[joelande]

There are a number of errands type things that I would like to take better advantage of in OmniFocus for iPhone.

Examples include:
- groceries
- household items
- hardware store items

Problem is that many of the items, but not all, can be bought at any, or two out of three of the three types of stores sometimes.

Targets/Walmarts/Kmarts have (smaller) grocery stores these days.
Hardware stores have many household items.
Grocery store have many household and some hardware items.

Furthermore, while I typically shop at the same stores, the stores where I live and work are different (Target vs Walmart; Home Depot vs Menards; etc).

I'd rather not come up with some complicated set of contexts that categorize items by the complicated combinations of where an item may be.

And I tried a generic term "store", but the top hit in my town is a Tire shop!

Any suggestions?

[Greg Jones]

I've not extensively played with Location Services, but I have created a couple that might be of help. I have a context of '@errand : DIY store' and I have the location set to "Lowe's" OR "Home Depot" OR "Ace Hardware" and it works well for me. Be sure to use the quotes around the store names and capitalize the OR operator.

I tried to work with a grocery context in a similar manner, but I found it more frustrating than anything. Normally when I am grocery shopping, that is the primary errand and I don't need OF to tell me where the closest one is.

Where I have found Location Services to be extremely valuable is that it will propose tasks that are otherwise not available in OF. I live in a rural area and there are some errands that I can only do in the city about 45 minutes away. Just this week I went to pick my wife up at the airport and her flight was delayed, so I went into Location Services and saw an errand for a project that is several weeks out and I was able to pick up the materials right then, possibly saving me a separate trip later. I've been able to do something similar multiple times now and this feature really pays off for me. I'd be interested to learn how others are using Location Services.

[joelande]

Originally Posted by Greg Jones

... I have the location set to "Lowe's" OR "Home Depot" OR "Ace Hardware" and it works well for me. Be sure to use the quotes around the store names and capitalize the OR operator.

Brilliant!

Did not know you coudl do OR logic in the location field!

Brilliant!

Too bad it was not a more discoverable feature.
OmniGroup should explain that on the input display screen—makes the feature infinitely more useable!
(I will put that in as a feedback)

Thanks again!

[Brian]

We're doing a google business search there, so any of their search operators will work. Definitely send in that feature request if you haven't already. :-)

Sorry, I read this last night, but I totally misread your "I don't want some complicated setup" statement; I thought you were trying to come up with some single term that covered the various items categorically.

[emck]

it would be nice to also narrow the location for example my work and house are so close to each other that they both come up in the near by, it would be nice to configure the near by to be in a smaller circle.

[JKT]

The "Nearby" is obtained from the Location Service of the phone and, as this is always an estimate at best (even if you do have a strong GPS signal), the chances of it being able to separate e.g. two locations next to each other are very remote.

If you are indoors, you won't even get a GPS signal most of the time, so you will be relying entirely upon Wi-Fi assisted localisation and this is woefully inaccurate in comparison.

In other words, unless you can distinguish between the two locations on the Maps application (i.e. there is no overlap between the blue outer ring on the location dot when in each place), then you won't be able to get this level of resolution.