[myotis]

Originally Posted by whpalmer4

I still maintain that using OmniPlan as I suggested is no more difficult or time-consuming (you're hardly using any of the features) and can easily do what Graham described of his paper system — it sounds like what I did in my example.

I think we may just have to accept its too difficult and time consuming for "me". As I said I have used project planning software in the past. The key thing is that whatever else happens the tasks have to end up in my Todo list (in this case Omnifocus).

I have used MSProject and integration with Outlook, and I have used the JCVGantt Pro addin with MindManager that also integrated with Outlook. Once I started using these tools for project management, I immediately saw their potential for personal time management, but...

In both cases it required too much effort and time, up front, and to maintain, when all I need is a rough idea of whether June is going to be a busy month or slack month. The return on the time invested just wasn't worth it for me.

As I said, the Month perspective that I have now created almost does what I want and it only involves hitting a hot key.

Graham

[psidnell]

Originally Posted by Brian

... Paraphrasing this post ...

I just read that whole thread, I think it must be visible from space.

I'd love to see what Omnifocus would look like if you implemented every suggestion in that thread.

Actually, no - I wouldn't.

[Brian]

Originally Posted by psidnell

Is this simply an absent feature that people don't seem to want or is it deliberately not present?

Requests for the feature have been filed against both the iPhone and iPad apps and they're towards the top of the most-requested lists. We're paying attention to that as we plan our future work, but I don't have any specific info on when work on the feature might happen.

And lest anyone get the wrong idea: the reason they're towards the top is because previous releases of those apps have knocked the other things that were above them off the list. :-)

[CatOne]

Originally Posted by Brian

Requests for the feature have been filed against both the iPhone and iPad apps and they're towards the top of the most-requested lists. We're paying attention to that as we plan our future work, but I don't have any specific info on when work on the feature might happen.

And lest anyone get the wrong idea: the reason they're towards the top is because previous releases of those apps have knocked the other things that were above them off the list. :-)

Now let's just get that darned split view out of the task view, and make it just a nice, scrolling page so task notes aren't a 7th class citizen. I'd give that one 10E43 votes if I could... I think I've given it 3 or 4 different support emails with screen shots already :-)

[mcogilvie]

Originally Posted by myotis

Well, I can almost do it with a perspective.

In the due date or start date, when setting up a task I can simply write in November or October or whatever to dump a task into future month. I also put the number of days estimated in the time estimate column
As I don't use the estimated time for anything else , I can filter the perspective view using the more than 1 hour option. This restricts the view to these major tasks. And then sort by start date with no grouping. Although not ideal, this pulls all the major tasks for any month together and I can scan down the Estimated time to add up the nuber of days work allocated for any particular month.

Thanks for sharing. I'm in a busy spot right now, and was looking for the same sort of thing you were looking for. The closest I found was "Timeli" for iPad, which is not bad, but there's no connection between it and OF. Your hack keeps the data in OF and is easy to start/stop using. Thanks again!

[psidnell]

Originally Posted by mcogilvie

Thanks for sharing. I'm in a busy spot right now, and was looking for the same sort of thing you were looking for. The closest I found was "Timeli" for iPad, which is not bad, but there's no connection between it and OF. Your hack keeps the data in OF and is easy to start/stop using. Thanks again!

There is also "Begin" on the iPad and the dev suggested to me that calendar integration was something he'd like to do (sadly missing from timeli too).

The nicest tool I've seen for calendar timelines is "Caliander" for the Mac (in the app store). It syncs with iCal so when all the OF variants support the Forecast view it'll interact at that level. I contacted that dev about an iPad version and he claimed he was working on one, but with no firm release planned.

The OF iPhone Forecast view is actually great (better than the iPad one at the moment) and desktop OF is due to get it "soon" from what I hear.

[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by psidnell

The OF iPhone Forecast view is actually great (better than the iPad one at the moment) .

Why do you think it is better than the iPad one?

[psidnell]

Originally Posted by whpalmer4

Why do you think it is better than the iPad one?

The iPad one shows a section of your days calendar with events as coloured bars, and by touching a section of it a window pops up providing the titles of any events under your finger.

The iPhone one has a similar timeline view but the day segments have also have reticles. What I really like is that the events have visible titles without the need for interaction, it's instantly clear what events you have on that day.

The above description is probably quite incomprehensible - there will be a short delay while I try and devise a way to attach screen shots from my iPad.

<Girl from Ipanema plays softly in the background>

Solution - go downstairs and turn the mac on.

[psidnell]

... a picture paints a thousand words ...

The iPhone Forecast view was released after the iPad one and I personally think it's a considerable improvement.

[whpalmer4]

I guess we agree on the differences, but award the points to the opposite competitor :-)

I like having the bar showing the "collapsed" but always visible, because I've often got more than a screen's worth of actions in the forecast view. I can always see the overview of the calendar (and because everything is sorted chronologically, it isn't a big deal that the bar potentially covers up an action or two at the bottom of the list that could otherwise have been shown, as I probably should do the stuff above it first).