[dvrooman]

I have a reoccurring monthly task to pay my phone bill. It is also tied to a person with a location. I'm on my friend's account, so I give him money directly. Last night I was at his house, a reminder kept popping up all night telling me to pay him even though the due date was nearly a month away.

Is it possible to make Location reminders take into account due dates and not bring up alerts unless the due date is soon?

[whpalmer4]

Do you have a start date on that action as well as a due date?

[dvrooman]

Thanks for the input. I added a start date a week ahead of the due date & when I was visiting him today, it worked perfectly: no annoying alarms. I do wonder, though if it might be viewed as a bug that location reminders pop up over and over again.

[Christian]

My guess is that OF checks for your location at a certain frequency, say, every 5 minutes or so. It then checks if your current location matched any context and, if so, if that context has been assigned to any task which is past its start date/time.

That would mean that if you are sitting on your friend's couch, OF would localize you exactly there, every 5 minutes. Since you have a task with a context that matches your location, it reminds you.

It makes sense because if you imagine a little scenario. Say you are visiting your friend on monday, tuesday and wednesday. On monday you knock on his door, your friend is laying on his couch, passed out drunk. OF still knows where you are and reminds you. On tuesday you are there again, your friend is laying on his couch with the blonde next door and does not open (unlikely at that may be). OF still reminds you because you are at his place. Wednesday you come back, your friend is hungover and just got the news he becomes a dad. He is in a bad mood but, since OF reminded you again, this time you can finally cheer him up with the money for your bill.

[Lizard]

The Apple feature we're using ("geofencing") is supposed to only activate the alerts when you enter (or leave, depending on the setting) the vicinity of your context. However, it's rather imprecise. I've had my phone tell me I've left work, while it's still sitting, untouched, on my desk.

In other words, we're pretty sure this is a limitation of the operating system, not a bug in OmniFocus.

[CatOne]

Originally Posted by Lizard

The Apple feature we're using ("geofencing") is supposed to only activate the alerts when you enter (or leave, depending on the setting) the vicinity of your context. However, it's rather imprecise. I've had my phone tell me I've left work, while it's still sitting, untouched, on my desk.

In other words, we're pretty sure this is a limitation of the operating system, not a bug in OmniFocus.

It's also possible that the location the iPhone is getting moves a bit: GPS is imprecise and can get spurious readings every now and then. The assisted GPS of the iPhone may be better but it's possible that sitting still you could get a reading that's 50 feet away every once in a while, I suspect.

[jdh]

My experience has been that this happens only when using the very narrowest location radius. I generally keep my contexts set to the "medium" radius, and while I sometimes get false positives for things that are nearby, I almost never receive repeated notifications when I'm at the location.