I use OF4 on my iPhone 16 Pro Max only (I have no Mac or compatible iPad). It’s a bit sluggish, especially considering I’m using it on the latest and greatest device, but it seems rock solid and remains absolutely crucial to managing my life.
A bit of background:
I’m a singer in senior living centers. Every booking is a project. Every project has tasks that are under one of several dated branches: First steps, month before, two weeks before, week before, day before, day of, and day after. Aside from first steps, every branch is dated relative to the performance date.
A few select examples of tasks are:
First steps: Create invoice, create confirmation messages with mail merge
Week before: Send confirmation, set alarm to leave on time, decide on songs to sing
Day after: Create task under “Performed but not yet paid” project, archive song list,
I’m approaching 200 bookings in 2025, so creating these projects is no joke! It seems like I should be considering automation to create these projects, including dating these branches, but I’m not sure where to begin.
I’m new to automation. I’d LIKE to use it to create projects that take a lot of input, such as from a line-delimited text file.
It’s this a realistic use of omni-automation? A demo that creates that creates a project based on some input, and some guidance to get started (in the words of the boss in Office Space), that’d be grrrrreeeeaaat.
I’m starting to browse through the tutorials and API.
I recommend checking out Templates for OmniFocus, one of the excellent plug-ins in @kaitlin’s plug-in collection. Templates for OmniFocus supports placeholders, optional actions, and date calculations.
Alternatively, you could use Apple Shortcuts to create template-based projects. The shortcut could prompt for user input. Pulling input from a text file should also be pretty straightforward. It would probably make the most sense for the shortcut to generate TaskPaper (a task-based syntax for projects and actions) based on the input, date calculations, etc. An OmniFocus action could transform this TaskPaper text into a project to help you prepare for your next gig.
I‘d begin specifying how the automation should exactly behave. Depending on that, a plugin may be required, or a Apple Shortcut would do or @timstringer‘s template/TaskPaper approach would work. „Writing“ this automation on an iPhone could be difficult due to screen size. The more specific you get the easier it is for others to help.
For example the automation could ask you for a project name and a performance date and then calculate everything back. Or it could stick to dates Mo-Fr. Or iterate over all of the actions and propose a date that you could manipulate manually. Or your text file thing. But then there needs to be a predefined format. Are all the action names always the same?
I have the feeling to often make a bigger issue out of an automation request, but when I read your post I get so many questions/ideas in my mind. It‘s then difficult for me to estimate the effort and figure out the best solution approach. That‘s why I‘m raising these questions.
