The Blog

OmniFocus is now on speaking terms…

by Liz on November 18, 2011

As soon as Apple announced Siri, everyone who owns OmniFocus for iPhone let us know just how much they needed these two tools to work together.

A couple of friendly productivity fiends took matters into their own hands and figured out that Siri could send emails to the OmniFocus inbox on their Macs.

We could have said “Yay, Siri and OmniFocus can work together” and gone back to our long-term projects. Instead, a couple engineers got to talking “You know, if we… and then the server… and…” “Wow, I think that would totally work!”

So, if you have an iPhone 4S and OmniFocus for iPhone, you can stop typing items into your inbox, and just say whatever comes to mind.

David “MacSparky” Sparks put together a couple videos to show you how it works.

OmniFocus & Siri from The Omni Group on Vimeo.

Here’s more detail on how to get set up:

OmniFocus + Siri configuration from The Omni Group on Vimeo.

If you tell Siri a time, OmniFocus will set the due date. If you specify a location, OmniFocus can assign it to the corresponding context.

OmniFocus + Siri: Location from The Omni Group on Vimeo.

We’ll be standing by on the usual support channels if you need any assistance. Twitter:@omnifocus, Email: omnifocus-iphone@omnigroup.com, Telephone: 1 800-315-OMNI

Comments

Thanks so much for this!

How does this play with context and time? If I say, “Remind me to do this tomorrow at home”, will it remind me when I get home tonight or wait until tomorrow. Siri seems to treat this as an or situation rather than an and request.

Michael Schechter

11.18.11 2:46 PM

Are there any plans to have this integrated into OmniFocus for the Mac?  I have OmniFocus running constantly on my Mac at home, so this would be more useful there as I wouldn’t have to remember to launch the iPhone app.

Barrett Jacobsen

11.18.11 3:06 PM

Amazing! I sure wish I lived at 1313 Harbor :)

Steven Sokulski

11.18.11 3:27 PM
Team Member

Michael: OmniFocus will assign both the context and the due date. Whenever either of those gets triggered, you’ll get notified. (Just like any other action with a context and due date.)

Liz

11.18.11 4:32 PM

That´s great news.

I ran into some issues though:

1. If you set a location based reminder in reminders.app (without setting up location based reminders in OF) all the following (non location based) reminders won´t get forwarded to OmniFocus. Quitting OF and reconnecting helps - but then also the location based reminders are being forwarded to OF.

2. Location based reminders in reminders.app seem to be more flexible as you can assign different options (when leaving/when arriving) to a specific location. So this might be nice to add in OmniFocus.

zwanzigtausend

11.18.11 4:40 PM

That was fast! I wanted siri to integrate with OF about 30 seconds after I got my iPhone, but never imagined it would happen so soon. I love it. Well done.

Lionel Gibbons

11.18.11 4:42 PM

Any chance this could be set to play nice with start dates instead of due dates? Recently I was waiting for some glue to try on a home repair. (Exciting, eh?) I told Siri to remind me to finish the repair two days later at 11:00 AM when I get home. Siri didn’t understand this meant I couldn’t do anything about it at 11:00 AM when I was away from home or when I was at home at noon the day before the reminder time.

Jamie Phelps

11.18.11 4:46 PM
Team Member

zwanzigtausend: OmnIFocus can handle leaving/arriving notifications the same as Reminders. That feature was added in version 1.12. For your other issue, I’m not sure I follow, so it may be easier to contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Liz

11.18.11 4:47 PM

I’m happy to hear this support is being adapted, but watching the demo videos it seems like there’s some shortcomings to these semi-supported hacks.

a. Seems like the productivity apps are getting into the game early by leveraging Siri’s existing hooks into calendars and reminders. Would be great to see something a little more well-integrated and organic. Since most things in a GTD system don’t have a date and time, I’m constantly looking for ways to keep Siri from asking me ‘When would you like that’ when I don’t want another voice prompt (it’s a GTD task, no time/date needed!).

b. Seems like there is Apple’s Cloud syncing and then the OmniGroup’s sync servers as well, plus the old desktop Mail.app email gateway -> OmniFocus desktop inbox pipe trick. Seems like it’s getting more and more complex and convoluted to keep track of how the syncing works. Shouldn’t we just be able to use the Apple Cloud service and move away from the OmniGroup syncs?

Roy

Roy Batchelor

11.18.11 4:54 PM

Great question, Barret! We wanted to do something for all the folks who were emailing us about wanting to use Siri with OmniFocus for iPhone - and we wanted the reminders to be as reliable as we could possibly make them. Keeping the feature in the iPhone app helps the latter goal.

With the current approach, if someone files a reminder, they’ll either get it from OmniFocus (after capture) or from Reminders (before capture). Not launching OmniFocus doesn’t mean you’ll miss something - it just changes where the alert comes from.

Routing things through the Mac would introduce more opportunities for missed alerts than the current approach. The alert might appear on your Mac, but neither OmniFocus or Reminders would do anything on your phone…

Brian

11.18.11 5:00 PM
Team Member

Roy Batchelor: (a) if you tell Siri “Remember to…”, you won’t be prompted for when.
(b) Adding iCloud sync support to OmniFocus would take a significant amount of time away from other improvements we’d like to make to OmniFocus.

Liz

11.18.11 5:09 PM

@Roy:  tell Siri to “add <taskname> to my reminders list.”.It will appear in OF without a due date.

Tony Paganelli

11.18.11 5:10 PM

really nice job David. Clean, catchy, funny.

Jonathan Cooper

11.18.11 8:06 PM

Thanks Liz, in hindsight I realize my question is the same as Jamie’s. Right now, it puts the reminder time in as a Due Date, is there a way to set it to always default to a Start Date? This way when I ask it to Remind me to do something at home on Saturday it doesn’t appear when I come home on Friday.

Michael Schechter

11.18.11 8:08 PM

Really well done.

I have been using Omnifocus since the pre-beta version (on my 1st Gen. iphone) up to now on my 4S with Siri. It is the best news ever.

I can’t wait to try this out. However, I can’t find any update in Hong Kong app Store yet. Yes, I can see a the new version in HK app store, but still now update available for the old user.

Please, I can’t wait any longer.

YK

11.18.11 9:43 PM
Team Member

YK: Not sure what you mean by new version vs. update for old user. There is only one version. It may show a price, but shouldn’t charge you again. Make sure you’re logged in to app store with same account where you purchased OmniFocus for iPhone originally?

Liz

11.19.11 12:42 AM

OK, my mistake. I bought my omnifocus using the US account, that’s why it don’t show up in my HK account!

Omnifocus and Siri works like a charm!
Thanks again.

YK

11.19.11 12:57 AM

Are there any alternatives to ‘remember to…’ that result in a task without a date or location?  I don’t always want a todo that starts with a verb. If my todo is “Steve Jobs by Walter isaacson’, it’s awkward to say ‘remember to Steve Jobs by Walter isaacson.’.

Robert

11.19.11 1:05 AM
Team Member

Robert: Yes, you can say “Add Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson to my Reminders list” (or “...to my OmniFocus list” if you’ve set up the separate list).

Liz

11.19.11 1:08 AM

Why isn’t there such an option in iPhone 4? It would be much better if I can sync my reminder to omnifoucs…

Cath

11.19.11 2:34 AM

I don’t seem to be able to get contexts working, no matter how much I simplify the addresses. Could we have a guide on this?

Lee

11.19.11 3:15 AM

Wow! This is so awesome! As an OF user, I was resigned to the idea that I’d probably never be able to add tasks using Siri. You guys are the best (not to mention very, very clever). Thank you!

Brian

11.19.11 4:46 AM

Can OmniFocus for iPad and Mac please have this same feature? That way, items in the reminders.app or iCal would be pulled across whenever OmniFocus on any of these devices was launched.

Lee

11.19.11 4:50 AM

YOU ROCK!!! I’m so glad i’ve switched to OF from Th*ngs… :-)

Obyor

11.19.11 6:01 AM

Been waiting for this! Thanks so much.

I can’t find this anywhere in the comments, but what if I don’t want to leave a reminder, but simply speak a new task into the inbox? For instance “talk with Steve about last week’s meeting”.

I can’t seem to make that work. Any suggestions?

Thanks again.

John

11.19.11 6:44 AM

From the iCloud terms and conditions:

You further acknowledge and agree that the Service is designed and intended for personal use on an individual basis and you should not share your Account and/or password details with another individual.

Is is still a good idea to share my iCloud account details with OmniFocus?

Martin

11.19.11 7:54 AM

Has anyone had any luck getting custom locations to work with the sync?  I got Home and Office to sync just fine but no luck on any of my stores or other locations.

Barrett

11.19.11 11:48 AM

Thanks Liz, but that’s too much talking.  I wish I could just say: “Add task Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.”  When you start having to remember to say “to Omnifocus list” after the task, chances are good that Siri will cut you off.

robert

11.19.11 12:13 PM
Team Member

Hi all. I’ll try to answer a few more questions here, but our forums are probably a better place for on-going conversations about the new Siri integration (and any other OmniFocus topics). forums.omnigroup.com

Cath: We set this up for the iPhone 4S, because that’s where Siri is. There’s actually some extra engineering challenges getting it to work when the reminders are typed in without risking some notifications being lost.

Lee: You need to have a context set up with the same address, at the smallest radius, with same leaving/arriving setting. If that still doesn’t work, contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Lee: The solution we’ve designed for the iPhone 4S would not work well with the Mac or iPad because it could cause you to lose some notifications.

John: OmniFocus is hooked into the reminders system. You have to say something that Siri knows to put in Reminders, like “Remember to…” or “Remind me to…” or “Add _____ to my Reminders list.”

Martin: The iCloud account info is only so that OmniFocus can access your Reminders. It never gets sent to Omni. I can tell you it’s safe, but I am not a lawyer and ultimately it’s up to you (and your lawyer?) whether you feel comfortable entering your account information in any situation.

Barrett: That sounds like something we could help with more easily on the forums or via email (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)).

Robert: Sorry, we have no control over what phrases Siri understands. (Dear Apple, please give us more flexibility to interact with Siri. Love, Omni.)

As I said above, the forums may be an easier place to collaborate with other OmniFocus users, and you’re also welcome to email us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Liz

11.19.11 12:42 PM
Team Member

PS Thanks everybody for your interest. We realize this feature is complex, and will probably be adding more detailed information to our website soon. I hope I was able to clarify things at least a little in the meantime.

Liz

11.19.11 12:44 PM

This does not work at all, irrespective of what you tell Siri. Keep trying, though.

Chris

11.19.11 12:48 PM

Not working for me.

Has Reminders category and all activated. Nothing comes through to OmniFocus.

Weiyun

11.20.11 12:18 AM

If you’re looking for a simple syntax to add date- and context-less items, just use “Remember”. You can skip the “to”, and adding simple items no longer sounds awkward.

“Remember ___________”.

Dear OmniGroup:

Please allow “with context __________” to be tacked on to the end! When you import items, look for that pattern, assign context, and strip the text. Boom.

Mark Jaquith

11.20.11 1:57 AM

Hi

This isn’t working at all for me either :(

I have no idea what I’m doing wrong, followed the tutorials but the reminder are still showing up in the standard reminders app and not OmniFocus

Rich

11.20.11 3:11 AM
Team Member

Rich: If you’re having any trouble getting this set up, please feel free to contact our tech support ninjas for assistance: you can email us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), or telephone us (during business hours) at 1-800-315-6664.

Tasks you enter with Siri are initially added to the Reminders app, that’s expected. Until OmniFocus for iPhone sees and captures those tasks, they’ll stay in Reminders: this means you’ll always receive timely Siri reminders on your device, either from the Reminders app or from OmniFocus (once it has a chance to capture them).

Reminders may sync your tasks with iCloud immediately, but sometimes not—that part isn’t within our control. Once Reminders does sync with iCloud, OmniFocus has the opportunity to capture those tasks—which OmniFocus will try to do each time you open it. For more details about this process and some troubleshooting advice, please see the Tips & Tricks for Siri -> OmniFocus capture thread on our forums.

But again, please don’t hesitate to contact our support team if you’re having any trouble getting this set up. We’re here to help!

Ken Case

11.20.11 8:00 AM

Its worth mentioning that if you do most of your work from a laptop or a cell phone (and therefore can’t assign a location to them), then, Omnifocus + Siri will not be able to assign contexts to most of your tasks.

I know that the reply from Omni is going to be - its apple’s fault not ours. And I’m not trying to assign blame, but at some point, it would be great if, with further refinements, one were able to assign contexts in Siri to all of those non-location based tasks that we do on our laptops, cell phones etc.

Peter

11.20.11 1:03 PM
Team Member

Peter: We’d love richer integration with Siri than what we have now as well. We’ve thought about pre-assigning a project and context by saying something like “Remember to ‘Do stuff’ for project ‘Foo’ in context ‘Bar’ starting ‘next week’”.

But for this first pass, we just decided to focus on capturing basic tasks to your Inbox.

In some ways, perhaps it’s better that we don’t try to recognize all those other attributes yet. Not that we won’t ever do this, but speech recognition is still a rather inaccurate technology. Siri knows this, and relies on hints like knowing all of the contacts in your address book so she can match what you’ve said against them. And even then, she asks for confirmation that she’s really understood what you’ve asked her to do before she creates a reminder.

Right now, we can match against your location-based contexts fairly well because we can rely on Siri assigning a good, confirmed location (based on your current location or an entry in your address book), and we can easily match up that location with the location of one of your OmniFocus contexts.

And similarly, we can rely on the due date being what you actually meant it to be, because once again you’ve had the opportunity to confirm that date with Siri.

But for other attributes, like matching against a project or context (neither of which Siri knows by name), you could easily end up with the wrong thing assigned and bury a task in the wrong part of your database where you wouldn’t see it. It seems a bit safer for it to start out in your OmniFocus Inbox, where you can process it and make sure it’s correctly set up the way you want. (Processing it from your Inbox also gives you a good opportunity to fix up any other mistakes Siri may have made in the rest of the task’s text, as well as being an important part of the standard GTD workflow—if that’s what you’re using—where you can decide exactly what that task means and potentially break it down into multiple steps.)

Despite the above limitations, perhaps direct assignment of other attributes by looking for key phrases would be worth it anyway—if not always, at least as a preference. Or perhaps you could map lists in Reminders to your project and context lists, and that way Siri would have already confirmed a known list assignment with you.

This 1.13 release is just our first iteration; we’ll keep thinking about how to make this even better. Thank you for the feedback; it’s definitely helpful to us to know what features you’d find useful!

Ken Case

11.20.11 1:45 PM

Thanks Ken for your thoughtful feedback. I always appreciate the passion and tenacity that Omnigroup takes in its approach to improving its software. Keep up the good work!

Peter

11.20.11 6:51 PM

How ‘bout some instructions? I hate watching these videos just to try to see a couple of screen shots!

Micah

11.21.11 12:20 PM
Team Member

Micah: There’s in-app help (accessible from the top of the settings page) and I’ve also started a forum thread with more details here: http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=22688

You can also post further questions on the forums, or email our Support Ninjas (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)).

Liz

11.21.11 1:07 PM

Capturing seems to stop after some time. I have to quit OmniFocus on the iPhone and reopen it to capture tasks again. Otherwise, tasks keep stuck in Reminders app.

Thomas van Benkeren

11.22.11 4:05 AM

Would it be possible for you to change the capture process in such a way that it syncs instead of capture? As you know Outlook syncs with reminders. However, if you capture the tasks it does not allow for syncing of tasks that are completed. (i have outlook at work and omnifocus at home and on my iPhone)  thanks

Doug Brown

11.24.11 6:53 PM

None of my Reminders were showing up in OF until I realized something:

I had configured an Outlook Exchange account to sync with Reminders, and as a result, all of my Siri ‘reminders’ were actually ending up in a list named ‘Tasks’, not ‘Reminders’.  I turned off the sync with Outlook, ‘Tasks’ went away, and now everything is dandy.

Jason

Jason Lyman

11.29.11 10:08 AM

second is awesome :)

haber

11.29.11 9:34 PM

The reminders work great - but when I specify a context (i.e. remind me to read marketing presentation when I get home), the confirmation that SIRI shows is in the Reminders, not the OmniFocus app as it appears in the video.

It still gets to omnifocus in the correct context, however.

danzo

12.03.11 7:28 PM
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