I have all my projects(each client is a project) in OF2 and have different projects with different due dates. So if one project has lots of little things to do I would like a reminder of these things in the morning. I’ve tried multiple ways of getting this done and most require so much effort I;d never do it? Thanks in advance for any help or input.
I’ll give this a shot – I may not have enough information, so if my answers don’t hit the mark, feel free to reply and I’ll give another try.
If I am reading your question correctly, it sounds like you have multiple projects, and each client is a project. You want to get a reminder of when you need to aggressively follow up with a particular client/project due to circumstances. There are a few ways to approach this:
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The most straightforward way to do this is leveraging the Defer Until function for a given task and set it for the next morning (or whenever you wish to be notified). Depending on your settings in OmniFocus, the task will “appear” and you will receive a notification when the task is available.
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If you simply want/need a general reminder that you need to look at tasks, you can can set up a task like “Follow up on tasks for Client X” and use the Repeat section to set a daily (or however often) reminder. If you want to save some time, you can create a link for the Project/Client and put it in the Recurring task’s Notes section. This way, you can click on the link and be taken to the Project/Client quickly.
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If you need to have the specific tasks highlighted and the above strategy doesn’t work, you can set Flags for each task. From there, you can look at the Flagged Perspective and see all of the relevant tasks you need to complete. If you need to have a recurring task, you can leverage the Repeat section as appropriate. This assumes, of course, that you aren’t using Flags for some other purpose.
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If you are using Flags for another purpose, another potential idea adding tags like [Client Followup] to tasks and then create a custom Perspective searching for that tag. From there, you can either check the custom Perspective in the morning or leverage some strategies above. Creating a custom Perspective requires the Pro version of OmniFocus, however.
I hope this helps!
I use the Review perspective to remind me or tickle me. The Review perspectives becomes your daily tickler.
Every project/client gets a different review cycle. Most of my projects have a review cycle of 1 month for customers that have a due date set way into the future.
But as the project/client’s due date gets closer, I change the review cycle to pop up more often in the Review perspective.
Every project (client) has a different review date or review cycle. Every day, I check the review perspective and I get to see all the projects/clients. I can go through each project/client and click the “Mark Reviewed” button. A project that is due in 1 week will probably get a review cycle of 1 day. A project that is due in 4 weeks will probably get a review cycle of 3 days. But as the due date creeps closer, I’ll shorten the review cycle.
Every morning, I visit my Review perspective and remind myself of all the projects/clients that are coming up in the next 7-14 days. I go through each project/client and review all the next actions. I click “Mark Reviewed” when I am done reviewing each project. I know that the project will pop up in tomorrow’s review because I set the project/client to be reviewed every 1 day.
This is another form of “notification.” I don’t get distracted by the shiny new toy that we call “Notification Center” when I already have a notification workflow with the Review perspective.
By using the Review perspective, I no longer have to waste time resetting the defer date over and over again.
