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iPhone alert - where did that come from? Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
I upgraded to OF 1.7 on my iPhone 3G last night. Earlier this week I upgraded the phone to iOS 4.

A few minutes ago, I picked up my phone to use it. When I'd set it down a couple hours ago, I'd left it on Mail. There was an an alert showing overtop of my Inbox, telling me that an OF task had gone overdue. I didn't hear the alert, if it was audible (which I assume is true) I was beyond hearing distance - I was in another room of the house.

I had already marked this task as complete in OmniFocus on my Mac. Obviously I hadn't yet synched my iPhone, so it did not yet know that the task was complete.

For reason of this exact scenario, I have not been using iCal alerts on the iPhone. On some days I do a pretty good job of keeping both my Mac and iPhone in sync, but on days when I'm in front of my Mac for several hours, I'll let my iPhone fall behind and catch it up when I leave the office/house.

My concern today is that I did nothing to enable these alerts. I looked in the OFi Settings to shut them off, but I don't see the setting. So I don't know how to shut them off. Is there a config URL that I can use to stop these?

Even if the Mac (i.e. OF 1.8 sneakypeek) could reach out to the remote calendar when the task is done, I probably won't use alerts, because of the way I use due dates in OF*. Instead, wherever I am, I keep watch of my overdue counts, whether that's on my Mac screen or in OFi while I'm out and about. On some days I have a dozen or so alerts for recurring tasks, and I'd just go numb to the alerts - (this is the other reason I stopped using the iCal alerts on the iPhone).

It would be extremely useful if the OF badge on the iPhone could update itself without opening OF, I could either ignore it if I know that the phone wasn't in sync or it would prompt me to sync up. But I don't want these popup alerts.



* actually I would use the alerts again if it was not an all-or-nothing proposition - if I could engage the alert only for certain selected tasks, I would definitely use that.
 
Hey fudster-

That alert actually was just a dialog box —*no audio alerts yet. (Though a few folks have requested that.)

To turn off local notifications, head here (on your iPhone):
http://forums.omnigroup.com/showpost...1&postcount=12
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by derekr View Post
Hey fudster-

That alert actually was just a dialog box —*no audio alerts yet. (Though a few folks have requested that.)

To turn off local notifications, head here (on your iPhone):
http://forums.omnigroup.com/showpost...1&postcount=12
Thanks Derek. Nuts, I apologize that I didn't see that before I posted - I thought I was caught up on the 1.7 threads but I'd glazed over that one cuz I didn't think it was going to matter for me... :-)

I'd really like it if OF could update its badge, even if the app is not open. This seems like it would employ the same/related APIs. Has anyone else requested this?
 
I was *very* happy to see local alerts. Now if we get the audio going, and maybe a preference for it to repeat, I'd be one happy camper.

j
 
I've emailed in my request.

I put dates on pretty much all of my tasks and go through the desktop version to make batch changes to tasks I didn't get to.

But it is normal for me to have 30 - 40 tasks set for a day that I don't actually get to and having to check off all of those alarms (especially when I didn't ask for them!) is a little annoying.

And yes, I am one of those people who use OF not because of GTD methodology (which I appreciate and have tried but have just never really gotten used to) but because it is good at hierarchical task management.

I'm glad that disabling alerts works, but I wish this was built into the application. In fact, I could see myself wanting to use that for select tasks. But never for all of them!
 
Mbnelson, thanks for emailing the request! We've got an item open on more control over the notifications in the development database. In the meantime, you may be able to save yourself some effort and increase your overall productivity if you cut down on the number of due dates you assign.

I find that when I assign lots of false deadlines to my items, it initially feels motivating, but - like you - I end up spending a bunch of time kicking items that aren't really due down the road. I also gradually get numb to the due dates because there are so many. I find that I get more done overall when I only put due dates on things that were truly do-or-die deadlines.

Your mileage may vary, of course! If your current system is working for you, I hope you'll forgive the unsolicited advice. It's just one thing that's helped me reduce the stress that comes from a busy schedule, so I thought I'd share in case it helped.
 
Thanks for the advice, Brian. And you might be right.

I actually use the flags for this kind of thing. In fact, I'm one of those people that wish OF had "priorities", which I realize may not be part of official GTD philosophy. So I flag several key items that are the priority for the day. Items of "low priority" are often not dated. Then I created a perspective call "Flagged Due Date" which sorts everything by due date and then by flagged items.

If I finish my flagged items, I can see the next items on my list and start going through those. If I don't go through those, I select them all on my desktop and push them to the next day. About once a week (usually Friday) I sort through those and go through my trigger list to see what deserves to be carried through again.

I do have some undated tasks. Some of my "projects" are really notes databases. I don't even want to guess how many hundreds of tasks are in there!
 
 


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