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Please combine OmniPlan & OmniFocus into a comprehensive time management app Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Quote:
Originally Posted by wilsonng View Post
This would work if your entire team/department/company buys into the GTD methodology.

GTD may work for some but not for others. IT would almost make you look like a religious zealot trying to preach the GTD Bible to the masses. Some folks just aren't ready for it and some just don't care.
Just to follow up on this: OmniPlan 2.0's collaboration features will work great with OmniFocus, once the Focus side is updated, but we absolutely want to allow different people to be able to use different tools. (And if you have an Apple Calendar Server you can see that in OmniPlan's beta now, as we'll interop with Mail and iCal to-do items.)

Omni recently joined the CalConnect standards body, where things like the iCalendar and CalDAV standards are set, and we're very involved in trying to further interoperability standards for tasks / to-do lists / project management / etc. Ideally, you'd be able to assign tasks from a project planning app or delegate them from a task management app, and the person assigned would receive that task, no matter what their preferred software was.

That's a long-term goal rather than a present reality, obviously. But that's where we're heading.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by tbo View Post
Yes and no. It's intriguing to have everything in one place - that's more or less the MS approach ("the one size fits all"). But I think Omni has does a terrific job at keeping the user experience consistent. So I think whereas I would love to get everything together in one app, task management is a much more detailed job for a different approach than project management. For me, OF is perfect for "getting things done". OP on the other hand comes in handy when trying to think ahead, balancing workloads and assigning resources. Having some sort of interaction (rescheduling for example) would be quite enough for me.
Besides that: getting my friends and colleagues to do some sort of task management is enough work. Project management is a completely different story...
It sounds like project management programs like OmniPlan is suited more for a higher Horizon of Focus. My life doesn't exactly require GANTT charts and what-not so I may be talking out of my @$$.......

But I do agree that OF is better for the runway and project Horizons of Focus.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by nailen View Post
Just downloaded the OmniPlan 2.0 beta and it looks great!

I'm not seeing how it integrates with OmniFocus...where/how is that done?

Maybe I'm missing something...
ah - thanks for the heads up - just downloaded the beta 2 and the OmniFocus integration isn't obvious either. it really would be great to mark a project in OmniFocus for "management" in OmniPlan - perhaps the actions that show up in OmniFocus are milestones you create, their due dates, and their status (esp if they are blocked) - I could definitely see a mapping to my @Waiting state at the very least.

well - any insight for us eager OmniFocus peeps would be great. I personally have no issues putting a few projects on hold short-term until I have a better handle on resource management! Thus, why I am looking at software like OmniPlan seriously.

UPDATE (from thread):
Quote:
Originally Posted by skwirl
It’s not featured in the OmniPlan beta because in order for this feature to work we need to update OmniFocus on the Mac, iPhone, and iPad first.

Last edited by chinarut; 2011-06-05 at 07:01 PM.. Reason: saw thread confirming plan to integrate
 
The general idea is that you build an overall project plan in OmniPlan, and set up publishing of actions for various resources to OmniFocus. The actions show up in OmniFocus for those resources, and when they are completed and synced, that information propagates back to OmniPlan to update the plan document. A variation on the same scheme allows for delegating tasks from one OmniFocus database to another. I don't think it makes sense to try to have the master copy of the plan in OmniFocus if you need OmniPlan's tools to plan and execute it successfully, though.

Unfortunately, before we see any of this stuff, they've got to ship OmniPlan 2.0 (which has the OmniPlan-OmniFocus collaboration support turned off right now, though it does have the OmniPlan-OmniPlan support turned on) and also implement and ship the OmniFocus end of the collaboration support for 3 different platforms, each of which runs on a somewhat independent release schedule. They'll need a lengthy testing cycle, as it wasn't really possible to do much testing before they pulled out the OmniFocus component. Some of the OmniPlan resources will be busy building OmniPlan for the iPad, too. I'd say if Santa Claus delivers this stuff in 2011, it might be a surprise :-) If you look back in this thread you see Ken predicting OmniPlan 2 and OmniFocus 2 in 2010, and as it turned out, they barely got the OmniPlan 2 private beta started by Dec. 2010 and still no sign of OmniFocus 2 (though who knows what might have happened had the iPad not come along a few months after he made that statement). One might hope that the current lack of OmniFocus sneaky peek builds means they are now working on OmniFocus 2 rather than yet another OmniFocus 1.x release, but that isn't the only possible interpretation...
 
I've been an OmniFan for a decade, adopting one Omni app after the next. I've looked at OmniPlan from time to time, but it's way more than I need for a single-person consulting business.

I've used iBiz (née iWork) for nearly as long for time-tracking and invoicing.

My dream since I began using OmniFocus 1.0 sneaky peek has been to integrate time tracking with my OmniFocus tasks.

Omni designers: please consider a time-tracking and invoicing app (OmniTime? OmniTrack?) that integrates with OmniFocus and/or OmniPlan.

-- Ward
 
I know we have a feature request open on time tracking in OmniFocus, and I wouldn't be surprised if there was a request filed against OmniPlan, as well. If you email the support ninjas, they can attach you to either/both.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by tbo View Post
Yes and no. It's intriguing to have everything in one place - that's more or less the MS approach ("the one size fits all").
Horizontal integration and vertical integration are commonly conflated. The MS approach is horizontal integration: an app with a million features that tries to do everything but does nothing very well.

The Apple approach is vertical integration: the 'seamless integration' between hardware, OS, and software apps which is vertical integration within a coherent system.

What I'm suggesting is vertical integration from task management to project management all the way up to being able to manage multiple projects; or if you wish from top to bottom: multiple projects, single projects, tasks all the way up and down the nested hierarchy. These are nested levels of complexity within a multi-level system. The ability to go up or down the hierarchy, or technically the nested holarchy, is vertical integration within the same time management system. This is vertical integration.

Separating levels of complexity within a hierarchical system into separate apps is the antithesis of vertical integration and makes life difficult for users. That's the MS way: a chip made by one company, hardware made by another, an OS made by yet another, etc.

In this case, OmniPlan for managing projects and a separate app, OmniFocus, for managing project tasks at a lower level of complexity (within the same vertical/hierarchical time management system). Just as it's better to have a computer whose levels of complexity are made by the same company, it seems to me it's better to have a time management system whose levels of complexity are managed in the same app.

Vertical hierarchical integration is what Omni group is so good at; they have mastered this first with OmniOutliner, then OmniFocus and OmniPlan. I suspect this is because of their expertise in object-oriented programming with encapsulation and inheritance because OO programming lends itself to such hierarchical nesting (objects).

This isn't about adding word processing or web publishing or other horizontal integrations which is the MS way, but about vertical integration ala the Apple way within the same domain, time management, so that a user can go up and down a nested time management hierarchy which is what Omni is so good at anyway. They can do it better than anyone else.

Last edited by nailen; 2011-06-26 at 05:59 PM..
 
 


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