[EricW]

Hi Lizard
Thanks for chiming in. How did you know we run a framistan kerflurgarator !
Had a chat with a friend this morning who has made dot project into what he wants.
Thinking about the business and the standard day we concluded for him that time allocated to Customer Contact or Web dev etc were not unlike contexts. eg now I have my Web Dev hat on I'm in this mental space which is a context but also a block of time in the day.
So its sort of coming down to blocks of time for Strategic Activity, Development Activity, Improvement, at the Office are three contexts.
Likewise time devoted to Maintenance might be recurrent running of updaters, major clean ups but also maintenance of relationships without a particular instrumental outcome.
So if I want to make sure I'm devoting some time to that I need it as a context too I think.
Home Office - Work Offices raises its head very much in tune with this thread. There are some things I can only do at home say where the development machines are and some at either. Duplicate Activities at the cost of some redundancy would have to be the way to go to have them appear in both contexts.
Two questions then.
Does OF provide for recurrent Projects ? (I can probably look this up)
Second question:
I have another thread with no response on Changing Contexts.
So far I think its a process of:

Change the names in OF
Check there's no orphaned tasks
Change the names in iCal (and on the Treo)
Realign the correspondences in the Sync prefs
Sync and hope for the best

Any gotchyas you can see in this ?

[Lizard]

Yes, you can create repeating projects. They can repeat based on when you did them last, or on a fixed schedule.

I really don't know the iCal syncing well enough to comment on that one. (I actually saw the other thread and shied away from it.) Perhaps email omnifocus@omnigroup.com to get a response from our knowledgeable ninjas.

Guys,

I've just installed OF. It was love at first sight. Just what I needed (and looked for) for organizing my PhD thesis work.

But... After the "second sight", honestly, beeing unable to assign to multiple contexts makes virtually impossible to organize my work - there are really lots of things and ideas to develop that really are in multiple contexts.

And this is it... I am not buying OF, only - and really only - because I will be unable to assign to multiple contexts.

I really hope this will change in a next version!

Alberto.

[Gardener]

Do you have any interest in providing examples? As a relatively new user of Omnifocus, I'd like multiple contexts, but so far I'm living OK without them. So I'm curious in both directions: (1) whether it might be possible for Omnifocus to work for your data anyway somehow and (2) the details of another case of needing multiple contexts.

Gardener

[Toadling]

Yeah, Gardener posts some good questions. Without some examples, it's pretty hard to make any suggestions.

Also note that Omni Group has stated that a future version of OmniFocus will include optional metadata columns that can be used for a variety of things, that presumably includes tagging or multiple contexts.

So if you can find some way to get along without multiple contexts now, it may payoff in the long run.

As an aside, I used to think I needed multiple contexts, but the more I used the current system, the more I realized it wasn't really necessary for me. In fact, I've come to appreciate simplicity of a single context, both in adding new items and in trying to find and work with them later. Of course, your situation may differ.

-Dennis

[Young Daniel]

Just thought I'd chime into the discussion. MY opinion on multiple contexts has changed since getting omnifocus on my iphone. When I go grocery shopping, I would like tasks for "convenience store" included in my "grocery store" context. However, if I am only at CVS I do not want my entire grocery list showing, only my "convenience store" tasks.

The work around I have is to use both contexts when I'm grocery shopping, which is less efficiant then having a "convenience store OR grocery store" label for context that lists that task in both locations.

[jdh]

I use parent and sub-contexts for this to some degree....

I have an "Errands" context that contains contexts for Grocery Store, Pharmacy, etc. Most things I tend to buy in only one generic place (I don't necessarily label my Grocery Store as a specific grocery store, but rather just any Grocery Store I happen to be at).

Items that can be done anywhere, or in more than one place, go into the parent context ("Errands"), while items that are more location-specific land in their appropriate sub-context.

As an aside, I find getting too store-specific creates more confusion than it solves.... If I can't find something I want at the grocery store I'm at, it's no harm to just leave it unchecked until my next grocery trip. Ergo, things like "Grocery Store" and "Convenience Store" would likely all fall into "Grocery Store" in my world. On the other hand, tasks like "Buy Milk" (ie, routine staples) tend to go into the "Errands" context so they're combined with my general errands and not just store-specific trips (in other words, I may need to stop off somewhere and buy milk when running other errands, but not necessarily specifically going to the Grocery Store).

In OF on the desktop, I simply select the "Errands" context and I see everything in the sub-contexts right htere. I can group by context if I want to separate them out logically, but they're still shown on the same listing.

When viewing this on the iPhone, I can easily move up and down, rather than laterally, to see those things that are sub-context specific as opposed to more generic. It saves a step, and of course you can still see the subcontexts listed from the parent context with the number of available items shown in each.

If you had a lot of different grocery/food stores that you bought specific items at, then you could just nest one level deeper: Grocery Stores could have additional sub-contexts for store-specific items.

I do similar things with my Calls contexts (sub-contexts for business and personal), and some of my "Household" tasks as well (based on location or situation within the house).

While not ideal compared to multiple contexts, it's not an unreasonable workaround.

[Christopher]

Originally Posted by algol

Guys,

I've just installed OF. It was love at first sight. Just what I needed (and looked for) for organizing my PhD thesis work.

But... After the "second sight", honestly, beeing unable to assign to multiple contexts makes virtually impossible to organize my work - there are really lots of things and ideas to develop that really are in multiple contexts.

And this is it... I am not buying OF, only - and really only - because I will be unable to assign to multiple contexts.

I really hope this will change in a next version!

Alberto.

Perhaps rethinking what your contexts are might help. For example, if you want to research something, and that research can be done at the library, at home, or wherever you have a computer, then make a context "research" and use Perspectives to filter.

[Young Daniel]

I had solved my problem of multiple contexts using perspectives...but because there are no perspectives in the iphone app, I thought multiple contexts would be the solution. Would the better solution be to incorporate perspectives on the iphone as oppose to the multiple contexts approach?

[joelande]

Originally Posted by Christopher

Perhaps rethinking what your contexts are might help.

Perhaps giving multiple contexts to those of us who want them might help.