn't show based on those criteria. That is to say these are single, not repeating actions, but I only want to do work stuff during the week, and personal stuff during the weekends.

Can this be done?

There isn't per item metadata which describes whether a item is a work week or weekend type of thing. However, OmniFocus does give you the flexibility to view your data in this way.

Let me describe my workflow to you. It may work well for you.

The top level of my OmniFocus Library has 4 folders which are roughly areas of responsibility.

In Project Mode, selecting any of these top-level areas of responsibility limits the displayed items. Focusing on these top-level folders will limit the items displayed in Context Mode based on this area of responsibility. I have saved Perspectives for view configurations that I use frequently.

Setting up your Library this way may be a paradigm shift for you, but is probably less work in the long run than making sure that each individual item gets marked as either weekend or work week.

[whpalmer4]

Torchy,

a more flexible solution to what you ask is to put projects full of "weekday" tasks in one folder, and those containing "weekend" tasks in another. Select the appropriate folder in the sidebar, click the focus button in the toolbar, and now you will only see tasks from those projects. If you need to look at some work stuff on the weekend, no problem — just look at the work folder.

[whpalmer4]

After a bit of playing around with this, I think the model is a bit odd, and in some cases, rather less functional than the "armada of parallel repeats" tactic.

Let's say I want to do something every night where my kid needs to go to school in the morning. I think most newcomers who haven't had to make do with the "armada of parallel repeats" approach in the past are going to say "this is a task which repeats every day, just skip Friday and Saturday". Okay, but if you set a daily repeat, you don't get those day of the week boxes active. "No, you need to think of this as a bunch of weekly repeats on selected days" says the support ninja in a soothing voice. New user starts muttering under his breath about confusing user interfaces...

Next, the poor sod decides to have a look at the Due perspective to see what is coming up in the next week. Whoa, where'd all those daily tasks go? You've got to think of it as a bunch of parallel repeating actions when you are setting it up, but without the benefit of actually seeing them, when planning! Hard to believe this isn't going to generate some support tickets.

Here's another trap for the unwary: let's say you've set up an action that repeats every Monday and Wednesday, but only needs to happen if you go to work that day. It isn't something that needs to be done the next day if you didn't do it on the originally scheduled day. Our intrepid hero is enjoying his new iPad with OmniFocus Saturday morning in mid-February, glancing over his schedule for the next week, when he realizes that he doesn't have to go to work on Monday because of the Federal holiday. He opens up Monday's bin of actions in Forecast view, sees the repeating action, and decides to defer it for a week by tapping the +1 week buttons for start and due dates. Great! Come Monday, he won't be bothered by reminders to do things he cannot do. Too bad he's a forgetful sort, and actually needs the reminder to do that important task on Wednesday — he's not going to get it this week!

I'm sure it seemed like a great programming convenience to implement this feature in the way that it is, but the PX came at a cost to the UX! It would certainly be more work to implement the same UI, but have it executed by the armada of parallel repeating actions. The users who are led astray might think it was worth it...