[curt.clifton]

I've come around to favoring having some way to associate OF actions with iCal events, but I don't think the date information in OF corresponds to events in iCal. An action in OF with a due date is an action that has a deadline. An action in OF with a start date is one that I don't have to think about until that date arrives. For me this isn't some sort of GTD orthodoxy thing; it's a simple matter of the date information associated with an action being categorically different than the date information associated with an appointment.

What I'd like to see is "appointment actions" in OF. For these actions, the start and end dates/times would correspond to the start and end of the appointment. There are two reasons I've decided I want this in OF, one clearly legitimate and the other a bit snide:

• Often an appointment is on the critical path for a project. I do some prep actions for a meeting, then the project stalls until the meeting happens, then I do some follow-up actions. It would be nice to have an appointment action in a sequential project that would automatically take care of these dependencies.
• I hate the appointment entry/editing interface in iCal. If I could just edit all the appointment data in OF and iCal would display it/sync it to my phone, I would be one happy GTingD camper.

Of course, adding appointment actions on top of regular actions, action groups, projects, and folders would probably make new users weep.

[CorgiGirl]

To piggyback what Curt was saying, I agree and add: there are actions, there are appointments and there are also single and multi-day events. Right now in OF, there are also projects, which to me are a combination of all. You want to check off when a project as a whole is complete (a big giant action), and many people (myself included) like to see projects and how they span in a calendar view, and projects in this sense are more time and calendar based.

I think the key here really is maintaining flexibility and keeping it simple, because it is obvious from the boards that (1) OF is already a flexible program (2) everyone really uses OF their own way (3) Simple is important to current and new users. And honestly, as much as I am a cheerleader for this enhancement, I don't want ALL of my projects showing up as spanned events in ical. In fact, I don't even bother syncing tasks to ical because ical is just worthless for tasks. I would like the flexibility of being able to choose what goes over, and how it goes over to ical. Hence my idea of being able to assign to every entry: 1. Send me to ical's tasks. 2. Send me to ical's calendar 3. Don't touch me. lol. You could, in preferences, set a default for every action. True GTD folks could keep the default as "nothing" and it would be as if the program never changed ;)

Another way to do this would be for Omni to add in a entry that is an event (as Curt mentioned). You create a new action, or a new event. However, this doesn't address being able to span projects over to a calendar view.

As crazy as this sounds, once a week, I export my OF in OP just so I can get the overview I am talking about. Then I export OP into html for my team so they have a weekly update of what they need to do (after running some filters to assign resources to contexts). I could just work in OP I suppose, but I rely on OF far too heavily for my own projects and actions and tasks and essentially my entire life. OP is great for the big view, OF is great for the individual view. I know Omni is working on eventually getting OF and OP to play together and sync together, so I think it is safe to say Omni is already having to consider this whole event vs. action vs. task discussion anyhow. And that's why I choose to discuss it on the boards, so at least Omni can get a sense for what many different types of users think :)

[Lucas]

I agree to some extent with the above, but it seems to be that there are many different actions, from different projects, that might be getting done in one meeting (in Curt's example). Then don't we have the same same action different projects problem again? AND the same action multiple contexts problem (probably)? And then, this is where it starts to become a problem (at least from my perspective) someone starts to bring up tagging.

[Gardener]

Originally Posted by whpalmer4

Putting things that belong in OmniFocus on the calendar, and that belong on the calendar in OmniFocus, merely clutters up both tools. See pages 142 and 143 of DA's GTD to see just how strongly he emphasizes this notion.

I looked at those pages, and I don't understand him the same way that you understand him.

He does firmly state that the calendar should not be cluttered up with To Dos. But I don't see him stating the reverse - that the To Do lists should not be cluttered up with calendar items.

In my case, I like to see my upcoming appointments when I'm in Omnifocus - that information often helps me make my choices when I'm selecting what action to work on. So I enter all of my appointments in Omnifocus, with a due date and time equal to the appointment date and time, and a start date a couple of days ahead of that date. That way, when I'm viewing my available actions, the appointments appear a couple of days before they happen, and I see them in my lists.

I get those appointments into my calendar through the process that I described earlier in the thread - I put them in a special context that's synced to a special iCal calendar, I sync, I open iCal, narrow to just that calendar, drag each synced-from-OmniFocus To Do into the appropriate day and time, and delete the To Do after it's been transformed into an appointment. It's the dragging-and-deleting part that I'd like Omnifocus to take care of for me, maybe by allowing me to set a "sync as appointments/sync as ToDos" choice attached to the context.

Gardener

[CorgiGirl]

Originally Posted by Gardener

I put them in a special context that's synced to a special iCal calendar
Gardener

Hi Gardener - I love this idea!. I just implemented this for my event entering. I already had a few contexts for different kinds of events and appointments, I hadn't taken it the "one step further" to sync the contexts with a hidden ical calendar. Great way to double check entries. This is why I love these boards. Thanks for posting G :)

[Lucas]

Originally Posted by Gardener

In my case, I like to see my upcoming appointments when I'm in Omnifocus - that information often helps me make my choices when I'm selecting what action to work on.

One other method for solving this problem is with iCalViewer (http://www.iCalViewer.com/), which puts a definable horizon of upcoming events on the desktop.