[sriggs]

What a great update! I love how fast I sync now but there's one thing…

I don't get why I would want to see my unprocessed inbox items in the context view? I feel like there is something that I am not getting. Can anyone explain why this would be a good thing?

I have emailed to add my vote to expediting an option around showing inbox items in the context list and having its default setting as off.

To me this is a very minor issue and one that maybe I'll think differently about when I understand the thinking behind it. Keep up the great work Omni!

[whpalmer4]

Some people like to do some work out of their Inbox. Perhaps this was a sufficiently popular request to the support ninjas.

One could certainly make the argument that "I set a context for this action, it ought to show up in my context lists" though the question might then be asked why the same isn't true for Inbox actions which have a project set but not a context, shouldn't they appear in project lists? Actions without a context once didn't even appear as Available; I see these changes as accommodations of the part of the user populace that doesn't feel the need to operate in a strict GTD-by-the-book manner. Until the option to turn this off is shipped, omitting the context on Inbox actions until you are ready to finish processing them will keep them out of your lists.

Usually I have many more items in a given context than Inbox items for that context, and the Inbox items are clearly labeled as such, so I don't find this new behavior particularly troublesome. I didn't find the old behavior particularly troublesome either, but if they add the option, I might have to spend valuable time thinking about how I want to set it :)

[sriggs]

Thanks for the response whpalmer. The out of the box behavior is such that if you add a context to an action in the inbox, it gets moved out of the inbox to the Miscellaneous SAL automatically. I end up with unprocessed actions from my inbox at the root of my context lists (basically the no context area). Not really a problem but kind of messy and I'm not sure I see the practical use for it.

[Brian]

The previous setup made sense to strict-GTDers, but was confusing to folks that came from other systems, or for whom OmniFocus was their first attempt at becoming more productive. They added something to the application, and didn't understand why it wasn't visible. Some folks thought that OmniFocus had actually dropped the action entirely from the database because they couldn't see it in context view!

The ultimate goal here is to make the app less confusing to new users while enabling the strict-GTD behavior via prefs.

Generally we try to roll out both "halves" of change like that at the same time, but in this case, it wasn't possible without holding up some other fixes we really wanted to get to folks. (The sync improvements, for example.)

[sriggs]

Thanks for the thoughtful reply Brian. I completely understand. I've cast my vote to the support ninjas and patiently wait a future release.

[patgallant]

This might be similar. I experienced this last night.

I use the iPhone OF app exclusively (no sync or Mac version). Under my Projects item I have a Reference folder where I keep a bunch of "single action lists" for things I might want to check out someday (such as movies to see, albums to listen to, etc.). Each item has no context (default of None) and they do not show up at all in the main Contexts window.

Last night I created a new SAL in my Reference folder called "Books to check out" and in that project I added a bunch of books, each with no context.

If I tap on the "Contexts" item on the main OF screen I see all the books I added appear at the bottom (under the contexts I have already set up). The ones I created prior to 1.6 don't show up, but ones I added since do. As a workaround I manually created a context called "None" and physically assigned each book to that context. That doesn't seem to be something I should have to do though, right?

Any thoughts?

[niels]

One thing I've noticed that is different than the Mac version is there is no way to control when things drop out of the Inbox on the iPhone. On my Mac, I can say cleanup requires a project, a context, both a project & context, either a project or context.

On the iPhone it seems to auto-cleanup when either is set. I prefer to have it require a context (it can set project to miscellaneous). Anyway to mirror this in the iPhone version?