The Omni Group
These forums are now read-only. Please visit our new forums to participate in discussion. A new account will be required to post in the new forums. For more info on the switch, see this post. Thank you!

Go Back   The Omni Group Forums > OmniFocus > OmniFocus 1 for Mac
FAQ Members List Calendar Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read

 
How to deal with people and a "today" view ? Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
I work remote in a very distributed team and interact with a lot of people during a day/week on chat/mail/phone etc. And the people varies alot + it is often related to multiple people - thus creating contexts for them does not really work for me afaics.

I started using omnifocus a while ago and it was ok but I got frustrated not being able to handle this "multiple people" problem and I moved to Things and been happy for a while.

But where Things shines with having Tags, is much prettier to look at (sorry :) and its "today" view is awesome it sucks in comparison to omnifocus when it comes to entering in tasks since I just haven't found a way to get it to remember what i entered previously so I end up not typing things.

Now, omnifocus is awesome for entering tasks BUT I now lost the ability for easy querying for what are the issues I need to do with "Person A and Person B"...

Some mentioned adding in a "people: persona, personb" into the notes which I could be ok with but:

A) would be nice to have auto completion of often typed tags

B) how do I do a search across *all* tasks with these names in them ?
(in things I just type "personA", "personB" in to the tags and I get it. Doesn't work that way in omnifocus.

Anyone with tips on how to capture/structure something like the above ?
 
Is it possible for you to use contexts for this? There would be a context for each person. Each task would be assigned to that person by setting the context. CMD-Click each context in the sidebar to see tasks for more than one person at the same time.
 
I also have lots of people I have to deal with and went with a nested contexts arrangement, where I group them into logical units.

As an example four people might be John, Paul, Ringo and George and these have a common group of the Beatles so I would have a context called Beatles. With the four names as sub contexts.

If I had a something I needed to discuss with George, I could add the action "Discuss xyz" and give it a context George.

However if I had to discuss this with George and Ringo I would add the action, "Discuss xyz with George and Ringo" but give it the context Beatles

If it was for all four of them then it would be "Discuss xyz with all" and context Beatles

In context Mode I can just do Beatles and I will see all the tasks for the Beatles. I will also see all individual tasks assigned to the members of the Beatles as well.

I do, do this in my own system at several levels. So that all of the people that I regularly come into contact with are members of various context groups. I have a generic context of "Others" in my People group for those I don't deal with often and don't want to give a context too. I just make sure I add their name to the action so I can search on their name if I need to find them.

I also have regular meetings with people from different groups. For this I set up a perspective by going in context mode and CMD clicking on all the attendees names in my context lists. This gives me a view of all the actions for those attendees. I save this perspective as the name of the meeting so I can quickly get all the actions on view.

Last edited by Cypher; 2013-04-25 at 01:58 PM..
 
My problem is that some tasks for are potentially for or related to many people.

For example I used tags in things to mark tasks with different people that I need to get in contact with on or about this task.

I could create individual tasks/context for these but the amount would explode and many of these would never be used more than once - making it alot of overkill compared to manage it with just a tag on the task.

For contexts I'm using "energy level" kind of contexts which works great, but again having to have each person or group of persons (many time overlapping) as a sub context of all these just seems like the tool requiring more effort than it will give back ?
 
If you want to use tags. and you want rapid entry then use text expander to 'explode' the tags for you.

Personally I would use contexts for people and teams. Then perspectives to remove anything irrelevant.

Energy levels only work for me once I have worked out what (of many things) I have to do I can do with the tools, location and people present.

Duration and Energy then are the criteria for selecting which one i do from the short list
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by philrob View Post
If you want to use tags. and you want rapid entry then use text expander to 'explode' the tags for you.

Personally I would use contexts for people and teams. Then perspectives to remove anything irrelevant.

Energy levels only work for me once I have worked out what (of many things) I have to do I can do with the tools, location and people present.

Duration and Energy then are the criteria for selecting which one i do from the short list
Agreed.

I know there have been many posts on the forums where the issue of multiple people come up. I would suggest a context hierarchy under a "Communications" context. Reserve "Call" and "Email" for simple tasks like calling the local hardware store regarding if they stock your favorite hammer. Having the Agenda sub context on top gives it a weighted importance at the top of your contexts. Add call and email to the individual task descriptions to give you direction on what the preferred method of communication for individuals in the "Agenda" context should be.

Communications
↳Agenda
↳Call
↳Email

To further setup the "Agenda" context; use "Anyone" context to address teams and individuals scenarios where one needs to speak with one or any to move a task forward depending on the information. This works because if I see Employee 1 from Accounting below I can check their agenda items and the department agenda items. This also allows me to address non call or email items for each individual or team.

Agenda
↳Wife
↳Accounting
| ↳Anyone
| ↳Employee 1
| ↳Employee 2
↳Sales
| ↳Anyone
| ↳Employee 1
| ↳Employee 2

etc...

Further, contexts can be limited by creating perspectives to include or exclude specific projects. (e.g. Home or Work views)

Hope this helps and just my $0.02 regarding the use and setup of contexts.
 
 


Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search
Display Modes


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
How to avoid "errands" to show up in today view Helmut Hauser OmniFocus 1 for Mac 2 2011-10-27 11:41 PM
"Today" view on iPad and iPhone skafoure OmniFocus for iPad 0 2011-05-14 06:29 PM
"Today" view msurtees Applying OmniFocus 20 2010-03-09 04:23 PM
Today "view" - feature request [Req. Exists - email support to vote for] vauha27 OmniFocus for iPhone 1 2009-04-20 11:42 AM
"Projects" view + "Contexts" view are slightly mis-named / misconceived RobTrew OmniFocus 1 for Mac 31 2007-08-23 07:19 PM


All times are GMT -8. The time now is 03:34 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.