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Workflow to export tasks to an email address? Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
So, say I assign a task to Bill, then hit publish in Omniplan. I'd like for Bill to get an email notifying him that this task has been assigned to him. It could be sent immediately, each day at 8am, or weekly.

What steps/process do I need to go through to have this happen?

I do not want them to get a calendar update, as I'm trying to work with a group of people who will be on Exchange and Outlook.

I'm willing to work in AppleScripts or Automator actions, but I can't put any more time into guessing what might work.

I am using OmniSync Server, and can set this up with either a Google Calendar or my iCal calendar if someone knows a way to set this up with some automation to it. I'm willing to bounce this work through some public servers if need be, I just need to know a workflow where they'd be notified of activities they need to be working on from what I do in OmniPlan.
 
Is it important that Bill only get one email showing newly assigned tasks, or is it okay to send him an email showing all of his currently assigned tasks?

It is straightforward, though a bit tedious, to produce a report showing all of the assigned tasks for a given resource. Put a filter on the plan with View->Filter Tasks... with a rule that only matches tasks where the resource is used. Then, use File->Export... to export an HTML Task List. Mail the resulting file to the appropriate person.

There is a potential complication with such lists: they do not show dependencies in a particularly useful fashion if the prerequisite task is assigned to a resource not shown in the document. You get a column in the table showing dependencies by WBS ID, but if the prerequisite is not in the table, the resource just knows that the assigned task is dependent on some other task, with no clue as to what that task might be. I've attached a sample below illustrating this issue.

You could also set up Publish actions that would put the tasks in a calendar for each resource. I'm not familiar with all this new-fangled calendar sharing stuff, so I can't comment much about this.

One could also make a fairly straightforward Applescript that walks through the document looking at each resource, assembling a list of tasks assigned to each resource, and emails the final result. Might be easier than attempting to automate the use of Omni's reports, which is a sad state of affairs, I think! It does seem like a fairly obvious use case, but using the Export... approach to produce individual reports for all the resources in a plan is rather clunky, in my opinion, and the Applescript dictionary doesn't give much hope for automation.
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Well, in my original request earlier I think I would've settled on just getting OmniPlan to produce anything that would be email-able.

As of right now I'm settling on exporting a filtered task list out to an ICS file and importing that into Outlook. It's sloppy and requires extra work that should really be necessary, but it's what I'm going to have to do.

I really would like a solution that would email a task, even individual tasks, out to a resource. I mean, I can select a person from the resource list and email them, so I'm at a loss why I couldn't email them their list directly from resource view. Seems like a pointless thing that all I can do is email them the subject line of the project name.

I REALLY like this product, but it feels like they were expecting someone else to pick up the slack on the backend of publishing data and no one does.

This needs some data I can push out to people, independent of actual dependencies, because I'm not planning on putting out any tasks to people that would not have already completed previous required tasks.

Thankfully my projects aren't that complex or detailed, but I want something that's going to help me keep open tasks organized with other people. And ideal solution would be to use OmniFocus, but I keep reading that OmniFocus and OmniPlan don't talk to each other, so I'm really confused about what to do.
 
 


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