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Why does the calendar export only go out 14 days? [A: See thread.] Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
The syncing setup is still pretty complex and everytime I change something big problems arise.

Now I changed the subscribed calendars address in iCal and on the iPhone. But now not all tasks appear in iCal. Some appear and are updated fine when I change e.g. the due date in OF. But some have a due date but don't show in iCal.

I tried deleting everything OF-related on the server to get a clean new sync but still only a couple of my items show up in iCal.

Any suggestion what I could have done wrong, or could change, to improve this?

Currently using this URL
https://webdav.mydrive.ch

Last edited by FatalError; 2011-01-16 at 01:31 PM..
 
Update: Is it possible, that calendar export only exports two weeks worth of actions?

That might be, but then that system was changed. Before I could sync all due actions (that's why it's called export due dates).

I'd like to hear some official statement from OF about this why and with which version at which date this was changed.

Sorry, but that f*cks up my whole setup. I'm relying on this system and now I can't plan further than two weeks or what?

WTF?
 
Sorry for the confusion, FatalError - the calendar notification export is intended to help folks get reminders/notifications on their non-Apple smartphones. It's always exported items with due dates that in the next 14 days to the calendar database.

Maybe you were previously using the iCal to-do sync, under the File menu? That's a separate feature, but it works similarly to what it sounds like you're remembering...
 
No, the calendar notifications for due tasks sync has always done about 2 weeks worth of events.
 
I'm pretty sure that I'm causing some confusing here and I apologize for not expressing clrealy enough what I intend to do.

Sync between iPhone & Mac works. But what I additionally need is a subscribed calendar which loads all due dates into ical. I had that setup perfectly under mydrive. then I switched to omnisync had some issues in general with time-outs and crashes which is why I switched back to mydrive.

since that I have the problem that in my subscribed calendar in ical I only see the due dates for the next 14-days. If that really is limited to 14-days, then

a) my memory plays bad tricks on me. I could swear I had due dates longer than 14 days in the future. :P
b) I don't see the point of that limitation

It's not much data traffic. Why not make it a month (that's not an insane amount of time to know the due dates for). Or even 2 or 3 months. I could live without having due dates from 2015 in my ical, but even if an important project is due in six months I'd still would like to see that in my subscribed calendar in iCal.

Am I crazy? Or is that a strange use-case scenario? For me that is perfect. I don't always want to start up OF to see what's next and having due-dates integrated in my iCal then on my jailbroken iPhone I can already see them showing up on the lock screen, which shows me all upcoming calendar items.

FYI: I am not refering to to-do sync with ical to-do list.


oh, and thanks for your patience with a somewhat difficult customer ;)

Last edited by FatalError; 2011-01-18 at 02:19 PM..
 
The calendar export feature was implemented in the pre-iOS 4 era as a way for folks to get pop-up alerts on their iPhones. You'd export the reminders to a calendar file, then have the calendar app on the phone subscribe to that file so it could pop up the alarms at the appropriate time.

The Mac app added the feature later, but it was initially designed with iPhones in mind.

In other posts here, you'll see folks that don't want to sync every day, or even every week; the two-week limit is intended to help those folks, while still allowing them to get the reminders if they want. We didn't want to go out too far, though, because that could cause sync times to grow too much. Exporting every item in the database that had a due date attached could have that effect.
 
Addendum - You're correct; the exported file isn't a huge amount of data. Limiting factors have more to do with the time and memory it takes to do the additional work on top of the other work we do during a sync.

Oh, and no need to apologize! Questions are good. :-)
 
Thanks Brian for moving this to a new thread. At least now we know what we are talking about ;)

It seems I somewhat misuse the calendar export feature. But for planning I use iCal and if projects from OF show up in iCal I'm aware of that. I use OF for some of my daily/weekly/monthly routines and then some of that stuff doesn't show up in iCal which makes planning a bit difficult since then all those items are missing.

If that use is unintended, my bad, but I don't care about crazy pop-ups beebs and blinks. The less distraction I have the better. But I care for overview and sync ability.

I still don't fully understand what's holding this back. What do you personally think about my use-case? Is that absurd? For me it was obvious and I really though that was, what this feature was originally was implemented for.

What's the point in "not want to sync every day, or even every week"? I don't understand the issue here. This is a setting in iCal in the subscribed calendar. So no big deal, imo. And what's the point in not syncing at least every week (which seems quite seldom to me)? Having all the due dates inaccurate? Sorry, I don't understand this argument at all.

How are those folkes helped by the 2-week limit?

Keeping sync times in a useful range makes total sense and is your good right to set as you wish, BUT (as with the turn off-alarm option issue a while ago) I think it's always the best to give the user a choice.

That a thing Apple seems to fail deliberately at a very high rate. Don't know why. Maybe Steve is a control freak? But even Apple seems to get the point: they now gave the user the option to adjust the hardware-switch on the iPad - u know what I'm talking about, right?

Bottom line: why not let the user choose? I think this needs some testing in order to make a decision. If you need a beta tester, I'll be happy to test to sync all my due-dates with the risk of a crash or whatever. I have a MacBook Pro and and iPhone 3G to test this with.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by FatalError View Post
I still don't fully understand what's holding this back. What do you personally think about my use-case? Is that absurd?
Certainly not absurd! Other customers have let us know that they'd like to coordinate their OmniFocus task lists with their calendars/schedules, as well. That's one of the reasons Ken created the What's the best replacement for calendar syncing? thread; we want to gather information from customers on their workflows so we can figure out the best way to help them with this.

While the solution you're asking for here might work well for you as an individual, we're pretty confident that it's not the right solution for the customer base as a whole. In addition to the considerations I mentioned before, we don't really want to encourage folks to use the calendar export this way when we think we can probably come up with something better.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by FatalError View Post
What's the point in "not want to sync every day, or even every week"? I don't understand the issue here. This is a setting in iCal in the subscribed calendar. So no big deal, imo. And what's the point in not syncing at least every week (which seems quite seldom to me)? Having all the due dates inaccurate? Sorry, I don't understand this argument at all.
Sorry, forgot to answer this! This doesn't have to do with the iCal setting; OmniFocus updates the exported calendar information when it syncs with your server. Some customers have told us that they don't sync OmniFocus that frequently, and they don't want to have to remember to do so.

Exporting dates out for two weeks was an attempt to make the alerts work for that group of customers. Undoubtedly, there are folks who would prefer to go even longer between syncs, but you have to draw the line somewhere. :-)
 
 


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