Is there a way to recreate the functionality provided by Curt Clifton’s complete and await replay applescript on IOS? (It would be amazing BTW if this functionality was just built in). Was thinking maybe this could be accomplished using Workflow? Unsure. Maybe its been done? For those who don’t know what the script does:
Complete Task.
Create a copy of the task with a prefix like “Waiting for:”
Change context of task to “Waiting”
prepend a note to the task with "Last Action Taken: current date/time
I may give it a go but didn’t want to duplicate effort if anyone has already tackled it.
I approached this a little differently with a contexts-based workflow. Here’s how I do it:
I make a new task that involves another person always starting with the “who” followed by the “what”. Example:
Sally - what is going on with the project plan
I then set the context I will use to tackle it (usually “Email”, but might be “Call”, “Twitter”, or something else)
When I am done, instead of completing the task, I change the context to “Waiting”
In this way, the task construct makes sense, and I can even update the context later to my “People/Agendas” context (for in-person follow-up if needed) throughout its lifecycle.
The downside is that this doesn’t leave a trail of a completed task, but the good news is that it works on iOS and Mac, so no scripting required.
Not exactly what you were looking for, but thought this might be helpful - I like to find the simplest solutions to avoid AppleScript (only because I also use iOS so much and want a consistent experience).
With Ken’s help, I pieced together something similar to this in Workflow while testing automation before the last public iOS release. Here it is, adapted to fit your post:
(It works as an action extension and can be accessed using the share button of the current task’s edit view.)
EDIT: I have updated the Workflow link to incorporate the new autosave feature added in the latest 2.15 release. Will update again in the future if OmniGroup develops functionality that allows auto-completion or editing of tasks.
Thank you. Would you be so kind as to explain its actions briefly. As near as I can tell, it extracts the title and prepends "Waiting For ". It also expects a “waiting” context and does something with the date?
Absolutely. You’ve summarized its actions pretty well already. The first part of the workflow captures all the pieces of data that OmniFocus outputs when running the share action and trims out only the detailed task information in the form of a long URL (storing it in the variable “Dictionary”).
As you mentioned, it then extracts the completed task’s title and project from the dictionary, uses the current date and time to create the new task’s note, and prepends "Waiting for " to the title. It also expects a “Waiting” context, but you can change this in the workflow to any other context name to fit your setup.
The new task is created at the end using the /add URL scheme. The URL encoding actions scattered throughout are required to handle any spaces in the task title, project, or note (without them the workflow would result in an error if spaces are present).
What an awesome idea @bryan. I built on your workflow and transitioned it to my own system. I thought I would be remiss if I did not share my updated. The only major change that I implemented was the re-opening of the original task and used the new Omnifocus add step as opposed to the URL scheme (simply for readability). Thank you for creating this in the first place!
Glad to hear my idle experimentation is being put to good use!
Ironically, I haven’t used this workflow much myself in the past few months because in practice I found it too cumbersome for me to access the workflow from the iOS task list view (it requires a push on the task, a swipe down to the bottom of the task properties, 3 more pushes to access the workflow itself, and then finally a brief wait for the Workflow app to run in the background).
I ended up adopting something simpler, similar to @deturbulence’s suggestion, with the addition of the occasional TextExpander snippet to add a task title modifier (I don’t really need much of a completed task trail).
I like your idea of automatically returning to the original task though. Perhaps if a couple more automation features are added down the road to iOS (e.g., the ability to autocomplete/edit tasks through URL scheme, and a simpler way to access the share screen of tasks, such as with a long-press of the task from the task list view) I might give the workflow another try!
One nit of an idea: I believe Workflow now has a mechanism to allow the user to tailor the workflow on installation. Please consider this for the name of the context, in your case “Waiting”.
