The Omni Group

So far, so straightforward…

Just sitting here whistling…

Will there be hooks to Mail? via a script perhaps?  I do like being able to send emails direct to Kinkless.

Yes, you can set up a Mail rule that adds tasks to OmniFocus.  (Every attribute of every task, project, and context in OmniFocus is scriptable.  In fact, that's how the Kinkless importer works right now.)

Things that I would like to see:

- sharing a project between users over a network. Sharing the projects themselves as well as attached files.

- some kind of integration with e-mail apps (through AppleScript, Mail bundle, save as PDF sent to OF like Yojimbo does) eg: I receive an e-mail: I want to be able to send it to OF for follow-up, notes, etc…..

- integration with iChat to be able to discuss things with other people involved in a project

- OmniNailGun (oh no wait… this one is part of another project if I quite remember :-> )

Looks good! I like the folder organization, and the filtering looks lovely. All of your “non-1.0” features sound reasonable as well—none of them would prevent me from purchasing 1.0 if it works well as a kGTD replacement.

Still wating for the screen shot to download! In the meantime - will there be a QuickSilver plugin? I've gotten used to that trying out some of the other GTD apps while waiting for OmniFocus.

David

Looking wonderful, can't wait until the release!  What about integration with 3rd party mail/calendar apps, specifically Mozilla Thunderbird?  I would love to see the ability to sync with a wider range of apps, not just Macs default set.

This looks VERY promising. Can't wait to get my hands on the beta!

Looking good!

One feature that I would really like to see is the grouping of contexts into places.  For example, I have an Office place that includes the Phone, On-line, Computer, Briefcase, and Campus contexts.  I have a Home place that includes Phone, On-line, Computer, and Briefcase contexts (but not Campus).  Finally I have a Traveling place that includes Phone, Computer and Briefcase contexts (no Campus or On-line).

A task filter that lets me select a set of contexts to display, plus scriptability is probably enough to get what I want here.

Any thoughts on import/export formats?  If I could export/import to plain text or OO format from the beta regularly, then I'd be willing to test a pretty rough beta version.

I'm pleased. kgtd is the only app that I'm happy with to do my GTD.

OmniFocus looks its going the right way.

I really like the fact that there is a clear homage to kGTD, even in the styling. It will definitely help the transition.

However, as great as the screenshot is, you've just made us all salivate even more. I guess that's what marketers do though!

Thanks for posting this information. The hype had created totally unrealistic expectations (just like scrybe) and this post has helped to bring at least myself back to reality. It's a decent looking app, but nothing revolutionary. I'm glad I didn't have to wait 6 more months to realize this. Thanks.

[...] Well, it seems that finally we can see what’s behind the guys at Omni Group. It’s about the hiper-hyped OmniFocus GTD-enabled software announced several months ago, we finally have a face. They posted a first screen-shot, and from what I saw it looks pretty interesting. I am a public fan of their products - OmniPlan proved to be an incredibly valuable resource for my company project plannning so far - and I constantly use their OmniOutliner for quick sketches or fast annotating documents. [...]

In the meantime, try out the recently-opensourced Actiontastic. By the looks of it, that's a better fit for my kind of tasks than OmniFocus is.

ps

Why don't you create a Palm app companion. Sync possibilities through iCal is good, but it means that actions will be classified by context by calendars. This will reduce the possibilities that a specific application would bring to manage GTD on Palm.

Please consider it, something like “Life Balance” already do.

All sounds and looks cool!

No mention of delegation of actions, though?  Without that it wouldn't be of much use in a business environment.  Anyway, I look forward to the beta, because my kGTD is cracking up under the weight of the projects…

In the meantime I'm playing with ThinkingRock 2.0 (“gamma release”), and liking it !

A big selling point for me would be either RSS integration (feed item -> todo) or enough of an API I could hack something like this up with applescript. I have about 15 trac instances that I currently monitor via RSS for new tickets for projects I'm involved in. It would be great to be able to dump these straight into the app from the feed. Even cooler (and more specialized, thus something I or someone else would probably have to hack up, rather than you guys doing it) would be to be able to poll trac items to see if they've been marked as completed, and close the todo.

MailTags integration would be excellent.

A fine start. You could publish the app, and your unit tests, and get a good percentage of us to QA the product for free.

Echoing David - a Quicksilver Plugin would be quite useful.

And, I'll say it again, release early, release often. Getting this in people's hands will provide lots of great feedback on features - including those that can't be divined from a screenshot, as well as some buzz.

Looking forward to it.

Seems promising.

I know it may sound silly, but it would be nice to keep an option to do non-styled text too, with a font that one can set in the default, and then forget about any formatting at all ever! IMO, formatting is distracting and only necessary for publications.

looking very good!

one thing I like to point out which is very, very handy when planning the days and weeks: the ability to assign time lenght for a task and a time of day when the task is planned to happen. also, LifeBalance has a great way of allowing you to set a task on a date and then attach repeats to that task, regular once or also custom (similar like iCal does). combined with the option to assign how much lead time you want (= pre-warning that the task is upcoming) this is really a good way to get most of the repeating tasks out of your face for planning the big picture but then popping up just in time so that you won't neglegt them.

I really like the interface, even though I am aware that it's still beta and a lot of stuff can change.

QuickSilver support would be greatly appreciated - I have come to use iGTD and it works wonderful, I've even adjusted LifeBalance and iCal to complement each other and now the 3 sync really nicely. at this point now it seems OmniFocus and iGTD will have a lot in common and it will be interesting to see where the two will be different.

Omnifolks:  Without a doubt you've provided me with some great software.  But, screen shots don't help me.  Especially after the long dialog that's surrounding this product.  I have to agree with Linn from an earlier post, “don't take too long to get the beta out.”  This blog is littered with good competitive products.  The field is getting crowded in this race and your really not in the game - except for screen shots.  Maybe it's time to pull the trigger on the beta.

I have some experiences with software betas (running them) and IMO you could start as soon as:

1) Importing kGTD files is robust

2) Basic kGTD functionality is supported and well tested internally.

At that point, most of us using kGTD could begin using OmniFocus on a day-to-day basis.  Kist my .02.

Any chance of syncing to Blackberries?  I can't wait to see this in action.

I like the overall look of the interface. I like how it's very reminiscent of Kinkless in its simplicity but it's not just a clone of OOP.

I'm confused what the difference between a Project and a Folder is (I only ask because you have the “Active Projects” sort and the “{} Folder” sort button both available in the interface).

I'm glad to hear that dates can be displayed in columns in the main interface (I generally dislike inspector windows and would hate to have to use one to see that data).

On a related note, can notes be displayed inline, below the action they are attached to like in OmniOutliner or are the notes relegated to the inspector window?

Just how Applescriptable will it be at the outset? Currently, I've written a little script for myself that grabs the full list of my currently active actions and outputs into iPod Notes format (hypertext navigable which was ridiculously easy to do—consider this for a future feature please). How easy will it be for me to pull out a complete list of my actions (preferably, only the active ones) with Applescript in OmniFocus?

Lots of great comments!  We really appreciate all your feedback.

• Olga:  We're definitely thinking about Palm integration (I'm currently using a Treo).  Of course, we're also thinking about the iPhone.

• PhysicistJedi: We check off the box (like OmniOutliner) and use gray and strikethrough when you complete a task, sort of like this:

<del datetime=“2007-04-21T00:36:59+00:00”><font color=”#808080”>Clean out personal email inbox</font></del>

We're still trying to decide just how much color choice to provide.  (The point of the app is obviously to get things done, not to fiddle with formatting.  But formatting can be very personal, so we also want to make sure that the formatting works for you rather than being distracting or even annoying.)

Singleton tasks can stay in the inbox and just be checked off directly.  Or you can create a “Singletons” project and move them there if you want to get your inbox to zero without finishing some of them.

Purple text means next actions, yes.

• David (and many others): Yes, there's already a Quicksilver plug-in.

• Jon: If Mozilla Thunderbird can drive some AppleScript or can synchronize with iCal, then it can synchronize with OmniFocus.

• Jason: We're trying to get it out as soon as we can, but we're also bumping up against the Mythical Man-Month.

• David: The Quick Entry panel is currently only available while OmniFocus is launched (though it can be hidden in the background).  You can also use Quicksilver, of course.

• Curt: I guess we should have showed you the context view as well!  In OmniFocus, contexts are hierarchical.

• Caruso_G: No, OmniFocus doesn't prompt you through any particular workflow.  You can decide how you want to use the tool, rather than OmniFocus deciding how you should use it.

• JLon: Your list of what “makes sense and works” makes sense and works for me.

• Bushford: No direct support for delegation of actions.  (But you can move them to a Waiting For context or whatever.)  Can you elaborate on what you'd like to see for this?

• GIJS: Rather than placing your task's next action in a separate column, you can simply add it as a child of your task and check it off when it's done.  See the “Preparation” task in the screenshot for an example of this.

• Hans: You could certainly use some external AppleScript to update OmniFocus' tasks from an RSS feed (or trac).  Or vice versa.

• Fancy: MailTags are definitely on our radar, but I don't think we'll be doing anything special with them for 1.0.

• Charles: The only user-styled text will be in the project or task's notes.

• Marlyse: We are including support for repeating tasks with start and due dates, but appointments that are scheduled to definitely happen at a particular time of day would probably be better suited to a calendaring tool (such as iCal).

• Gary: It definitely feels like using OmniOutliner, with the same keyboard shortcuts for entering information and navigating, the same dragging behaviors, etc.  But without any of the manual formatting/styling controls (except in notes), and with multiple windows supporting true clones of items.  (It's a branch of the OmniOutliner 4 code base.)

• Mep: A project is something you can complete; a folder is just a mechanism for grouping projects (and can't ever be completed).  A folder can only contain folders and projects (no tasks), while a project can only contain tasks (organized in an outline with subtasks), not other projects.

Notes are displayed inline, yes.

The AppleScript support is complete:  features are actually being tested in AppleScript before they're being exposed in the user interface.  For example, in today's alpha build (pictured in the screenshot) there's not yet any mechanism in the interface for deciding whether a task group is parallel or sequential, though that's actually a supported individual property of each task group and can be changed using AppleScript.

Whoops, I meant OmniFocus.

Ted

[...] Well, it seems that finally we can see what’s behind the guys at Omni Group. It’s about the hiper-hyped OmniFocus GTD-enabled software announced several months ago, we finally have a face. They posted a first screen-shot, and from what I saw it looks pretty interesting. I am a public fan of their products - OmniPlan proved to be an incredibly valuable resource for my company project plannning so far - and I constantly use their OmniOutliner for quick sketches or fast annotating documents. [...]

I everything that could be imagined is already mentioned in the previous entries.  Just sign me up for the beta.

Ken,

Great job on this so far. I can't wait for it. You last comment post answered the questions. Keep up the great work.

Thanks!

Shrop

I love how dependent tasks are handled in OmniPlan and I would very much like for OmniFocus to handle them in a similar manner.  When planning during my daily/weekly review I tend to assign tasks and dependencies at the same time.  The inability to handle even the simplest task dependencies is one of the major shortcomings of most GTD software on the market today.

[...] OmniGroup’s blog today has a post with a screenshot and substantive details on its highly-anticipated productivity software OmniFocus, which is based on David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) religion system which I have blogged about extensively in the past. From the article, Omni clearly sounds rather shy about letting out details, and they apologize profusely for the painfully beta-like look of the GUI, but all things considered the software sounds pretty promising. I’m on the email list for beta testers, and I’m looking forward to test driving it. [...]

I've been very excited about OmniFocus, but honestly I'm reaching the point where I can't wait much longer and will go with another solution (e.g., iGTG) if you don't release something soon.

It'll take an AMAZING product to get people to switch once they've committed to another product. The longer you take to release this, the more customers you're losing, even though they would rather have gone with OmniFocus…

[...] The Omni Mouth » OmniFocus screenshot and feature overview What OmniFocus looks like and how it works. (tags: Apple apps gtd mac organization osx productivity software omnifocus omnigroup) [...]

looking good! some thoughts:

- please, please, please: anything that appears as a floating panel should be dockable as a drawer. the drawer in ical the the *single* reason i like it better than sunbird. sunbird makes me edit event details in a modal dialog, and modal is *bad* for productivity. having to slide around a floating panel is almost as much of a workflow-stopper on the limited screen space of a laptop.

- i know you're talking about ical sync. but you should know that i consider the product essentially of no use to me unless ical sync is there. preferably bi-directional, and smart about using existing calendars if i want it to.

- custom metadata for tasks and projects, please! custom metadata is the secret power of omnioutliner.

- try not to make the app so linked to the GTD method that those of us who use our own systems feel bullied. let me hide the whole idea of contexts if i want to. let me declare some other sort of metadata to be top-level important and sort all my work by that metadata. by making omniplan GTD-savvy but not GTD-mandatory, you rise above the crowd of current to-do apps.

can't wait. you guys rock.

I have tried em all (I think!). This looks like the one! I would like to request that ical sync allows for existing tasks to be pulled into Omnifocus and then kept synchronized. Also that users get the choice of which ical calendars are synced.

Hi,

generally, I am excitedly waiting for when I can test it. When I read about your plans about an integration with OmniPlan I was thrilled.

I am definitely looking for better ways to have control over some sort of an calendar while assigning due dates to tasks (be it within iCal, or be it within OmniPlan, or be it with whatever else—wait, can I do this with iCal?—see the start and end date of all my tasks in iCal?) . That would enable me to assign due dates more realistically (earlier if there is more time, later if there is less time). That'd be sweet!

Keep up the great work!

Claus

Wow… tons of comments, but a few things I didn't see mentioned.

- What are you doing about archiving? Will things be archived?

- Are you developing with OSX 10.5 in mind? Are you going to make sure at the very least, it won't break in 10.5?

- Does it do the basics that kGTD does with recur/renew for all task? I have really started to use that in kGTD as it helps a lot for tasks and projects.

- Are you considering project templates? This would be a project that has a bunch of tasks that were all pre-formatted so it could be easily started. I would use this for things like trips and smaller projects.

I have voted before, but will vote again I rather you get it out earlier so we can play with it than wait till it is feature complete.

Release early and often.

BZ

Please make font size configurable, and if colors are not configurable, stay away from paler colors. The small gray letters in iCal were sometimes difficult to read before my recent eye surgery, and I still hate that iCal is not configurable that way. Lots of people have all different kinds of vision issues, and even more like to set font size and color to the way they prefer.

Thanks for the info on scriptability, Mail and Quicksilver.  Sounds like any Kinkless fans will not experience any bumps at all switching over.

Here's a thought…what exports will you offer?  OOP? RTF? PDF? 

Glad you're thinking of Palm.  I've been a long term Palm user (but I do wonder about the long term viability of the platform.)  For me, syncing with Palm might just be about looking at iCal…

I think one of the key things will be a well-designed set of print templates.  Something that will scale well between index cards and letter/A4 size.  Something that would look cool at a meeting…something tasty…

[...] Omni Group’s blog has a post about OmniFocus, which is their upcoming GTD productivity app for the Mac. It looks stellar. Today’s blog post is meant to show you what OmniFocus looks like and tell you in general terms how it works. We are really hoping to have a beta (possibly a non-feature-complete version) available soon, but until then, here is a screenshot for your viewing pleasure… [...]

Looks great! A few thoughts:

1) Does the quick entry only support typing text into the box? A much more useful entry method would allow for drag-and-drop of items such as emails (in Mail.app), files, webpages, etc. into the quick entry box, which would create a new action with a link to the item. I'm thinking about similar functionality to Yojimbo, but creating a link instead of making a copy (to keep file sizes down). This allows you to, for example, scan through your emails in Mail.app, see something you need to respond to tomorrow, use quick entry to add a link to an action that says “reply to this email”. When you open OmniFocus tomorrow, all you have to do is click on the link and go directly to that email, without having to open Mail.app and scan through your emails again trying to find that email.

2) Since OF will have date functionality, may I suggest that we add a “tickler” view, where actions may be grouped and viewed by their start date or due date. An alternative would be to have a “Today” view listing all actions starting today or due today.

3) I agree with Daniel that Elevations should be a part of OF. My thought is that you could assign an Elevation to a project, and have OF default assign a due date to that project based on the Elevation. That way, if there is something that you need to look at in a few months, OF will remind you to review it.

4) There should be an option to allow an action to sync with iCal as an event rather than a to-do. While I understand that you can simply go to iCal and add an event, adding this functionality in OF will allow you to keep everything in one place, without checking back and forth between iCal and OF to see where you assigned that action, or even just to make sure that you actually remembered to create that action item!

5) Finally, I'm sure you'll do this, but just in case: please make sure OF supports multiple languages. I live in Taiwan and have a lot of stuff in Chinese. Unicode will be very helpful, but I would also like to get support for Big 5, which is another popular encoding method for Traditional Chinese.

Eagerly awaiting the beta!

I have a request.

What I'd like to have is an ability to get external stuff to inbox.

Especially like follows:

I currently often use the audio memos option of my mobile phone (sony ericsson w810). YOu can imagine how fast you get the stuff out of your head!!

So I see to options:

Implement a grabbing feature via bluetooth or from a folder. (! coding efforts)

or

A reminder to clear your “phone” or what so ever.

I'm pretty sure that you know the feeling when you are not sure whether you processed all of your inboxes.

Udo

“I am an active kGTD user, since it is an Omnioutliner based app, one of the features i heavely use is to add my own columns with calculations for hours per task and total on nested task. For me it’s very important the possibility to attach hours information to tasks .”

@mauricio - I'd love to do this but have always been afraid of messing up the AppleScript that is kGTD.  Is it just a matter of adding a new column of type “duration”?  Thanks!

[...] The Omni Mouth » OmniFocus screenshot and feature overview (tags: GTD MacOSX mbwideas OmniGroup OmniFocus Software Organization) [...]

• Joel/Bushford: I think I understand.  The way I handle this in my workflow is to put the task in the Agenda:Jim context and set its start date, so that I can review the action with Jim when we meet on or after that date.  (Contexts are hierarchical in OmniFocus, so this doesn't unduly clutter the context list.)

I still see the tasks when I review the project itself, but I see that they're delegated because they've been placed in the appropriate Agenda context.  (And when I meet with Jim, I see all the things I need to discuss with him from all my projects.)  Does that make sense?

• Daniel: There is a little bit of elevations in the concept of grouping projects into folders, but we're mostly trying to work at the lowest elevations in OmniFocus.  (At higher elevations things are generally more abstract, so I find myself using OmniOutliner or OmniGraffle instead.)  But also see the response to Alex's #3 below.

We expressed our interest to Apple in developing OmniFocus for the iPhone on the day the iPhone was introduced.

• Sam and Mauricio: We plan to support custom metadata on tasks, projects, and contexts—but we'll just store that information (and display it in an inspector), we won't be trying to process that metadata in interesting ways in 1.0.  (No special metadata views, no metadata summaries.  You can, of course, write some AppleScript to make your own reports.)

• BZ: Completed and dropped tasks remain archived in the database until you delete them.

We're developing with 10.5 in mind.

Yes, OmniFocus will support tasks which repeat on fixed (take out the garbage every Monday) or flexible (mow the lawn again in a few weeks) schedules, as Kinkless does now.

We have a lot of ambitious ideas for project templates, but for 1.0 they'll probably be pretty basic (maybe just by making it easy to copy and paste from your templates).  We could spend a lot of time on features in this area, but we'd really like to ship 1.0 as soon as possible.

• Alex: 1) Quick Entry is not just plain text, it supports all the features of the main application (drag-and-drop attachments and links, etc.).  Does it make more sense to you to link back to Mail, or to just copy the Mail messsage into the action so you don't have to go back and forth?

2) The picture shows projects grouped by folder, but you can also group by Due Date, Start Date, Next Review, Added, and Changed.

3) Each project currently has a next review date (e.g. July 1) as well as a review interval (e.g. every 3 months), so you can configure some projects to be reviewed every week and some every quarter or year.

4) We're really trying to avoid duplicating iCal's functionality, but I do understand your point.

5) All Omni applications support Unicode.

• Bill: By changing the view options in the filter ribbon, you can show all your completed actions grouped by completion date.  (If you want, you could even write some AppleScript to automatically copy them into a Mail compose window addressed to your manager.)

• JohnJJ: I use audio memos on my phone also (it's great for ubiquitous capture).  You could certainly set up a repeating reminder easily enough—and perhaps you could then run some AppleScript to grab stuff from your phone and toss it into your inbox.  That'd be very cool.

I second the request for a priority mechanism.

to Ken, on delegation:

Yes, I think the hierarchical context will do the job.  My concern with using contexts - without hierarchy - was that it would lead to an unmanageable list…

so, when can we see a Beta ? :-))

o exciting! thank you!

I want to second:

  Olga on integration w Missing Sync.

Charles on a font that one can set in the default, and then forget about any formatting at all ever.

  RS on dependant Tasks.

  Daniel on integration w OmniPlan asap - I too would buy both if they were integrated.

  McOgilvie on font and size configurablity and please may next actions appear optionally-not-necessarily in purple or any other color. God knows I'm always in danger of fiddling rather than making widgets, but the daily irritation of a basic application that can't be personalized would be a deal maimer maybe a deal killer. But all Omni apps have pleased, so I will keep the faith and continue to salivate.

Ken Thank you so much for the information and discussion.  Hierarchical contexts & review dates are brilliant and the whole approach looks clean and smart. But I hope you don't let paper-based GTD limit what you're willing to let OF be used for.

1.  I'd really like to see sortable, multi-valent, user-defined metadata.  Being able to add columns looks like the best approach to me (much more versatile than tags which are binary).  However it's structured,  it needs to be sortable.  This can cover a range of user needs, for example, priorities, urgencies, “delegations,” locations, durations,  and lots of things that you and I haven't thought anyone might need.  The point is, there are many uses for that cut across context and project hierarchies. 

2. re: “delegation”—hierarchical contexts in Waiting Fors and Agendas aren't adequate to me (unless there are clones of tasks, which would also handle it). In the mostly volunteer organization I work with, I have individuals who have many roles:  board members, project leaders, committee members with me, and volunteers to set up for a conference or sub as a workshop leader.  I'd like to see all the tasks that relate to one person (or group of people) whenever I'm about to meet with them or call them, or negotiate how tonight's class is going to be run.  and I want to beable to put those tasks in different contexts as well.  So agenda per person seems unecessarily limiting to me.  @James can be a context, but so is @Calls for some of the same tasks. 

3)  iCal Sucks—as a user interface:

Anything other than looking at the current view ends up being a context switch for me, because it takes too many clicks and keystrokes to get to and the clicks don't fit Fitt's law. They're too finicky on my laptop. 

And half the time, there's no way to look at the next 3 or 4 weeks,  which is the main period for I'm negotiating schedules in.

And ... and ... and ... there's a lot more, but that's a post-version-1.0 rant. 

4)  Alex is right about needing to be able to post events, AT A MINIMUM.  Even David Allen uses the calendar to post have-to-be-done-today tasks (as all-day events) and to block out time for tasks (that take morethan an hour, I think it was).  And I'd love to be able to go from event to task and from tasks to event, so that I can immediately see what's up when this afternoon's meeting gets postponed til next week, with 2 tasks on the agenda due before then and 3 others dependent on people who will be gone next week. 

Events can be a task in some cases, a context (container of tasks) in another, and simply non-discretionary time in a third. 

Again, probably a post-1.0 issue. Managing Focus really needs to be able to address both attention and time.  kGTD only aspired to manage GTD lists, but I'm hoping for a tool that really does support managing my focus and not just another list manager.

None of this is meant to take away from what you've accomplished, which I'm really looking forward to.  Thank you.

I'm also looking forward to this very much. And though I have some requests/suggestions, don't take that to mean that I'm not loving what you've already done.

I saw your mention of hierarchical contexts. Some (many) of my tasks can be done in multiple contexts that aren't necessarily hierarchical. Hierarchical might be like Office and Computer. But I might be able to do that same task on my office computer or my home computer, or my Palm for that matter (especially in this day and age when so much can be done in so many locations.) Or if I need to discuss something with my boss, that could fall under contexts Boss, Phone, E-mail, etc. Similarly many of my tasks help lead to the completion of more than one project (which I look at as each being a specific desired outcome.) Filling out some form at work, for example, might help me accomplish more than one outcome for the case for which I'm filling out the form. I guess I'm talking about including many-to-many relationships between tasks and contexts and also between tasks and projects.

Tags or maybe the ability to have multiple additional, user-defined columns might be one (two?) way(s) to accomplish this (or might be good for other reasons too.) Sometimes I differentiate between location contexts and tool contexts, for example, so allow me to decide that I want a separate column for each. I also have, for another example, a case (account) column which is important for the work I do, but doesn't really take care of the need for a context column or a project column.

And then also being able to sort, filter, or search by multiple columns, e.g., all the tasks that involve my Boss and the Smith account. (Or why not OR searches, This But Not That searches, and other Booleans?)

Someone mentioned priorities. I'd like to see them available too (maybe just as one of these user-defined columns that I'm suggesting.) Even after filtering for next actions within a specific context, I often have more tasks than I can make sense of, so at that point I sort by priority (and/or urgency.)

It will be interesting to see how able you are to deal with the limits imposed by syncing in various ways (with Mac's various apps, with Palm.) Palm limits you to 15 categories for example. Mac's iCal may not give you the ability to set up these many-to-many relationships I'm suggesting; the user might need to pick a default category/calendar for example, instead of having the task show up on multiple calendars (say if you use a calendar for each context.) That would limit the usefulness of having a task assigned to multiple contexts within OF.

Being able to GTD on my Palm is essential as that's something I have everywhere. I sync to my Mac at home if only for backup purposes, but it's nice to be able to GTD on my Mac as it has a larger screen than my Palm (obviously.) Plus I'm more likely to print from my Mac than from my Palm (actually I don't print from my Palm at all.) I'm not allowed to sync my Palm to my office computer (Windows) which sucks but I'm still able to GTD at the office on the Palm, obviously, at least. Plus my job often involves being “in the field.” I'm not often enough within wifi range so being able to GTD on the internet isn't all that important to me.

Being able to record finished dates and to archive tasks and projects is important as it can be useful to show what I've been doing, what I've accomplished, to my boss and also to document “Reasonable Efforts,” something that comes up in the court hearings that my job involves. (I'm a social worker in child protective services if you're curious.)

So, thanks for all the work you've done so far. I'm looking forward to your first beta and your 1.0 as well as future versions. If anyone can come close to all that I'm hoping for, I'm most confident in Omni. Lord knows I haven't been able to come close in my feeble attempts with Filemaker. (No slight meant to Filemaker, only my newbie database skills.)

Sweet screenshot. When can I testdrive it? Also, will there be i-sync integration?

>“I haven’t quite grasped the idea of linking a To Do or Calendar event with an e-mail. It seems very …something…inelegant?… to have a whole e-mail message show up in the To Do or Calendar entry. Or are there other ways other apps do this?”

I frequently connect email with iGTD.  In this app's case, the email itself is not sucked in iGTD (like Inbox Beepers does), just a link to it.  I get many emails with tasks mentioned in them, and once linked, if I need to reference the email, I click the link in iGTD and the email opens.  For me, email is an integral part of my GTD workflow.

I'd like to add my vote for many of the above requests, but in particular:

1. sortable, user-defined metadata by adding arbitrary (dates, text, numbers) columns to the view/fields to any text entry boxes.  Lotus Agenda did this really well back in the day.

2. the ability to show task dependencies or a daily work schedule.

The last one is an absolute must for me.  Most GTD software forces me to mark tens of tasks as 'delegate' or 'waiting for'  to get the next action list to a reasonable length.  Then, once I've finished a task, I must manually pick the next action from the long list of 'waiting for' tasks.  I need an easy way to assign the order/dependency of tasks during each morning review to plan my day.

two questions:

1) Will there be an upgrade/crossgrade price for thoes of use currently using OOP and kGTD?

2) Any word on slick keyboard navigation? The keyboard isn't just faster, it's healthier for your wrists! :)

Also, not sure I saw anything about 43 Folders.

Is there someway we can get that type of functionality included (1.2, 1.5).

To me, at the basics, it allows tasks to be set for a day or a month or a year and when that d/m/y comes about these tasks unearth themselves. Maybe the get dumped into the Inbox for processing?

I can't stand doing it on paper.

BZ

[...] For those folks who are interested in further details please visit the OmniFocus Blog and sign up for the beta mailing list. [...]

Oh, by the way guys, thanks. Looking forward to the app.

Looking like a real app!

How about hooks to OP? I suppose that may be later, but it'd be nice to tie tasks to the project schedule.

Can't wait till the beta comes out, iGTD has been driving me batty with annoying bugs. I'd like to be annoyed by new ones =).

good work OG!

[...] The Omni Mouth: OmniFocus screenshot and feature overview And all the Mac GTDers go crazy. [...]

Thanks for all the continued support and feedback!

Richard: There will only be one next action, but there will also be an option to filter tasks by “available” actions. I think this will provide the result you're looking for.

Jonathan: There will be a special upgrade price for people using OmniOutliner and kGTD. We agree that keyboard navigation is important and I think you'll be happy with it in OmniFocus.

Tarek: Yes, we've been discussing the bullets. They provide an easy handle for dragging stuff around, but they do clutter the interface a bit. We may make it so they just appear on hover.

BZ: We aren't offering any direct support for 43 folders, but you could possibly achieve some level of support through folders, contexts or metadata. I'm excited to see the solutions people come up with.

FWIW, I could care less about syncing.

Releasing something soon should be the priority. Additional features can be added later.

Everything looks terrific and the suggestions made have been good, as well.

I don't know if this is possible, or a good choice, but would you consider including some “additional” features that would be accessible via AppleScript, rather than not include them, at all?

This might be a good way to introduce the features “under the hood” before exposing them via the UI. This may reduce the time needed for testing/QA that would otherwise be needed…

I bought a Blackberry Pearl after I saw the iPhone…knowing I would switch once its released.  I have moved on from kGTD to iGTD with a similar hope that OF will be where I end up.

Couple of features I like in iGTD:

- calendar allows me to click on a date to add it in

- link to address book so I can link in a contact

- ability to flag next actions, mark them as maybe, pending etc.

- ability to prioritorise

What I would love to see in OF is a couple of pre-populated templates (similar to the Stencils available for OmniGraffle) available for download so we can get some inspiration for how others might use OF.

Exporting to a web page (similar to OP's export feature) would be useful too.

Ready for any beta as soon as you can.  As long as it doesn't delete actions the way Kinkless did, I'm ready for it.

BTW, it looks great!

dv.

Yes, I emphatically agree with Jim! One view that shows me all of my next actions. So if I have 18 active projects and 5 single actions in my system, there should be a view that shows me 23 items—the 18 next actions from the 18 projects and the five single actions. And if that list were sorted by context, a la kGTD, that would be lovely.

If that feature is included, I will buy OmniFocus on the first day it becomes available.

Ken: Thanks for responding to all the questions and suggestions.  Somehow, though, I seem to have missed your reply about priorities.  I use the three priority levels in kGTD (sync'd with iCal) extensively, and would hope that OF at the very least includes the three priority levels in kGTD/iCal.

T'would be nice if you could add columns for things other than start date and end date such as persons to who task is related or delegated.  I'd also like to be able to filter on that column or any of the other columns.  If you could save your settings for various views you'd have a lot of the functionality of Lotus Agenda which once did all of this GTD stuff in a superior way.

Sounds like a perfect sort of features for 1.0.

As for further developement, I'd really like to see a time measuring tool. Like, you click on a task, it becomes active and the timer starts running.

But I understand that the reports would time take some serious toil.

(A good example of time measuring tool is a web-based SlimTimer. Its reports are really good and flexible. An example of task managing and time measuring tool is FusionDesk for Windows. Not that I really checked its time reports though.)

VERY VERY EXCITED.

Well, great to hear that there is progress on this project. I am desperately waiting to upgrade my prodcutivity suite (kGTD, OO, ...) with something more stable and more integrated with the rest of Apple and more productive.

However, reading between the lines of your post I get a bit worried, when OmniFocus will actually increase my productivity. Sofar, there was a big hype produced and one screenshot. Well, at least that is what the potential customergs got to see. This becomes quiet worrying whilst reading that there are only few ressources on this project. Sounds very much as if Omni has other priorities at the moment to assign its ressources to. Or might it be that OmniFocus is not a priority yet? Is is a development done between 8 and 10 in the evening by a handfull of motivated freeks?

Do not misunderstand me. I love Omni and I am really looking forward to using OmniFocus. It all depends on how long I can keep myself motivated to wait for it.

One feature that would be useful for me (and perhaps many others) is the ability to “tag” tasks with people in our address book. This way we could create smart lists such as “Tasks related to John Smith”.

Already have most of your software, currently using iGTD and certainly willing to try OmniFocus!

Best regards,

What Jim said above. A view that just shows you all your current NAs in one window would be tremendously helpful!

And as far as setting priority/urgency… in true GTD form, this happens at the Weekly Review. I haven't seen any other app that provides good support for the Weekly Review. I'm hoping that this will be it. I don't need priority or urgency settings, sliders, bells and whistles, fussy overhead. Just a pure GTD app, done in the clean and elegant Omni way we've come to know and love.

I think it's hilarious, too, that one minute people are demanding that you release this app ASAP, yet the next, they're asking for all sorts of added functionality that seems way outside the scope of what OF (and GTD, for that matter) is intended to be. With Ethan and Merlin advising, I'm confident that this app will be *great*. And now that I've seen the screenshot, I'm even happier—and more willing to be patient, since it's now clear to me that my hopes for OF are well-founded. Good job, Omni!

I'd like a “brainstorming”, note taking, clipboard type of sub element for each project. Look at Curio http://www.zengobi.com/company/pr/curio10.html for an example this type of thing. I think Curio is very nice, but overkill.

I really like the Gold Fibre Project planner note books. Something like that for Project Planning Notes, urls, brainstorming.

Things look great, love your software.  Thanks for the passion, energy, and attention to detail you put into your programming.

Syncing between my work and home macs could make this my favorite app ever.

Will you be providing a TO DO TODAY LIST window. I.e. a reminder that sits on the destktop telling me what I have to do today? This is what I understand Entourage will be providingin the new version. It is a very attractive feature.

Look forward to hearing from you. Thanks and regards, Jack

What about support for adding prepared checklists for tasks? Once a month I would like to see my checklist “Office”.

It will contain:

Do Invoices

Pay bills

Rip of workers

Adopt Vista

Sell soul

Laugh 32.4 minutes.

Return to reality.

PS.

Being able to have these checklists as memos in my Palm would rock my world.

Clean, spare. Keep it that way, please. Add in recursion for those who need a single ring to rule them all (GTD for GTD, or GTD^GTD) and everyone should be happy. For me, it's definitely OMNI-UI, which is good, because it keeps the optionality in the background, where it should be. I'll wait patiently for B.