A "Tagging" Solution via Find Text in perspective

#1

Well, I’m officially very excited about version 2 of OmniFocus. There has been so much debate over the years about whether tagging should be included in OmniFocus. I don’t want to open up that debate again, but I have discovered a tagging workaround that works extremely well for me.

When creating a perspective under filtering, you can now search text. So, you can create a perspective that searches for particular tags, in the example that I am going to use, @waiting

Here is a situation:

You have sent an email to Bob asking for a document. How do you track it?

Based on an improved OmniFocus feature here is what I now do:

  1. write the action “follow up with Bob about document” and assign the @bob context. In the note field write @waiting.
  2. when meeting with Bob, you will see the note OR when reviewing your @waiting perspective, you can see everything you are waiting for.

Some of this works in OF1, but as far as I can tell, until now you haven’t been able to create a perspective around a particular text search.

The perspective will also work on iPhone and the iPad.

I think “find text” in perspectives opens up some powerful new possibilities. As with any type of tagging system, the key is consistency and simplicity. I would be interested in your thoughts and other ideas.

Steve

#2

@steve, I agree - however this is also available in OF1. I used to do it by performing a search, viewing the results in the outline and then saving that as a perspective. I think “restore selection” was the magic checkbox which was required to do it (ensure it is checked when saving the perspective) - but it was definitely possible.

With OF2, it is far more accessible and easy to set up, which is a nice improvement.

#3

I hadn’t realized that you can save a search term in OF1 into a perspective. . . that is cool. I agree the OF2 makes it much easier to set up.

#4

Interesting how different folks use different strokes. I much prefer having the context be @waiting, and the tag be named for the individual. My reason for this is that I often look at the context @waiting to see in one glance what’s out there that I’m waiting for various people to get back to me.

If Bob calls me, I can go to the @Bob perspective (a saved search), but since I use @waiting a lot more than I use any individual’s context, I do it this way. Also, it keeps the number of contexts down.

Anyway, that’s my leaning. YMMV.

#5

Since my need for tags involves people, my version of this tagging workaround is to type a slash before anyone’s name in an Action. Not in the Note field, but in the text of the actual Action. So an action might read “Call /Bob re: meeting” or “Waiting for /Charles to finish the plans”. (Since not every name I enter needs a tag, that’s why I differentiate with the slash.)

This saves me the extra effort of adding text to the Note field. I just search for the text string (/Bob or /Charles) and can save that as a Perspective if I want.

Works reasonably well for me.

#6

My OF2 doesn’t recognize “or” when creating perspective where I want one or the other string to be found…