The Omni Group
These forums are now read-only. Please visit our new forums to participate in discussion. A new account will be required to post in the new forums. For more info on the switch, see this post. Thank you!

Go Back   The Omni Group Forums > OmniFocus > OmniFocus 1 for Mac
FAQ Members List Calendar Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read

 
Feature Request: task prioritization! Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
This discussion seemes to be moving a bit in circles.

As I am no native English speaker, I am missing some of the ironic parts, sorry for that.

But I can not see, why some of you are that against adding this little feature. It could be disabled by default.
I got the point of not overloading the app with hundreds of unwanted features. But looking through this forum, I got the feeling that this is the most wanted feature. Just look how long this thread became.

To sum it up
- Many dont want priorities, but they should not care if it is disabled by default.
- Many need priorities and it seemes the #1 wanted feature.

And think of: A fool with a tool is still a fool.
What is a methodology like GTD good for, if we waste lots of our time on an endless unproductive discussion? Did anyone got more of his work done by joining this thread? It cost me a whole evening to go through this.
Why not find a solution that fits everybodies need and end this thread? Why not just implement it, leaving it off by default?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Adam Sneller View Post
I have to throw my 2 cents in here.

I've just waded through 10 pages of people debating whether to include priorities in OmniFocus. To me, this only proves two things: (1) a lot of people use priorities and (2) a lot of other people do not.

I would suggest that priorities be included for those who use them. But there should also be a Preferences option to turn these off, for those who don't.

There is nothing wrong with adding features that some users find superfluous. In fact, this fits really well with the whole "shrink to fit" concept that OmniFocus is based on.
Amen.

I personally would love to have priorities. As Adam points out, adding this as an optional feaure wouldn't hurt those who don't need it.

OmniFocus is a pro-tool for us productivity-lovers. It's already rich featured and someone who hasn't ever looked into productivity-stuff will get confused with all these options anyway. So in my opinion a pro-tool should get me all the features I might need. It just needs to be well designed and integrated, so it won't get in the way but help us if we need it.

I like Curts suggestion having a relative slider. It worked in life balance pretty well for me.

1.0 needs to be reliable, sure. But why not integrate it later?
 
This is now a problem for me, which will hopefully be solved by the people from Omni.
You offer a discount until Jan. 8th, so I have to decide to buy it or not until then. I won't buy it for $80,-, IMHO this is way to high. This is the price of the complete iLife or iWork suite. Comparable products are all below $40, iGTD is free (though they will charge for additional groupware features in the future).
So I will buy it now, or won't buy it at all.
Priorities are crucial to me, OF is useless for me without (instead I would continue to use iGTD, which has priorities, which also sync to iCal priorities).
I could live with it, if priorities are not in the V1.0, as you are already in the phase of getting it stable. But I would need a clear statement of direction.
So would you please give me this SOD?
And though this is a different thread. The brackets [] for the project name brake synchronisation with Agendus on Palm, which uses this brackets for the contact link. Agendus is the #1 organizer on Palm, so many would have this problem. What I would need is an option to use other characters instead (eg. {}).
As this is also a showstopper for me, I would like to have a SOD for this also.
I am hoping that you will clarify this.
TIA
Arne
 
abruenin,

At its heart, OF is a GTD application. If you even had a cursory understanding of GTD, you would understand why stronger priority features were not a huge concern for v1. Complaining that OF lacks the sort of priority feature you want only makes you sound like the guy who wanted to know where the horse goes on seeing his first automobile.

I don't think you have to buy the GTD book to use OF, but I am convinced that you will get more out of OF if you do. BTW, there are web sites with GTD info if you don't want to pay for the book. Post if you want some links.

FWIW, Omni has gone outside conventional GTD thinking in the design of OF, and there is no reason to think that they won't continue to find creative ways to include useful features from outside GTD canon going forward. However, for v1, I think what you see now is pretty much what you are going to get.
 
How weird to see The Faithful get indignant about a proposed impure feature in a fundamentally impure program (re: outlining/nesting), from a company explicitly aiming to serve more than just the faithful. I'm reminded of the LOTR loonies hectoring Peter Jackson during his filmmaking.

It's a feature easily-enough made invisible. But still...the sacrilege incites eleven pages of howling.


Anyhoo, a few things amid the grogger spinning:

1. flagging is a poor workaround for prioritization (though nowhere near as poor as affixing prefixes...sheesh, to be forced into that in $80 software!) because flags are binary. If a very important action is temporarily overshadowed by some screamingly important actions, and you de-flag the former to highlight the latter, the former might then get lost. We need a spectrum.

Also, as-is, gathering flagged actions into a single list (such a list being the ultimate intention of prioritization) means navigating two levels of pull-down menu (and doing so twice, to later reset flag view) without so much as a keyboard shortcut. Ugh.

2. I love Adam's idea of "have the ability to create Smart Folders that can be configured to display a variety of data using rules (contexts being one of them)". Hope that didn't go unnoticed by TPTB.

Last edited by Eric Schoenfeld; 2008-01-12 at 08:30 PM.. Reason: typo
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eric Schoenfeld View Post
How weird to see The Faithful get indignant about a proposed impure feature in a fundamentally impure program (re: outlining/nesting), from a company explicitly aiming to serve more than just the faithful. I'm reminded of the LOTR loonies hectoring Peter Jackson during his filmmaking.

It's a feature easily-enough made invisible. But still...the sacrilege incites eleven pages of howling.
It'd be nice if you'd made a reasoned contribution to the debate instead of ranting. I'm afraid I don't understand where you're coming from: if OF doesn't fit your needs, why did you buy it?
 
Er, wow, A lot to chew on!

First, there IS no debate. I see potential customers who desperately need priorities noting that it need not intrude on the UI of those who don't want to see it. I see Omni responding that they'll probably add priorities, but that it won't intrude on the UI of those who don't want to see it. And I see forty miles of bluster from folks who mostly note, post-rant, that they wouldn't mind its addition if it doesn't intrude on their UI. That's not debate. That's AGREEMENT.

Second, I made several contributions in my posting. Umm...what'd YOUR posting add?

And third, who says I bought the program? There's a demo, you know. And I won't buy until priorities are added. Though, come to think of it, maybe I will just because I feel really bad for the Omni guys, who will come to regret ever having mentioned GTD in their marketing materials.

Oh, and I like GTD just fine, btw. So even that's not a debate. I just think the world needs fewer incensed true believers all around.
 
Oh, I've already said my piece on this earlier in the thread and I'm not going to rehash it now. I just found it amusing/ironic that you were complaining about the "incensed true believers" but coming across as one yourself. :)

As far as the debate goes, I felt it was largely a philosophical one about where OF was going re: GTD - was it (like its predecessor Kinkless) going to "enforce" GTD principles/practice to some extent (which, FWIW, I think it does - it makes you use contexts, for example) or was it going to be more freeform. Remember that most of this thread was written when the app was in (early) alpha and the feature set was pretty undefined. Also, most of the people who came on the beta program initially (myself included) were attracted to OF purely as a GTD app, then as it became more widely publicised a wider audience joined. There was bound to be some argument. :)
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by al_f View Post
you were complaining about the "incensed true believers" but coming across as one yourself. :)
.
That's odd...I don't believe anything but that I need priorities to make good use of this app.


Quote:
Originally Posted by al_f View Post
Remember that most of this thread was written when the app was in (early) alpha and the feature set was pretty undefined.
Point well taken
 
Is this still going? There are plenty of ways to priortize in OF, just not an actual priority which is not very GTD.

Lots of features I rather have first.

BZ
 
 


Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search
Display Modes


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Feature Request: Per task work hours hackeron OmniFocus 1 for Mac 4 2011-03-13 10:14 PM
Feature Request: task prioritization! endoftheQ OmniFocus for iPad 2 2010-07-31 11:51 AM
Feature Request: Task Templates Seeker OmniFocus 1 for Mac 2 2008-01-20 07:02 AM
Feature request - POP3 to task johnrover OmniFocus 1 for Mac 4 2007-06-12 11:52 AM
Feature Request: Task outlines vmarco OmniPlan General 1 2006-08-01 06:42 AM


All times are GMT -8. The time now is 08:30 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.