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OF for Business (OF 1.5/2.0/OF Pro?) Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
I really need help fitting OmniFocus into a business tasks management tool. How do you all do it?

I want to apologize up front for beating a dead horse with this request. I know that it has been requested many times before. But I really need this so here I go . . .

I have been using OF to manage all my personal and business related tasks for some time now. However, I am now getting to the point where I need to share a task list with my partner. I would also love to be able to assign tasks back and forth so we know who is working on what tasks. Eventually, as our office grows, I will need to add more people into the mix. The utopia fix would be to have this somewhat real time. Maybe OF could sync our tasks through a webdav server? but how do you do that without potentially messing up the file with simultaneous modifications to the file. The ultimate would be to have an OF server, but I don't feel that will happen. Maybe and OF Pro version?

So how are all of you doing this now? Are you exporting data and send the file to someone who imports it? I played around and this does not seem to work too well. Plus, it exports my entire database. I really want to use OF for my business but I am getting pressure from my partner to find a way of us syncing/sharing tasks.

Are there any estimates on when such a feature will be released? Do you need beta or alpha testers? I really need to find a solution quickly.

Cheers
Joe
 
While you could have multiple people sync via WebDAV and our locking should prevent actual data corruption, data conflicts can still happen. Multiple simultaneous users will dramatically increase your odds of having conflicting changes on different clients. (In which case the last one modified "wins", generally on an item basis. That is, if person A changes the title of a task and then person B changes the due date of that task and then they sync up, the title change is going to be discarded because the change with the due date is more recent. Doing finer-granularity merging is something we will be exploring, but it will be difficult to do without significantly slowing the sync process.)

So basically, I don't recommend it. And I'm afraid I don't see a solution for your situation coming very quickly - that's simply not one of the current priorities.
 
I think another thing that could help would be the ability to send someone a task/project or group of tasks. Then the other person would just have to import into OF. Is this possible now? Is this feature on shorter list?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by joeworkman View Post
I think another thing that could help would be the ability to send someone a task/project or group of tasks. Then the other person would just have to import into OF. Is this possible now? Is this feature on shorter list?
Perhaps something may be possible with applescripting and the automatic email importing (address+omnifocus@email.com) to send off tasks in specific waiting contexts?
 
Joe, I bought 7 copies of OmniFocus and OmniOutliner for my work group, but the lack of export, delegation, and reporting has left me as the only real user of the program. One of my team members uses it on occasion and sends screenshots of projects which is less than ideal.

More export options or the ability to send a selected to context (or project) to email would have solved the problem for us.

There are applescripts out there, but these need to be available on the OmniGroup website. I tried to help people on the team install applescripts, but it was frankly too much work for me.

I love OmniFocus, but it is a very difficult program to teach to novice users. I continue to watch and wait.
 
No, we don't currently have any two-way import/export options, nor do we have a selective export option (exporting just a subset of your document). If this is important to you and you haven't already done so, please send feedback via the normal method (Send Feedback from the Help menu) so that your needs will get recognized and tracked.
 
Hi Joe and Steve,

I don't know if this will help, but I had similar needs here, with the complication that I didn't want some people to "mess up" my OF structure.

What I did is I created a perspective for each member (or project, by focusing on the project), then I export each daily in html and display on a shared web page. This way I still can benefit from OF (on my computer and my iphone) people know what they need to do, and can check it on the web server at any time. True, it is not "real time" but I'm looking into whether a script can help me automate this as I make bigger changes. I am not a script person, however, so I'm not so sure how that will turn out ;)

Granted, this still isn't ideal and probably only good for small organizations, but it still is better than some of the other project management programs I have tried. The other project management tools lacked two-way sync with ical or didn't have iphone compatibility.

I have to say there is large gap in the software marketplace for this now...

For larger team needs, you could try syncing OF to ical, and then ical syncs to the program Merlin, which multiple users can access and use. Changes in Merlin can sync back to ical and then to you in OF. I'd love to plug OP here, but multiple users can't use OP right now. It's a lot of runaround, but it is the only other realistic solution I have come up with. :)


Just food for thought!

Last edited by CorgiGirl; 2008-09-25 at 03:57 PM..
 
 


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