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Repeating options? Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
A more flexible way to set reoccurring tasks would have benefits, no doubt. But essentially, as I see it, it's

(a) not the idea that you use OF to organise such tasks which reoccur on a fixed date evey Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Those are date-fix events that belong into your calendar, not your task manager. Make a reoccurring event in iCal on these days and you should be fine. That's how GTD is constructed.

(b) It is also no problem to set up such reoccurring tasks in OF if you really need to. Maybe you have no calendar or such, then you can simply take a few minutes to create some tasks with due dates on the dates you need them to be done. All you really have to do is make one task, duplicate it 10 times, set the due dates of each (which is no additional work since you would have had to do that even with the added functionality we are discussing here) and then you have some weeks covered. Doing that ahead for an entire year should not take more than half an hour, provided tasks are similar which I base this on since you want them to be reoccurring.

Is that really that much effort? I think not.

From what I can tell, adding a simple calendar view in which you can set date-fix events which then automatically translate into tasks plus a simple notepad of sorts that allows to capture some todos in a meeting and quickly process them to become tasks would enhance OF a lot. It would basically make it an all-round tool for people like me who use it to organise date-specific tasks with holy deadlines. Is OF a great software without such? yep! Can I just use any other notebook app installed on the very same iPad? Yep! Can I just use the calendar also installed on the very same iPad? Yep! All just one click away. Think of the iPad as one large app if you will. All you have to do is tap the icons for different views :)

That being said, Brian, Ken, Anybody....can you please FINAllY implement that coffee-machine feature I have been asking for since three years?? All my coworkers are using the large machine in the canteen because OF really sucks at this simple yet needed task!!

Go figure.
 
I scratch my head wondering ... why some people oppose so aggressively to a simple feature request that just aims to get rid of workarounds. After all OF and GTD is all about getting things (and esp. workarounds) out of your head to free up capacity for the fun stuff.

Life has endless examples for "every 3rd Saturday of the month".

It's not about making things pretty.
It's not about making things just differently.

It's purely about ease of use.

So why not just include the option and that's it. No big deal. And certainly no reason to get up in arms to rather stick with workarounds - one should think...

I thought the discussion here would rather be around the HOW to implement such a basic in a lean and beautiful way...

Cheers everyone
Chris

Last edited by c.nick; 2011-10-12 at 04:30 AM.. Reason: correction of a spelling mistake
 
There is an endless list of enhancements that could be made. There isn't an endless supply of resources with which to implement them. Omni tries to work on the ones with the biggest return first.
 
Personally, I don't really need this feature, but on the other hand, there is a bit of a self-selection process going on in that the only people who stick around long enough to actually make new feature requests are people who basically already like OF the way it is.
 
Possibly so, though I'm sure the people who ask for a refund are asked for feedback about what they didn't like. I don't think sticking with OmniFocus should be interpreted as a blanket approval of the program as it is today, however; rather a belief that it is the best tool available to the user in question, yet with plenty of room for improvement. The 1500+ emails I've sent them over the last 5 years are mostly bug reports or suggestions for improvement. Sometimes they adopt the suggestions, and sometimes they don't.

All else being equal (which of course is rare), as a user of the program, I'd rather see them work on things that do not have a suitable workaround. If it is important to me and there's a workaround, I can do it, with some inconvenience. If it is important to me and there isn't a workaround, I'm stuck. I'd rather be inconvenienced than stuck :-)
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by whpalmer4 View Post
All else being equal (which of course is rare), as a user of the program, I'd rather see them work on things that do not have a suitable workaround. If it is important to me and there's a workaround, I can do it, with some inconvenience. If it is important to me and there isn't a workaround, I'm stuck. I'd rather be inconvenienced than stuck :-)
I'd normally agree with you (and usually do on most things), but for me this is a real teeth grinding annoyance which requires several workarounds, not just one. Workarounds should be for the short term, rather than a long term.

e.g. I have a project I carry out on the first working day of each month, unfortunately I've had to set it for the 1st of each month and as it appears I reset it for the first working day.

I have several projects and tasks which I do two or three times a week, this leads to that number of identical copies which, when these require amendment, I have to amend the two or three copies individually.

I have a weekday morning routine which when I complete it on a friday, I have to find the next version of the project and move the start and finish dates to the monday.

I know you handle these differently and I've tried having a single reminder and a link to a list in Evernote, but that doesn't work for me. I need to check things off as they're done so I know exactly where I'm up to.

The way OF does projects works perfectly for me in every way but the rudimentary recurrence options. and that's why I stick with the solution.

The situation is though that OF is pretty open regarding how and why they add features at this time. I've logged my request and I have to wait until they decide whether to implement or not.
 
Geoff, I actually do think they ought to add those options, and I would certainly use them quite a bit. But given that just about any feature request tends to be somewhat, mmm, deliberate in its appearance :-) I express the preference that I do.
 
I wonder if another way to handle this would be to trigger an applescript from ical to create a new particular project or task group in OF with custom due dates. It could trigger automatically from iCal and use iCal's more detailed repeating options and could probably do some things that are pretty rare for repeating options, like find the last working day in the month.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lucas View Post
I wonder if another way to handle this would be to trigger an applescript from ical to create a new particular project or task group in OF with custom due dates. It could trigger automatically from iCal and use iCal's more detailed repeating options and could probably do some things that are pretty rare for repeating options, like find the last working day in the month.
A good idea, but this wouldn't work for me. I mostly use OF for iPad, and like these actions checked off in OF.
 
Why does that cause a problem? iCal can just add in tasks set for the first working day of the month or of the week without having to know whether the previous one completed, so long as iCal and OF stay open on your mac.
 
 


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