[krisblack]

Trying to visualize all projects and their due dates is hard when you are trying to schedule a new project between other active projects.

When I think of time and scheduling I visually imagine the traditional monthly view calendar in my head. It would be great if Omnifocus had a calendar view built-in that would display tasks on days of the month corresponding to the dates applied to the task.

If a task had a start date and end date, maybe the two dates would be presented like a multiple day event in iCal.

Selecting one task would display some sort of visual queue of other tasks in the same project. Projects could be listed on the left like they are now. Selecting certain projects in the list would alter what displays in the calendar view.

Also, I'm not sure if this fits here or not but being able to create project templates with dates set based on the relative start date of the project would be awesome. For example, if you have a project template with 3 tasks and each task started two days after the previous task, setting the start date to the 10th of the month would mean that the first task started on the 10th, the next on the 12th and the third/final on the 14th.

Being able to create templates like this to quickly throw a project in a calendar view with a list of due dates would be beneficial to managing project quickly and efficiently to see how it's tasks fall within your already scheduled projects. You could then click and drag to move projects to different days. Moving a task to a different day from the default set in this template project could display an options dialog window to let you decide if moving this task would affect previous or future tasks by the same number of days.

I love how Omnifocus provides a list view of everything, but sometimes having a more touch/click approach to move items around when due dates are extremely important would be beneficial.

[pjb]

krisblack, sounds like you need OmniPlan instead of just a calendar (with planned OF integration)

[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by krisblack

When I think of time and scheduling I visually imagine the traditional monthly view calendar in my head. It would be great if Omnifocus had a calendar view built-in that would display tasks on days of the month corresponding to the dates applied to the task.

If a task had a start date and end date, maybe the two dates would be presented like a multiple day event in iCal.

One problem here is that tasks tightly specified are better put on your calendar directly.

Tasks not so tightly specified don't fit the calendar model so well. Consider a task that will take you an hour or two, but you can't start work on it until Monday, and it is due Friday at the end of the day. Is smearing that out over 5 days on your calendar going to be a useful time-planning tactic, or represent how you will actually spend the time needed to do it? And let's consider that you have a handful of such tasks, plus some involving longer and shorter timespans. Are you really going to be able to make better sense of your load on any given day, when this view shows you a list of everything you might potentially work on that day?

Go too far down this path and I think you really need a tool like OmniPlan to do the resource availability side of the problem.

Also, I'm not sure if this fits here or not but being able to create project templates with dates set based on the relative start date of the project would be awesome. For example, if you have a project template with 3 tasks and each task started two days after the previous task, setting the start date to the 10th of the month would mean that the first task started on the 10th, the next on the 12th and the third/final on the 14th.

Check out Curt Clifton's Populate Template Placeholders script. Couple it with Dan Byler's Defer script for the part where you postpone portions of the project.

I love how Omnifocus provides a list view of everything, but sometimes having a more touch/click approach to move items around when due dates are extremely important would be beneficial.

Be sure to send in any feature requests with Help->Send Feedback so they get into the development database.

[NickDun]

The way I use omniFocus is to build a list of things that I need to d, and by when I need to do them ... but I actually organise and visualise my time in iCal. Even the feature in the iPad version that shows the future tasks, whilst a great addition, is nt the same as a calendar. Tasks and events get added to the calendar from many sources ... TripIt, Exchange, a phone call, someone coming into my office etc etc. So OmniFocus is one tool to help me organise my thinking, but is not the centre of my planning ... if for no other reason than the fact that I can't SEE my days, weeks, months laid out in front of me. This was the way I was trained to think in the old filofax days ... for good reasons .. it works.

So, to have OmniFocus tell me what needs to be done and when is very important. Then I can organise how and when I do my tasks in iCal. So, yes, I would like to have the to-do function back please.

And I do agree with people who call for integration with OmniPlan ... to do the basic thinking in OmniFocus, then to do the planning and detailed resource allocation etc in OmniPlan.

[policarpo]

Oh man, I am in a bag of hurt now. I can no longer use OmniFocus for sharing my ToDo's through iCal.

We were using BusyCal and BusySync to share our tasks on the LAN, but now since upgrading to the new MobileMe, it no longer works.

There are just too many hoops to jump through now to get shared tasks distributed to my team. There are too many manual steps now. :(

Please please please...for the love of pete, please support CalDAV so I can get back to using OF for my team work.

Sorry to keep harping on this, but man, moving all of my stuff back into Things is just a pain in the arse...the workflow is so different. Sure I can do it, but I don't like it.

[Lisa512]

I have not yet moved into the new iCal calendar because it won't work with OmniFocus. I use OmniFocus to enter and keep track of all my projects and tasks and some personal/family projects and tasks. Other personal/family tasks and appointments are entered in iCal. While I manage those tasks in OmniFocus, I sync with iCal so that my tasks are visible in the to-do list. I am self-employed, and everything is on that calendar. I like being able to look at a calendar to get daily, weekly, and monthly views, see the tasks due, block off time to accomplish my tasks and have the ability to move those blocks around. I will be extremely disappointed if OmniFocus no longer supports that function - it was one of the reasons I moved to OmniFocus in the first place. While it does not work flawlessly all the time - 90% of the time I have had no issues syncing everything between desktop, laptop, and iPhone so I have information at hand in an easy format wherever I go.

[hfra]

Just another vote for using iCal sync for alternative visualization purposes. I like to see a unified view of all of my events (created in iCal) and todos (created in OmniFocus) for a given day/week in iCal. I am sure one can also do this with the OmniFocus reminders calendar, but in the past I found it very nice to assign todos to different calendars (e.g., context "home" to a calendar "home" etc.), which also allows to filter the unified view of events and todos in iCal. Obviously, there may be other (better) ways of achieving the same goal.

[policarpo]

Well I am back to using OmniFocus after a week of grappling with Things. I am bummed about our lack of CalDAV support in OmniFocus so I've resorted to sending each of my team members a .PDF of their tasks they are covering for the week.

There's nothing automatic about this process and it will probably add about an additional 45-60 minutes a week to my regular workflow.

Man, I thought computers were designed to make life smoother...I had my Delegation and Collaboration working thru iCal and BusyCal for a good 6 months. It's really hard going back to paper for this stuff.

Grrrrrrrr.....

The good news is that Things is definitely out of the picture for me. It felt like I had to consistently prune the weedy Things tree to keep it ordered the way I wanted it to be. How anyone can deal with that is maddening to me.

[OmniGuy]

Originally Posted by Ken Case

So that huge benefit to calendar syncing is gone, but I know a number of you are still using calendar syncing, so... What else are you using it for? Syncing with mobile devices which can't run OmniFocus? Sharing tasks with other people? Is there something we can add to OmniFocus which would solve your needs more directly, rather than trying to shore up this sinking stepping stone?

Please let me know, either here in this thread or by sending me direct email at kc@omnigroup.com.

I use it to create for my daily timeline management. 6 of the most important to-dos are distributed throughout the day along with breaks and "gotta minute" time to deal with inevitable encounters.

It's critical.

[policarpo]

Is everyone submitting the request for CalDAV support as a feature request?

If not, please do. :)