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Noobie Question - Outlook at work, iPhone and Mac at home. Any suggestions? Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
I am new to OmniFocus and love it so far but I am having a tough time getting set up. At the office I am forced into Outlook but use an iPhone and MacBook for everything else. Can anyone describe a good setup? The best I've come up with is to email anything that comes up throoughout the day to my MobileMe account and then process the emails at night when I can fire up the MacBook. Is there a better way?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by der56 View Post
I am new to OmniFocus and love it so far but I am having a tough time getting set up. At the office I am forced into Outlook but use an iPhone and MacBook for everything else. Can anyone describe a good setup? The best I've come up with is to email anything that comes up throoughout the day to my MobileMe account and then process the emails at night when I can fire up the MacBook. Is there a better way?
I have the same situation and am looking for a "Best Practices". I really need a way to get emails from Outlook into OF. I have a Gmail and MobileMe so was looking at those options. Also read the thread about a dedicated GMail address for OF.

Is there a thread or FAQ that addresses this? What works and what doesn't?

G
 
Why not just use your iPhone by day? Send emails for items that come via email but otherwise. A mobile me acct gives you access to all kinds of data online, but frankly since I've had my iPod touch, I hardly go online for such data, (but still use mobile me to sync OF as well as other data).


BTW: I agree it would be nice if Omni would provide some nice starting (best practices) models.
 
If you are able to, keeping your Mac online at all times while at work (that is, don't put it to sleep) would allow you to use the Mail rule* for processing incoming messages tagged with a sequence of characters to automatically add those e-mails you are sending to yourself to your OmniFocus inbox. That way, when you next synched the iPhone version, you would get them in the inbox there and could process them while still at work.

Note, if you are happy to learn the syntax for the e-mail title, you can also get things processed automatically by the Mail to OmniFocus Desktop rule so you wouldn't even need to worry about processing them on your iPhone.

* Take a look at the Mail preferences in OmniFocus on your Desktop to see how this works.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by JKT View Post
If you are able to, keeping your Mac online at all times while at work (that is, don't put it to sleep) would allow you to use the Mail rule* for processing incoming messages tagged with a sequence of characters to automatically add those e-mails you are sending to yourself to your OmniFocus inbox. That way, when you next synched the iPhone version, you would get them in the inbox there and could process them while still at work.

Note, if you are happy to learn the syntax for the e-mail title, you can also get things processed automatically by the Mail to OmniFocus Desktop rule so you wouldn't even need to worry about processing them on your iPhone.

* Take a look at the Mail preferences in OmniFocus on your Desktop to see how this works.
I have MS Exchange Client on my iPhone and Outlook on my office computer so 99.5% of email, personal and work related, go through that. I access email on the MB at home and while traveling through a Citrix client. I hate Entourage and haven't really used OS X Mail.

So if I'm understanding correctly (which is a big leap of faith), forward the relevant emails from work or the iPhone to my MobileMe account, which will be picked up by the OS X Mail program running at home. I set rules in OF that picks off the appropriate stuff based on syntax.

Put -- in the subject line

-- in body of text becomes an action
:: becomes a project
@ becomes a context
# becomes a date
$ becomes a time estimate
// becomes a note

Am I getting this right?
 
Sounds err... pretty simple ;-) Just bring your MB to work (or make them buy you one) and ignore the M$ box. Use OS X Mail, setting it up via iMap to get your work email, and then you are all set.

Last edited by dancingbrook; 2009-07-14 at 06:23 PM..
 
If your work server is an Exchange 2007 you can wait until Snow Leopard, then it will sync over to and from Omnifocus.
Well that is as soon as syncing is working.

:)

Travis
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by gallen1119 View Post
Am I getting this right?
That is correct. Set Mail on your Mac to check for new messages every e.g. 5 minutes and the delay between your message arriving in your OmniFocus inbox (or projects, etc.) if you have added the syntax will be reduced to the minimum.

Fwiw, make sure you check that it is working first as some people occasionally run into issues with the Mail rule.

Btw, I no longer do this other than for the occasional message where I absolutely need the content of the message - I actually prefer to just type things in by hand on my iPhone now. ;)
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by JKT View Post
That is correct. Set Mail on your Mac to check for new messages every e.g. 5 minutes and the delay between your message arriving in your OmniFocus inbox (or projects, etc.) if you have added the syntax will be reduced to the minimum.
You still need to have a sync done by the iPhone client before the data will get to you, however. If you are actively using OF on the iPhone and making changes or checking off actions, you'll get frequent syncs if Auto-sync is on. If it isn't on, you won't see the new items in your database on the iPhone until you do a sync. The desktop will automatically do one 1 minute after a change is made to the database there, such as processing a message from Mail.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by JKT View Post
I no longer do this other than for the occasional message where I absolutely need the content of the message - I actually prefer to just type things in by hand on my iPhone now. ;)
Maybe Omni can add clipping to the iPhone.:)
 
 


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