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 > Applying OmniFocus
FAQ Members List Calendar Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read

 
Using OmniFocus & iCal together in harmony Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Quote:
Originally Posted by psidnell View Post
A calendar view is clearly ideal for planning when to do things. I obviously enter things that are inherently time boxed directly into the calendar but most of the other things I do start life as floating tasks in OmniFocus.

When I schedule when I'm going to act on an OF task, I often create an entry in the calendar for it but this manual copying of the task into another app (iCal) does seem like a pointless chore simply for the benefit of seeing it in a calendar view. I'd much rather check a box on that task in OmniFocus and have just that one item appear in the calendar from its start to due time. This scheduling of things is part of my daily planning ritual and I would love to simplify it.

The forecast view in the iOS versions of OF (what I mostly use) is a great step forward but it's a long way short of showing a coherent view of the two worlds, particularly on the iPad where you have to finger over a calendar entry to even see what it is.

I'm looking forward to seeing what Omni come up with when the forecast view launches on the desktop version.
That is so funny, today I purchased OF and I was playing all day with iOS version of OF. One word - AWESOME! I love it. Forecast option is really something big for me.


I totally agree with you. I will change little bit my approach with planning daily tasks. For now I am using iCal to events more constant, repeatable, to see how much time I have. It is much easier for me when I see it as blocks.
I plan there also meetings, which I do not have very often and also is helpful to estimate my time. OF is for me for tasks which I do not have to make at a specific time for a specific period of time.

Idea to simplify process will be great. I have mine, but I don't have time right now to write something more.

I would love to see forecast option on OS X too.
 
If you have a workflow where you're happy for ALL your due items to appear in your calendar then OF can create an iCal ics file in your WebDAV account to which you can subscribe in iCal.

I periodically try it out then turn it off again because:

1) I have a lot of trivial items with due dates in OF and I don't want to see them all in the calendar, just some. No doubt I could avoid using so many due dates, but they work well for me.

2) All the exported tasks have "Due: " prepended to them so the text doesn't fit in iCal, which responds by lopping three characters of the end so it can add "...". That's 7 characters of my text that I can't see. Worse still, if I have overlapping items in my calendar, all the OmniFocus items become "Du..." which renders it useless for a quick glance.

3) The start date/time is ignored. All the items are of zero duration and have only a due time. Even if OF knows it starts at 1pm and finishes at 2pm it'll be a zero duration item at 2pm.

4) ALARMS! I have found no way of exporting the calendar without alarms. I'm exporting my due tasks to a calendar so I can use the calendar views to visualise what I'm doing and when, I don't necessarily want every event to be an alarm.

No doubt there are scripts galore that fix these issues on the desktop.
 
Thanks for reply. I also will be relying mostly on OF. But, for example today I created few actions with OF and an event in iCal, basically for 1 task. I know on Wednesday I am driving to bring music books to a friend. I have to be at the place just before 5PM.
I created in iCal the event which takes 30 minutes. Now I see that it fits perfect to bring that just before gym.
To not forget I created action in OF with due date on Tuesday, 10:00PM, to remind myself to pack the books.
Another action in OF I created to text to my friend that I will be before 5:00PM at the place. Due date for that is 4:00PM on Wednesday.
In this example the due dates and times are when I need to take an action.

Since I look very often into my iOS OF, I know I don't have to do anything more to remember. My head is clean. I do not feel overwhelmed.
iCal is helpful to see everything. For example somebody would call me and ask me if I can do something. In the past I was saying "sure, I will be just after I will deliver books to my friend..." And then I had to skip the gym which I hate to do.
All my events like work, school, gym, and some other activities which occur on a specific date and time, or are repeatable, I prefer to keep in my iCal.
It is kind of new approach for me, but I feel that it works much better then old one, with iCal, OF only on my laptop and thousands of notes and notepads, everywhere.

Last edited by BrainInside; 2012-04-10 at 06:01 AM..
 
 


Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search
Display Modes


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
OmniFocus and iCal iztech OmniFocus 1 for Mac 7 2011-04-22 03:32 AM
ical <-> omnifocus larsfarm OmniFocus for iPhone 1 2010-05-10 07:16 PM
OmniFocus to iCal RBrown iCal Sync 2 2009-01-15 06:31 PM
What goes in iCal and what goes in OmniFocus? benjohnson iCal Sync 7 2008-04-05 05:06 PM
Omnifocus->iCal is fine, but iCal --> OF ...? wealthychef iCal Sync 0 2007-11-16 04:54 PM


All times are GMT -8. The time now is 08:11 AM.


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