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Quote:
Originally Posted by Casper TFG View Post
With some pre configuring (like the photo of the list above this post) Can you nominate say, a whole area as an @context area with geo reminders?

So you park your car - in a shopping area check OF and it tells you what you need to (can) get in that say, square mile..?

How would you set distance parameters..?
You can set the location to be your current location at the time of setting it, or an address, or the address from a contact, or a business search through the Google maps linkup, or "always available". Whenever you fire up the Nearby search, it just asks Location Services for your location, figures out how far it is to all the contexts that have locations set, and either displays them in a list, ordered by distance to the nearest instance, or on a map, with a red pin showing the locations and a blue dot for your location. It is up to you to decide if something is "within range" so to speak. OmniFocus just makes the sorted list.



In the map view above, tapping the arrow on the right side of the label gets you the list view for that context. Tapping the left side of the label gets you the Maps application for getting directions there. In the list view, tapping the mileage button (which is straight-line distance, btw) will do the same thing as tapping the left side of the map label.

If you wanted to make a context for a shopping center, for example, you could set it up with an address of one of the stores there, or by using the "current location" button when actually at the shopping center. Then you could assign actions that would take place at that shopping center to that context, and be reminded of them when you use the Nearby feature. However, that would lose you the flexibility of having it suggest that you could do some particular errand at a different location (a different Home Depot, for example) where you happened to find yourself.
 
I see what you did in your example and that works perfect for the contexts where I have actions at a single location. But what I'm trying to do is the following:



But what I'd like to see happen is the parent context aggregate any child contexts' location information. So in this case, I've got GPS coordinates for the @Home Depot, @Lowe's and @Menard's contexts. The idea is that I assign all my actions to the @Hardware Store, but when I check my current location I get all the actions for the context of @Hardware Store when I'm near any of the three child context locations.

This doesn't work now (tried it tonight), but would love to see what it would take to add this to the wish list for future release. This is a round about way of getting the ability to have multiple locations assigned to a given context. So either the ability to roll-up child context locations to the parent or allow contexts to have multiple specific locations.
 
You can set up your Hardware store context to have a location of business search for Lowe's OR Home Depot OR Menard's, and then set up each of the subcontexts to search just for that particular chain or location. See Brian's initial post in this thread. Tasks that could be done equally well at any of the bunch would go in the top-level context, and ones where you had a strong preference would go in the lower-level context. The All Actions view at the top-level context would let you easily check the specific contexts for the other stores, too.

What you propose would have to be an option selectable on a per-context basis, as I think there are cases where you really wouldn't want it!
 
I agree that there will be cases where you will only want one location for a given context. What I'd like to see one of two options.
Option 1: Allow me to edit contexts on my Mac like I can on my iPhone so I can add multiple lat/long coords for a locations (e.g. 'lat:long1' OR 'lat:long2' OR 'lat:long3') or multiple addresses. This will be ideal because then I can do more complex edits with a full keyboard and mouse. However, this may get too complex if you wanted to add multiple addresses or Contacts to a given Context. I've already sent a request for the ability to edit Context properties via the feedback button under help.

Option 2: If a parent context does not have any location information associated with itself, then use information from child contexts. This gives me the flexibility to assign an action to a general context that can be done at multiple locations or assign an action to a specific child context where it needs to be accomplished at a specific location. I've already sent a request for this one too.
In both cases the method you enter your context will dictate whether or not it is a single location context or a multi location context. Option 2 I believe is the better choice because it allows a person to more easily create this type of relationship right from their iPhone.

Love to hear any thought or comments.
 
Casper, the Nearby Contexts view will show all your active contexts that have locations attached (in list mode) or will show whatever pins fit on the screen in Map view. (The default appears to be a couple of square miles.)

If you wanted to just set one location for a couple different contexts, you could just attach it to the parent context and leave the children without their own.

For your shopping mall example, I'd probably attach locations to each of the child contexts - that would hopefully ensure that an entire mall's worth of tasks don't all pile up in the exact same spot. That depends on how Google has the map set up, I suppose...
 
Brian/Casper, you're comment on being able to add geographic information to child contexts and have them roll up is exactly what I'd like to see from Omnifocus. I've tried doing that exact approach and Omnifocus does not do that at this time. If you really think this is a value (and it appears you do), please submit feedback to Omni and request this feature.

If enough of us say this is important, we'll see this functionality sooner vs later. :cool:
 
I made sure a placeholder item was created in our development database for the "parents should aggregate location info assigned to their children" request. :-)
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by jason.verly View Post
Brian/Casper, you're comment on being able to add geographic information to child contexts and have them roll up is exactly what I'd like to see from Omnifocus. I've tried doing that exact approach and Omnifocus does not do that at this time. If you really think this is a value (and it appears you do), please submit feedback to Omni and request this feature.

If enough of us say this is important, we'll see this functionality sooner vs later. :cool:
Will do!
:cool:
 
I'm a first time user of OmniFocus, and it's awesome so far.

I'm trying to do what this thread suggests, creating a generic context for home improvement stores, and setting the business search to: Lowes OR Home Depot OR hardware.

I live in an area where I have a Home Depot <1 mile and a Lowe's < 2 miles; however, the generic context business search only reveals the Home Depot location.

If I change it to only search for Lowe's, it shows up... any suggestions?
 
You need quotation marks around the multi-word portions of the search:

Lowes OR "Home Depot" OR hardware
 
 


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