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I guess all the key features is reserved for future payable updates.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by savan7 View Post
I guess all the key features is reserved for future payable updates.
A look at the collected release notes (http://iphone.iusethis.com/app/versions/omnifocus) would suggest that's an overly cynical viewpoint. I also don't think they have anything big in the can yet that would justify a 2.0 release and all the headaches that will bring. I can't rule out the possibility that we won't see anything but bugfixes prior to 2.0. It doesn't strike me as Omni's style to do that, however, and this also doesn't seem like a headline feature for a major release.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by whpalmer4 View Post
No need, I understand it quite well. Just about everything I put into OmniFocus is something I need or want to do but cannot do at the time that I think of it, so the 2 minute rule rarely applies.

The functional blocks are that I create the action, I look up the contact, and I make the call. Do I not have to do all those things in any relevant scenario? The savings here is only if Omni makes it easier to find the contact and extract the necessary info from within OmniFocus than by switching to the Address Book, copying it, switching back and pasting. All my iOS gadgets still run some 3.x flavor, so I don't know how much easier that is under 4.x, but I don't find it to be much of a chore under 3.x, so that puts an upper bound on how much time it will save me. If it is a repeating call, that small penalty gets spread out over a larger number of calls.

I think you are being a bit disingenuous. No one has said that Omni only looks at the customer requests database when deciding what to do next. It is merely one input. If Ken or whoever else is in a position to make such calls thinks that there is a feature they should build to advance the product, they are going to build it whether or not anyone has had the good sense to ask for it.
Bill, I'm shocked and disheartened that you could even think I was being disingenuous!

If Ken wants to give us location-aware alerts that trigger when you're 10-miles from the intended destination and travelling in the opposite direction, you're right, that's his choice. He also has to accept that those who bought OmniFocus for the iPhone as a premium-priced (shopping) list App may well look at much cheaper rivals with more features and look askance at OF. If after 4-5 years and contacts hitting the top spot back in July I doubt he'll be surprised if even some of the long-standing Members who are committed GTD'ers starting asking Why Vote? and voice their complaints.

You'll also have to forgive me, I forgot that your contacts are rarely dynamic, I don't imagine Auntie Em's phone number has changed since 1939, but sadly we can't all live in rural Kansas!

I accept that my posts rarely make sense without examples, so here goes.

OK, at the moment, we have a team of six on location in India, four currently in Kerala and two in the Maldives. As their phone numbers and addresses change every few days, they email .vcf's to the rest of us so we have always have their latest contact details.

A couple of my Ferals are on gap years and they do likewise, we get emails as they change country with the location of their current fleapits and new SIM numbers. I have an action to call each of them once-a-month to find out how much dosh they need.

In a few days time, I'll be getting reminders to call a couple of dozen individuals to arrange Xmas lunches, I probably haven't spoken to most of them more than once or twice this year, so if I'd copied-and-pasted into OF, I'd then have to go back and make sure that info was up-to-date.

The young lady who does our buying sends us generic .vcf's (ie. catering) which means we get the best deal at any given point in time, but the actual company may well change two or three times a year.

etc. etc.

I certainly can't be bothered to constantly update OmniFocus to reflect all this by copying-and-pasting when I should simply be able to insert a contact into OF and when I click on it I'm taken straight to that name in my well-maintained address book!

It's a no-brainer. :)

Last edited by endoftheQ; 2010-11-08 at 01:24 AM..
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by endoftheQ View Post
The young lady who does our buying sends us generic .vcf's (ie. catering) which means we get the best deal at any given point in time, but the actual company may well change two or three times a year.
I agree that it would be useful to be able to link a contact to a task, but I think that this falls over from a purely programmer point of view in your example:

Would contact be linked into OF by the name, or more likely by a Hidden Unique Identifier. My guess would be the latter as two contacts can have exactly the same name and OF would not know which one was linked if it was by name.

On the assumption that this is the case, as you deleted an old catering contact and saved the new one. OF's link to the contact would be broken as it would not know about the new Catering contact, the old one would be gone.

Embedding the info in OF leads to old data, so wouldn't work either.

This can be programmed easily, but you have to make sure that you capture the exceptions.
 
Hi GeoffAirey,

I must confess I don't often delete a contact, simply update an existing one in my address book, however I've no doubt Ken's coding skills are up to the task of capturing the exceptions! I have dozens of Apps (some of them freebies) that manage this successfully, some even dynamically update info as it changes.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by whpalmer4 View Post
doesn't seem like a headline feature for a major release.
I know OmniFocus is not CRM, but... come on, Project without Contacts? It's disingenuous :)

Last edited by savan7; 2010-11-08 at 07:56 AM..
 
 


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