Hello friends. I have a dilema. Years ago I began toying around with Omnifocus after purchasing the apps everywhere. Eventually I realized I didn’t need that much power because I had less to juggle. Now I’m leading a group of people and have a lot of things to keep track of. I am thinking of upgrading from Omnifocus 2 to 3 but I don’t know if I should do the standard or pro plan. Any advise? Thanks!
Good morning, @Cal_Callison.
Congratulations on the new opportunity of leading a team!
OmniFocus is …um… focuses on managing your own time and actions. You can have actions that you can follow up on things that are assigned. From what I’ve seen on the internet, people tend to use other tools to collaborate with other people and resources. You might be interested in Omniplan.
I’m sure this thread will soon be filled with people suggesting what they use to collaborate with others.
Tools like: Trello, Asana, kanban, ms project, or putting it on a stickynote and attaching it to a pidgin.
Thanks for the replay @mandaris. I guess maybe I wasn’t clear enough. I’m not so much needing collaborative abilities in my task manager. I just need a way to track everything I personally have to do, which would include checking in on people who are planning different events. Sorry that wasn’t clear.
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(IMO) One of the greatest benefits of the Pro version is the ability to create custom perspectives. With custom perspectives, I can have an easy way to pull out just what I want to see at the touch of an icon.
There is also a custom tag option in Forecast available in the Pro version that looks interesting but I have not yet delved into using it.
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I ageee with @JoePreiser perpectives are the way to go, my omnifocus system at he moment is what I am calling a three gage system, every task gets three tags.
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The person involved in the task
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The task priority (minimum, low, medium, high, critical)
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Action type, (conversation, administration, programming language)
I then have a collection of custom perspectives to filter the tags. e.g I have one to give me all the conversations I want to have with people excluding myself.
I have another one to show me all the items I have that are in the post.
These are simple examples to avoid getting stuck in the weeds, projects are just used to give my tasks a hierarchy.
OmniGroup does provide a handy comparison chart Here
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Also, you can bet that when they launch their cross-platform javascript automation that it’s only going to be a Pro feature (as is AppleScript on the Mac in OF 2).
For collaboration, I’d look elsewhere.
Sharing tasks in OmniFocus 3 will not be available in v3.0. But it is on their road map.
The hard part about sharing tasks is that the other folks have to buy into OmniFocus themselves and also use it. For most of what I need, I e-mail someone else with a task description, any notes, and attachments and let them handle this task or project themselves on their end.
I did use Asana for a previous project and it worked well to notify my supervisors about what was done and when.
OmniFocus is focused on a single user experience. The task sharing will be a start on the road to collaboration.
Personally, I’ll repeat what others have said here in that the custom perspectives are what make the Pro version worth it. I’ve always used the Pro version, but I can’t imagine OF without it.
Back when the latest version of Things came out, I was tempted. Ultimately it was the custom perspectives that kept me with OF. Being able to say “I’m in Work mode. Show me my work list, and having all my tasks arranged exactly as I want” with one click is a game changer.
(By the way, I’m a graduate student, manager of 15 employees, owner of several pets, and a single homeowner, so I have PLENTY to manage, and OF has handled everything I’ve ever thrown at it and then some.)
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Maybe if your life isn’t so complicated, you can get away with OF Standard. It has the basic foundation.
I have to echo @andreamocko. Custom perspectives are awesome! The ability to tap a perspective shortcut and have it arrange your data automatically in a grouping/sorting that makes sense is quite easily the best feature.
I can look at my tasks based on due date or by context (physical location, tool, person, energy levels). I can sort the same data to show tasks that are available to me now.
At the office, I can look at just my admin tasks perspective. Anything related to management and taking care of the office goes here.
I also have a Big Rock perspective that looks at the current active Big Rock projects that are running at the moment.
Or I might just want to spend time on my computer. I can look at my computer perspective to work on those tasks.
In addition, I can sort any of these perspectives by due date. I can work on all the important and pending tasks that have due dates. I can clearly see anything assigned with a due date here.
I’m not a programmer but there are Applescripts available for download to help you speed up a routine task. Like many folks, I can look at an AppleScript and try to tweak it just enough to fit my particular situation. I don’t know how to make an AppleScript from scratch but I can look at the script and figure it out because AppleScript is very readable.
I know some Things 3 users like to just go to their Tags perspective and click away to turn on/off the tags they want to see. But they can’t save those settings in a smart list or smart search. OF3 Pro will be able to do that easily.
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