The Omni Group
These forums are now read-only. Please visit our new forums to participate in discussion. A new account will be required to post in the new forums. For more info on the switch, see this post. Thank you!

Go Back   The Omni Group Forums > OmniFocus > OmniFocus for iPhone
FAQ Members List Calendar Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read

 
Not Loving Context Sorting [A: Adjust using View button in v1.13.1 or later.] Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Quote:
Originally Posted by jbrown View Post
Sorry for the confusion here. Normally, perspectives on the iPhone app are only available if you're syncing with the Mac version. However, you can turn on perspectives by tapping the link on this page:

http://people.omnigroup.com/kc/debug...spectives.html

You should now see a Perspectives row in the sidebar. The Due perspective gives you a list of your actions sorted by their due date. Hope this helps!
Restoring the Due perspective has helped greatly. The persistent date-bar across the top is irksome but far less intrusive than the one in Forecast so I can live with it. Thank you. This saves me quite a bit of time switching to another taskmaster app. Will I have to save that link to restore Perspectives when I update the OF app again or will this change persist?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken Case View Post
Thanks for the feedback! I've filed this as bug #76573 (Consider restoring flagged & due sort ordering in context lists, or providing a sorting option) and added all your comments as votes there.

If anyone else would like to vote for this, please email our support ninjas at omnifocus@omnigroup.com and reference the bug number. Thanks!
If it gets changed back, huzzah, but I didn't bug-report it myself because the release notes implied this was an intentional change. But if it is a bug, that changes my attitude significantly. Thanks!
 
Just wanted to chime in one more time and say thank you to Ken for personally replying to this thread and explaining the reasoning behind the change (One of the reasons why I chose to give my money to Omni over other GTD/task managers was the great support and personal attention I got for my questions during my free trail period).

I'll just say that jdh and I are very much aligned. My preference would be for a user-defined option on how things should be sorted on the iPhone app, but if that would add too much cost/complexity, then I much prefer the old way of sorting actions by due/flag (which feels much more in line with GTD teachings) within a context rather then by project. If someone has a need to sort by project, that person can always create a perspective to do that.
 
The iPad behavior (which appears to be identical to that of the Mac's built-in Contexts perspective) has a very nice feature — it saves one from having to enter due dates for everything in a sequential project or action group where the actions are all in the same context. You just have to put in the due date for the final item or the group and you'll get them displayed in the order they need to be done. Otherwise, you get the behavior where only the ones you've assigned dates to are sorted to the top, and if they are within the Due Soon window, you have the styling which would otherwise suggest that they are not yet available overridden by the Due Soon or OverDue styling, and you go off and do some action without proper sequencing.

The iPad behavior isn't perfect, but it is less imperfect than the old iPhone behavior!
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by SFF View Post
Just wanted to chime in one more time and say thank you to Ken for personally replying to this thread and explaining the reasoning behind the change (One of the reasons why I chose to give my money to Omni over other GTD/task managers was the great support and personal attention I got for my questions during my free trail period).
I'd like to second this notion. There are a lot things that Omni does right in my opinion - and genuinely caring about their customers' concerns is tops for me.

Thanks very much Ken.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken Case View Post
But if everyone agrees that the earlier behavior of sorting by Flagged & Due is better, we'll just do it that way. (Perhaps we'll extend the behavior to the iPad app as well to improve consistency—unless it would be inappropriate there due to different usage scenarios.)
I typically work from my own perspectives as well as the Forecast view, but when I do use the context view it is helpful to see items sorted in the new behavior for the reason that whpalmer4 listed.

However, one of the things I find most frustrating with OmniFocus is when the views that I use less frequently do not match up across the 3 platforms (which is one reason why I rely more on my own perspectives). In other words, count my vote as wanting consistency, even if the resulting view is less perfect than what I would have preferred.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Baarogue View Post
Restoring the Due perspective has helped greatly. The persistent date-bar across the top is irksome but far less intrusive than the one in Forecast so I can live with it. Thank you. This saves me quite a bit of time switching to another taskmaster app. Will I have to save that link to restore Perspectives when I update the OF app again or will this change persist?
You shouldn't have to use that link again unless you have to reinstall the app.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by whpalmer4 View Post
The iPad behavior (which appears to be identical to that of the Mac's built-in Contexts perspective) has a very nice feature — it saves one from having to enter due dates for everything in a sequential project or action group where the actions are all in the same context.
I guess that's where the difference in workflows becomes somewhat apparent :)

I personally never use the "Remaining" view when I'm looking at my contexts in any of the three apps, and therefore don't care if it's sorted by project as the blocked tasks will simply never appear, due date or not If something's not available to be done, I don't want to see it in my context views. For me, that's what the project views are for.

As for the Mac version's built-in context perspective, I changed my sort order to due/flagged at the top a long time ago for the same reason, so I can't really remember what the original or "default" sort order is. Again, however, I almost never work in "Remaining" view even in the Mac app.

Were it not for the risk of adding more confusion for new users, I'd almost think the sensible compromise would be to sort by due/flagged when viewing by "Next Action" or "Available" and sort by natural project order when viewing "Remaining" or "All." Sadly, however, I think that would be much more confusing and complicated than just dropping a sort order option into the "View" menu. It does, however, seem to illustrate the two very different ways in which Context views appear to be getting used.
 
Le *sigh*. So "Due" doesn't work like I need it to after all.

It's stuck in Remaining view, instead of Available like I need it to be, with no option to change it. SO I'm stuck scrolling past dozens of tasks that won't become Available for hours, to get to the few I need to be working on.

I spent a lot of effort learning exactly how your app sorted tasks and customizing my schedule in OF so it would behave just how I needed it to. I raved about it to every co-worker and friend. Thanks for the good run, I guess. Keep the change.

I'm done.
 
There's another ongoing thread about it over here where Ken explained Omni's logic for making the change (basically matching the iPad version), and indicated he didn't think it would as controversial.

I think the general consensus in that thread is that many others (myself included) want it changed back, or in the very least made available as an option. Hopefully this will be fixed in the next version, as it's made my context views similarly useless in the iPhone app.
 
Just been using OF for the past 3 days. Got a question, I just opened a context "@errands" with "available" as the sorting order. The tasks listed are listed in no apparent order unless I'm missing something. They're not alphabetical, they are not listed by date, which I would prefer with due soonest first and they are not grouped together by folders or projects. Just curious if I'm missing something.
 
 


Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search
Display Modes


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
View->Sorting issue gfadel OmniFocus 1 for Mac 3 2012-12-11 07:54 AM
Sorting in Context whshep OmniFocus for iPad 23 2011-10-18 05:34 PM
Sorting Flagged View Catherine OmniFocus 1 for Mac 13 2010-09-17 06:00 PM
Context button shows Proj. view [A: associated perspective edited; reset to default] stevegray OmniFocus 1 for Mac 3 2010-09-01 01:29 PM
Sorting context/project drop downs in Clippings view? emarmite OmniFocus 1 for Mac 5 2007-11-08 09:08 AM


All times are GMT -8. The time now is 02:30 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.