[whpalmer4]

To get a list of all calls due today and tomorrow:

Go to context mode. Select your calls context in the sidebar. Group by due. Sort by whatever you please. Remaining or Available. Any duration. Any flag state. Close the groups for anything but due today or due tomorrow. Example attached.

The "trick" if you will to many of these things is to look in context mode rather than project/planning mode.

[Ken Case]

Originally Posted by whpalmer4

To get a list of all calls due today and tomorrow:

Go to context mode. Select your calls context in the sidebar. Group by due. Sort by whatever you please. Remaining or Available. Any duration. Any flag state.

One minor suggestion: rather than "Remaining" or "Available", choose "Due Soon", so OmniFocus will only list the calls due in the next few days. (You can choose precisely how many days you want to see by changing the "Due Soon" popup in Data Preferences.)

[Gardener]

I wanted to propose another situation where multiple, non-hierarchical, OR contexts would be useful. It's very similar to the "shopping" scenario, but it's not shopping. It's essentially a research task.

Let's say that I have:

Project: Choose plants for the experimental low-water bed.
Next Task: Get a real-world look at Shasta Daisy "Becky".

Let's say that I know that "Becky" can be seen at:
- The city park.
- Jane's garden.
- Grafton Nursery Display Beds

Each of these sites is sufficient. Each is equal. There is nothing to make one preferable to the others. As far as I can tell, there _is_ no single best context here. And the contexts are not in any way hierarchical.

But so far, for this one task, I can solve the problem by simplifying - I can just put the task in Errands, and scan Errands everywhere I go, and be reminded to go look at "Becky".

However, let's say that I want to look at real-world examples of sixty-seven other plants. Or eight-four. Or three hundred.

And let's say that I already called around, got plant lists, got brochures, checked web sites, to find out where those plants can be seen. Let's say that I have seventeen locations where I can look at plants, each of which has a varying number of of these plants on display, with lots of duplication. I want to put this information in OmniFocus, sync it to my phone and, whenever I'm at one of these locations, get a look at the plants available at the location, so that I can photograph them and take notes.

In this case, I want lists for each location, and I want to build these lists with multiple contexts, one context for each location. Checking off a plant in any context should check it off altogether. I don't see any graceful way to handle this other than multiple "OR" contexts, or using another tool entirely.

When I go to the city park, for example, I don't want to look through all sixty-seven (or three hundred) plants in one "Plant Viewing" context and check the task detail below them to see if that plant should be at the city park. I already did that work, and I don't want to do it again. By the time I get to the city park, I should be done fumbling with my lists; I want to be down to glancing at the list, taking photos and scribbling notes, and checking items off.

I could eliminate that problem by duplicating the tasks, so that all three places that are growing "Becky" have "Becky" in their list, for three separate tasks. I don't like that either. I don't want to have to search the checked-off items for places I've already been, or dig through my notebook, to see if Becky was checked off, and i don't want to waste time hunting down Becky two or three times before I remember, in an annoyed and frustrated way, that I have indeed seen Becky. If I only have a dozen plants to look at, it may not be a problem to remember what I've seen, but sixty-seven or three hundred is starting to push memory, and isn't the whole point that I don't have to remember all this stuff myself?

I also don't want to do a bunch of extra pre-work planning, making a battle plan where each plant is listed at only one location. This is because (1) I may not go to the locations in the order that I predict and (2) my information may be out of date and "Becky" may have just been mowed down at the city park, so that I need to look at it when I get to Jane's garden after all. Or, even worse, I skipped it at Jane's garden because it wasn't on that list in the battle plan, so that when I find it's been mowed down at City Park, I have to go back to Jane's.

I could just have one task called "Look at plants" and store the individual tasks outside Omnifocus altogether. I don't like that either - I've just essentially made a project into a single task, and totally eliminated the value of contexts, plus I now have to get another tool to sync politely to my phone. For now, yes, I could have a task for the City Park context that says, "Check the SomeOtherSoftwarePackage list of plants for City Park", but I'd rather do it all on one tool.

This is essentially the "shopping" task all over again, but I think that there may be _many_ "shopping"-like tasks - shopping, research on things that might be available at many locations (like the above), activities available at many locations (going to movies is a simplistic case that could admittedly just stay in Errands), and so on.

Anytime that you have the situation where there are several functional instances of a resource, but not _so_ many instances that you can count on finding that resource absolutely anywhere, there's a possibility that multiple OR contexts may be useful. Bird watching. Research in rare books. Viewing rare but multi-instance art, like prints. Purchasing niche products. All of these examples are strongly location-based, but I'd bet that there are other context types that would apply, if I could just think of them. :)

This type of project may be rare enough to keep multiple contexts from floating to the top of the priority list for features, but I think that they exist, they're legitimate, and multiple OR contexts would be genuinely useful for them.

Gardener

[Freid]

Hi guys,

I won't debate no time, i got things to be done ;) (plus i have no brain).

But : I would enjoy multiple tags or context or whatever you call it. Make it (pleeease) a choice for the user & voila :)

And please forgive my crummy english, i'm just a frenchman.

[Liquid Engineer]

I just started using OmniFocus, and I love it. That said, I've never read a single thing about GTD, but I've used TaskPaper for several months before deciding I needed something with a bit more muscle to manage university assignments/other tasks.

Many people have made excellent points in regards to why multiple contexts can make you more efficient, and I happen to agree with them that it should be a supported feature. But my reasons for wanting it implemented are a bit more pragmatic.

I've come to the conclusion OmniFocus needs multiple contexts, if for no other reason than that iCal syncing is apparently dependent on context to figure out what goes in which calendar.

I've got a calendar for Law School Assignments and a calendar for Law School Events (meetings, etc.). In OF, I've got a Folder for my Law School related projects. I've also got projects and tasks outside that folder that have nothing to do with Law School. I find it very intuitive to set a context for an action (e.g.: "email," "website," etc.). However, I also need to be able to indicate a context for which iCal calendar this action belongs to (possible calendars: Law School, Law School Events, Personal, Medical, etc.). I can't simply tell it to throw all my email-context actions into my Law School calendar, for instance. Duplicating contexts hierarchically is also a terrible idea.

Either the way things are synced to iCal needs to change, and I'm not really sure how it could, because in theory the context-to-calendar idea is very efficient, or at the very least OF needs to support a minimum of two contexts, with the second being used to indicate a calendar. So you might have a task that has the primary context "email" and the secondary context "Legal Writing." The user can then use the iCal pref pane to tell OF that Legal Writing context actions go into a specific specified calendar.

[brianogilvie]

Could you explain how you then use the iCal data once it's synced? Are you then syncing with a smartphone or Palm? What usage scenario do you imagine--do you want all your law-school-related email actions in your Law School calendar, and other email actions in another calendar (or calendars)?

When I was syncing to my Palm, I created entirely new calendars for my contexts, with similar names (though I sometimes synced several contexts to the same calendar if it made sense). I couldn't focus that way on a particular project or area of responsibility, but I synced project names with the actions, so I could skim over my context list (calendar) and identify the actions as a help to deciding what to do. In other words, I left my existing calendars for events, divided by area of responsibility, and used the new calendars for tasks, divided by context.

[Liquid Engineer]

Originally Posted by brianogilvie

Could you explain how you then use the iCal data once it's synced? Are you then syncing with a smartphone or Palm? What usage scenario do you imagine--do you want all your law-school-related email actions in your Law School calendar, and other email actions in another calendar (or calendars)?

What I'd like to do is sync the actions from OF so that they show up as ToDos in the appropriate iCal calendar. Then I'd be able to see my ToDos/Actions from MobileMe by viewing my online calendar when I'm away from my computer, and be able to use iCal's alarm features, which are more robust than OF's, where appropriate.

I'd also be able to print calendar views from iCal that included the relevant tasks for that time period.

I suppose I'm trying to use OF as a replacement for iCal's barebones ToDo support, which I've never really been able to get much use out of. I spend a lot of time looking at my iCal calendar, so it'd be nice to be able to have a current list of actions/todos in the same window, at least for reference. I would not, of course, want to use iCal to attempt to manage the ToDos.

When I was syncing to my Palm, I created entirely new calendars for my contexts, with similar names (though I sometimes synced several contexts to the same calendar if it made sense). I couldn't focus that way on a particular project or area of responsibility, but I synced project names with the actions, so I could skim over my context list (calendar) and identify the actions as a help to deciding what to do. In other words, I left my existing calendars for events, divided by area of responsibility, and used the new calendars for tasks, divided by context.

This is an interesting approach, but given my existing calendar setup it's a bit overkill. I have one calendar already for class scheduling and assignments, and another for ... everything else. I've also got calendars for Medical, Personal, and Other appointments/events. Creating a calendar for every possible context would overclutter things, I think.

I certainly don't need syncing. I'm already very happy with OF. I just discovered the option while going through the preferences and thought "this could be cool and potentially useful," and was a bit wierded out when I realized I couldn't do it the way I wanted to. I brought it up in this discussion because IMHO it presents a scenario where multiple contexts (or at least two) would be very useful that I didn't see any other proponents of multiple contexts bring up.

On the subject of multiple contexts in general, I've yet to use OF long enough to decide if I will find the restriction to one context problematic. I've used TaskPaper for a while, and you can give an action in that program as many contexts as you want. My general usage in that program was along the lines of: This is a task I must do. @this-is-what-I-need-to-do-the-task @this-is-why-I'm-doing-it (e.g.: school, work, etc.).

So I'd have things along the lines of: Contact university bursar @email @school @financial

I can't recall a single instance of going beyond three contexts (aside from the automatic @done context TP stuck on completed actions), and usually never went beyond two. @finance was the major exception, as I generally wanted to note what said expenditure had to do with, and it can be useful to see a list of all the transactions regarding money you have pending with one click.

[dondo]

curt [he says meekly] - I have a "shopping" context. I select both it and "errands" when I'm getting ready to head out the door, and depending on what I'm doing I may select it when I'm at my desk to do the online stuff.

[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by Liquid Engineer

What I'd like to do is sync the actions from OF so that they show up as ToDos in the appropriate iCal calendar. Then I'd be able to see my ToDos/Actions from MobileMe by viewing my online calendar when I'm away from my computer, and be able to use iCal's alarm features, which are more robust than OF's, where appropriate.

But is there any useful alarm support in MobileMe for To Do list items? That's all that OmniFocus supports with the iCal sync support. I don't see any To Do support in MobileMe, just in iCal.

[brianogilvie]

Originally Posted by whpalmer4

But is there any useful alarm support in MobileMe for To Do list items? That's all that OmniFocus supports with the iCal sync support. I don't see any To Do support in MobileMe, just in iCal.

I don't think there is any alarm support for To Do items, either in iCal or MobileMe. You can get the list of To Do items in MobileMe, in the Calendar module, by using the gear menu.