Using OmniFocus 4.7 with the new Planned date field is a breath of fresh air-simplicity reigns. The toggled tag groups are also welcome and intuitive. Those two features moved me from NotePlan/Things back to OmniFocus. I refer to 4.7 as the Kaitlin Salzke edition. I was grateful for her plug-ins available to the community without charge, but now I am grateful to return to just using the stock app (mostly) without involving Keyboard Maestro scripts that run at 12:05am and so on.
I can’t help but notice the beta is more stable for me than the previous released version. My only issue is that I’m used to Things’ almost simultaneous sync and the OmniFu sync is a little slower (even though I am in the United States). I have an always on server (Minnie), so I will set up a WebDav tonight and see if syncing that way works faster.
Time to stir the pot…I am edging toward the conclusion that OmniFocus with Planned date, Today view, and Forecast view could be the simplest task manager available if you just want to see what’s on your plate today without seeing tasks that are not available. That’s assuming you ignore the advanced features, which is certainly doable. You don’t have to have projects or tags if you choose not to. I like all the advanced features, especially the repetition options. As a long-time user, I’m moving towards simplicity by exchanging automations for a quick click on the Inspector that has everything enabled. After three years away, I’m back in the OmniFu fold.
Here’s a post from OmniGroup head honcho, Ken Case, replying to a thread about Planned Dates.
Previously, I had a Keyboard Maestro macro that opened OmniFocus on the left side of my screen and set to show an OmniFocus perspective. The macro would then open Fantastical on the right side and switch to Day view. I would drag an OmniFocus task to a time block in Fantastical. That was how I scheduled time to work on a particular task or project.
The Planned Date is most likely gonna change my workflow and I would be relying on Planned Dates and the Forecast perspective to figure out my workload for tomorrow.
I’m enjoying the new repeat settings (repeat until a particular date or after a number of repetitions) and the mutually exclusive tags (changing a tag from High Priority, Medium Priority, or Low Priority) feature has me rethinking of new use cases.
Aah Ok. I was thinking “Today” view similar to Things, something I rely on a lot an its also the place I work out of.
It’s been a while since I have used Omnifocus.
Though I am waiting for 4.7 to release to give it a retry.
If the “planned date” items will appear in Today Forecast view then that will sort out my main hurdle. I am aware that I can create Today Custom view, but that doesn’t update the task items on the app icon - again something I find very useful.
