[athenadesignuk]

Hi!

I can seem to find the answer, I like the idea of using the location services, however can these tasks be inputed via Omnifocus 1.1 (desktop version) with the option of the location? So it then syncs with the iPhone.

thanks all!

Steve

P.S Im hovering over the buy button on the iPhone depending on the answer. ;-)

[Craig]

Locations are assigned to contexts (not tasks) on the iPhone app. Each context (including those contained by or containing other contexts) can be unassigned to a place, assigned to a specific place, or assigned to be considered "everywhere."

[Andrew]

An addition to Craig's response: locations can currently be assigned only on the phone. So any contexts you create on the desktop, you need to sync to the phone and there you can assign locations.

[athenadesignuk]

Originally Posted by Andrew

An addition to Craig's response: locations can currently be assigned only on the phone. So any contexts you create on the desktop, you need to sync to the phone and there you can assign locations.

Many thanks guys, I have just bought both and looking forward to using them!

Thanks!

Steve

[kingsinger]

Apologies if this has already been discussed in depth already, but I don't find location based contexts very useful. Location based actions would be a lot more useful to me.

Much of the GTD literature I've read cautions against getting too granular in your contexts, because it leads to an unmanageably long list of contexts.

If context is the only modality upon which you can assign a location, it encourages creating lots of granualar contexts that relate to only one or two actions (e.g., "Fred Meyer").

I have one context for errands called "Out and About Errands". Within that context might be actions all over town. It would be great to get a view of how those different errands relate location-wise to my current location (and even better how all of my currently available actions relate location-wise to my present location).

I don't want to have to create a context for each place I might stop on an errands run (i.e., Fred Meyer, Target, Bagel Deli, Zoka Espresso, U-Village, etc.). But I might like to assign a location to each of those places.

Probably, there shouldn't be any hard and fast rules, but to my mind if a context doesn't regularly support more than one action (whether thats a bunch of actions in one transaction or a repeating action that regularly happens in that particular context), I don't really want to be forced to create a context to represent its location. Shopping at QFC is an action I do as a part of the time I spend in the out and about errands context.

It's certainly defensible as a context in the sense that it is a physical or virtual place where actions can happen. But for many people I suspect it morphs conceptually into an action (shopping).

Conversely, Northgate Mall might be a more sensible context, if you go there regularly to run a bunch of errands.

But it seems like the user should have more flexibility to determine which way they want to view these things and to assign location data to either.

Maybe someone else would want more context granualarity in those tasks. But for me, either I'm at home, at the office doing office related tasks, on the phone, working on the computer (on-line or off-line), or I'm out and about.

[jet14]

Originally Posted by kingsinger

Apologies if this has already been discussed in depth already, but I don't find location based contexts very useful. Location based actions would be a lot more useful to me.

Much of the GTD literature I've read cautions against getting too granular in your contexts, because it leads to an unmanageably long list of contexts.

I think a piece of the OmniFocus structure you're overlooking here is the ability to "nest" contexts... It is quite simple to take the list of locations you give as an example:

Originally Posted by kingsinger

I don't want to have to create a context for each place I might stop on an errands run (i.e., Fred Meyer, Target, Bagel Deli, Zoka Espresso, U-Village, etc.). But I might like to assign a location to each of those places.

...and place them under your "Out and About Errands" context. That way, if a specific task has a specific, physical location, and it would be useful to you to have your iPhone take that location into account, then it would be worthwhile assigning that location it's own "location aware" context. Any non-location specific tasks would just go under the "top-level" context, without a specified location.

In my opinion, the alternative you suggest (assigning locations to individual tasks) would, in the end, create more work, as you would always end up "reinventing" the wheel any time you generated a task that needed that location. If you're going to this place often enough for the location awareness to be of use, you might as well create a specific context so that, even when you're entering tasks on your desktop, you can associate a useful location with the task.

Conversely, if the task is a "one-off", I would suggest that it's really not an appropriate one to use location awareness (cool as it can be to have OF-iPhone tell you how close you are to a particular task).

Just my $0.02...

J

[whpalmer4]

I agree with the hierarchical errands context notion, and use it all the time. For example, some grocery items I'm willing to buy at any of the stores I patronize that sell groceries, so they get dropped in the Errands : Grocery Store context. Other items I want to buy at a specific store might go in the Errands : Target or Errands : Costco or Errands : Trader Joe's contexts. And finally, there are even less-specific purchases that would get tossed in the top-level Errands. I don't choose to make Target, Costco, TJ's as subcontexts of Errands : Grocery Store because I buy non-grocery items at them as well and don't want to either duplicate them (which would complicate OF's quick recognition on entry of a few characters) or have them in the "wrong" place. Your mileage may vary here; I'm using a laptop so I can have a perspective for pulling the separate contexts together, and if I was using an iPhone (thus no perspectives) I would possibly prefer to have them nested in there as Errands : Grocery Store: Target, etc. and rely on the location awareness support to remind me that even though I went to Costco to buy bananas, I could also pick up that new flat-panel TV as long as I'm in the neighborhood.

In my opinion, if having a "temporary" context to remind you when you're near some location that you could take care of something will help you get it done, you should do it. You can always delete the context after you've marked the action complete if think you won't need it again. If you think you might need it again, but not soon, you could mark the context as dropped and you won't see it in the usual list of remaining contexts. To mark it as dropped, select the context in the sidebar, then ctrl-click or right-click to bring up the contextual menu and select Dropped. There's no reason the list of contexts has to be carved in stone when you start using the program, never to change...

[Fontmedia]

I would totally agree with kingsinger. The true benefit of location services would be to not have 50 contexts for all of the different places I might buy something; but to have the phone indicate when I approach a place where certain actions might be able to be completed. I can purchase widgets at many different vendors, why not give me a shout out when I get close to one of my preferred locations. Isn't this more in keeping with the "just in time" nature of GTD?

Then a user can indicate how many "locations" they wish to use as options; or for those capitalists in the crowd, merchants might indicate what they are selling that would be appropriate also. I'm not a big fan of advertisements, but if I'm a block away from a Lowe's and I have something on my shopping list for Home Depot, maybe a little "incentive" to check Lowe's out might not be a bad thing. This may break privacy issues, but there might be some reasons to opt-in.

Is there any idea of this type of location awareness being added into upcoming versions of OF?

Kurt

[Craig]

Originally Posted by Fontmedia

The true benefit of location services would be to not have 50 contexts for all of the different places I might buy something; but to have the phone indicate when I approach a place where certain actions might be able to be completed.

Isn't that the very definition of a context? :confused:

[Andrew]

Fontmedia - the kind of location awareness that you're describing has limited benefit, because we can't run in the background. So if we added that feature, you would have to leave OmniFocus running all the time (switching back to it immediately after using any other app, etc). In addition, location requests are quite expensive - if we constantly monitored the location, your phone battery would die quite quickly.

Maybe it's something that will become feasible in the future (I agree that it's obvious how useful it would be), but not for now.