[jharrison]

Although OF has good facilities for keeping notes on projects and tasks, I find that I often need to refer to project folders containing other supporting documents, and it's often useful to manage substantial project notes in a separate OmniOutliner document in the project folder. It would be nice to be able to get to these resources quickly and easily during project planning. You can drag their links into each and every project notes field, but that's awkward and I don't particularly like the way the link icons disrupt the text in the notes fields in OF.

So, here are two simple Applescripts that 1) open (or create) a project folder with the same name as an OF project that is selected or contains the selection and 2) open (or create) an OO notes file called "• <projectname>.oo3" in the project folder (this sorts to the top of the folder if you sort by name).

Both scripts assume a folder named "Projects" located the Documents folder of the current account, which will contain the individual project folders (this can be changed by editing the paths at the start of the scripts). If the main Projects folder or a folder for the current project don't exist, both scripts will offer to create them with an option to cancel. If an OO notes file doesn't exist in the folder of the current project, the notes script will offer to create it with an option to cancel. Both scripts base the names of the project folders and notes files on the name of the project that is currently selected (main window or sidebar) or contains a selection or the cursor in its hierarchy.

It's convenient to put the scripts in the ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/OmniFocus folder and then to add them to the toolbar. I've given them a couple of icons that look OK to me (borrowing an OO document icon for one).

The scripts may be used and redistributed freely. They are a little larger than the maximum zip file allowed here (due to the icons), so they can be downloaded from http://jhh.med.virginia.edu/main/OmniFocusScripts

[gcrump]

jharrison: Great scripts. The only problem I had was the notes script was opening to projects1, but your code was well documented. Thanks again, very much. This will be very useful.

[jharrison]

...sorry, that was my last test. It's fixed now and thanks for the tip.

[jharrison]

The scripts have been modified slightly to support project groups in the planning sidebar. If a project that is grouped is selected and doesn't have a folder or notes file, the scripts will create a hierarchy of folders in a main ~/Documents/Projects folder that match the hierarchy of containing folders in the sidebar, to an arbitrary depth. If projects folders and notes files exist in an appropriate hierarchy, they will be opened from within the hierarchy.

[jharrison]

I've made an additional slight modification that allows the scripts to open or create folders for groups of projects directly with the same names as the project group folders in the sidebar of OF. This makes it easier to get to documents that relate to a group of projects, but don't belong in any single project's folder. It also allows quick access to an OmniOutliner notes file in a group folder, which may be useful since OF itself doesn't support notes on project groups. The scripts are available at http://jhh.med.virginia.edu/main/OmniFocusScripts

[benfsmith]

Awesome. Thanks for sharing these.

[brest]

Thanks much, awesome job!

[stevebob]

Awesome & ++
Thanks!

[Rolandf]

Thank you very much for that script it's very usefull.

Would it be possible to do the same to create groups and notes in DEVONThink ?

[dwayneneckles]

for some reason i am not finding that folder u mentioned to put the scripts in...