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sync to iCal as events for due dates? Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Thanks Brian, but those scripts create a To Do in iCal and not an Event (at least as far as I can tell, especially the first one) and they also don't provide any feedback as to whether they have worked or not. I'd much prefer an elegant UI that is built into OmniFocus for this.

I'm trying to e-mail OmniGroup a formal feedback for this, but my server is apparently down at the moment. It should hopefully arrive in the inbox at some point today.

* To Do's are worthless on the iPhone so this is not really helpful.
 
Okay, it was pretty trivial to modify the script to create an event for each action instead of a To Do. Just like the other script, if you have one or more actions selected, they get added to iCal. If you have no actions selected, it adds all flagged items.

Creates an event that matches the start and end dates if both exist, otherwise makes a 15-minute event at whichever of the two does. If one of the events has no start or end date, it stops and tells you there's a problem.

Just like the other script, you need to open it up in Script Editor once to make a couple of settings - whether there's an alarm, how long before the event the alarm fires, etc.

Thanks, of course to uku, snarke, and yeary, who wrote the 99% of the code I just ended up copy-and-pasting. :-)
Attached Files
File Type: zip tasks to iCal events.zip (13.2 KB, 2554 views)

Last edited by Brian; 2009-02-17 at 12:02 PM..
 
Just remembered that the original request was for a script that moved the action over to iCal; mine doesn't do that. I can see one place I could add that, but it would be too early in the process; if the script didn't complete for some reason, you could end up with the action gone from OF but not in iCal.

I'm gonna leave that one to the folks who have more AppleScript smarts than I do...
 
Thanks Brian.. I'm surprised this function isn't in OF... some things have to be done at a certain time sometimes :)

Is there a way to get it to ask what date and time we want it to happen at? Or for it to read it from the "Todo" we made?

Last edited by tdehnke; 2009-02-22 at 10:07 PM..
 
The script is going to use the contents of the start and due fields in OmniFocus to create the corresponding event in iCal. You can show the start and due fields in OmniFocus by selecting
View -> Columns -> Start/Due Date

That help?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by tah View Post
Omnifocus still seems like it is geared towards the corporate employee with limited responsibility, and a few home to-dos.
I disagree, quite strongly.

OF is the best productivity app I have used. I have tons of home to-dos, and responsibilities in quite a few different areas.

I am a housewife and mom, full time. I haven't sat in a cubicle in 15 years.

Couple OF with my Google calendars (one per family member, one for whole-family events, the school calendar, and several others), and Consistency for my "regularly irregular" tasks, and I have a system that works.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by LizPf View Post
I disagree, quite strongly.
I am a housewife and mom, full time. I haven't sat in a cubicle in 15 years.
Can see how it works well for this too. Home activities are nicely listable. Generally all of the house projects can wait until its the next task on the list. If you don't get to cleaning the gutters til next week, its not a big deal. Equally time scheduled appointments (pick the kids up at hockey, meet with neighborhood committee, etc) work well to be placed directly in iCal.

My problem is that of a small business and consulting firm. I have 24 projects tasked out for this year. But I have no idea how to organize the task timelines for the projects, when I can fit a new client in, when I can realistically tell someone all the tasks will be done for their project, or how to audit projects for how much time I actually did spend, etc.

I could use Omniplan, but it is designed more general purpose and takes too much time to enter project, it doesn't have quick entry, or most importantly ANY of the features of omnifocus. Putting my tasks in 3 places Omnifocus, OmniPlan, and iCal is ridiculous. Easier to just use a piece of paper or spreadsheet at that point.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by tah View Post
My problem is that of a small business and consulting firm. I have 24 projects tasked out for this year. But I have no idea how to organize the task timelines for the projects, when I can fit a new client in, when I can realistically tell someone all the tasks will be done for their project, or how to audit projects for how much time I actually did spend, etc.
I agree; I don't think that OF is really designed for predicting when a particular project will be done or schedule out when projects will be completed. It is also obviously unsuited for time auditing.

On the first issue, people's personalities about this may differ, but my personal view is that building up timelines far into the future ends up hurting projects, because some things take too long and now you are behind on all of your deadlines. Obviously, you have committed to certain completion times with your clients. Nonetheless, in my view, if you have 24 projects, at least one of them is going to take longer than expected. At which point having allocated time to all of your projects while assuming that they would complete on time, to me, seems like it went out the window.

In contrast, I used a of-like system as a law clerk, which requires adhering to strict deadlines on multiple ongoing projects from lots of different clients, which seems quite like your situation of having to juggle clients. I think that the benefit of the OF system system is that, when things take longer than expected (but you haven't yet missed a deadline), your entire plan isn't now overdue. Rather, the system tells you what your upcoming obligations are at that point in time, for you to figure out a way to manage them. Said another way, for me, when I planned out time on everything in a task list, before long everything on the list is overdue.

Having said that, some method of visualizing the volume of upcoming obligations--for dashboard, in my view--I think would be valuable.

On the time auditing issue, I think you just need to get time auditing software. I can't imagine that OF is ever going to be appropriate for that very specialized task.
 
By audit, I don't mean anything sophisticated. Just that I can look back and see my gantt chart in the past.

<allegory>
Way OF works is kind of like those money management methods where you put your money in little envelopes at the beginning of the month. At the end of the month, you stayed within budget, but you don't really know what you did with your money, just that you stayed within budget.

I like to use a credit card. Harder to budget, but at the end of the month I can download detailed records of where I spent every penny into quicken
</allegory>
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian View Post
Creates an event that matches the start and end dates if both exist, otherwise makes a 15-minute event at whichever of the two does.
Hi Brian,

Thanks a lot for giving us this script, seems to work very well for me. I have 2 questions:

1. I very frequently put a due date for my tasks, but no start date. So in this case the script creates a 15 minutes event in iCal. What do I have to change in the script to get events of more than 15 minutes? They look a bit too small in my agenda and I would prefer, let's say, 1 hour long events.

2. The link to the omnifocus task in the iCal event doesn't work for me. When I click it, it doesn't bring Omnifocus to front and doesn't open the task that should be highlighted... Do I have to change something in the script?

Thank you for helping!

Gabriel
 
 


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