Death of the Estimated Time field? [Restored! Now available in all editions of OmniFocus.]

I, too, would love to see the return of the estimated time field in future updates of OF 2 for Mac. As it is now, it exists but is tough to actually use.

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How do people use the estimated time field?
Iā€™m curious to see if I can improve my workflow, if anyone has a better technique.

I suppose Estimated Time to Complete is valuable for quick entry in meetings,
when the person entering items is noting someone elseā€™s work vs their own. And may not have a grasp of task time because its not theirs.

ETC is never prominent on my radar, because I donā€™t use OmniPlan & it may be beyond the scope of quick entry for me in a task minder or ā€œto-doā€ list.

I would rather hone my entries later, rather than micro-manage them at inception.
Because the tasks need doing; need to be logged, whether I can schedule them well at the time, or not.

Now that the tasks are split over 2 lines there is a ton of wasted horizontal space. There is plenty of room for an estimated time field and no good reason to remove it. Please bring it back. Same as with the other fields, if you donā€™t put a value in it wonā€™t show up, so whatā€™s the problem?

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I also use estimated time to plan what I can accomplish in my day. Only being able to see it in Inspector, rather than in a column of its own, makes that much more difficult.

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I wholeheartedly agree with this request. The Estimated time field is vital to my workflow. Please return this field to the OF2 main display screen and add it to the iOS versions for iPad and iPhone.

Thank you.

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I use estimated time primarily to generate a perspective called ā€˜Quick Winsā€™. Everything that takes less then 5 minutes is in it. Things like phone calls I needed to make during work hours but couldnā€™t when I entered the task. Itā€™s a great place to pull things from when you need to generate some momentum.

I also have a perspective ā€˜Little Bitesā€™ which has everything 15 minutes or less. Itā€™s great when I have 15 found minutes in my day and can get something a little more meaty completed.

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I created perspective with No duration tasks. Every day during my daily review I go to that perspective and fill estimated times into my tasks. But return estimated time field to basic row will be welcomed.

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I upgraded to Mavericks just so I could install OmniFocus 2. After installing OmniFocus 2 I promptly uninstalled it and went back to OmniFocus 1. Very disappointed to see that they have removed the Estimated Time field. This is important to my workflow and Iā€™ve been complaining since the get go that the field is not included in any of the iOS apps. Iā€™m not on board with this direction at all.

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Another vote for the ability to somehow see time estimates in the task list. I canā€™t even use the estimate field now because Iā€™m flying blind - I often estimate one task based on the times estimated for others in the same project to create or stick to a budget.

I realize there was a lot of work that went into the new layout, and changing it is a hassle, so Iā€™d like to suggest the following:

The ability to group by duration

Pros:

  • It wouldnā€™t require design changes to the ui
  • It would allow us to see the time to complete tasks in the list under duration headings
  • Enables quick wins to power through periods of low energy
  • Many happy users

Cons:

  • May take up more room, especially if each task has a different duration, but I certainly wouldnā€™t mind the tradeoff
  • Wouldnā€™t allow grouping by other fields

(I realize you can sort by duration, but you canā€™t see any estimates in the task list and inspecting each one is tedious.)

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It would be nice to have an Script with Omnifocus 2 that you can changed the ā€œestimated timeā€ of selected taks by range of duration (pulldown)

15 min
30 min
1 hr
4 hr
1 day
1 week

Maybe it help to add this field ā€œestimated timeā€ in the upcoming iOS update for the iPad

I have made on my mac an Textexpander Snippet group as workaround

I use the estimated time (ā€œdurationā€) column ALL. THE. TIME. Especially since I got in to OmniFocus from David Allen and the GTD method, when there are days that I just want to do some housekeeping, I like to have a perspective based on home and work contexts that allow me to sort by amount of time needed, and then I can slowly build momentum to my bigger items as I check off my smaller ones. It also serves as an easy way to pull up a perspective and figure out what kind of task I can do in the time I haveā€“short tasks up top, longer tasks on the bottom.

I havenā€™t upgraded to OmniFocus 2 pretty much for this reason. Iā€™ll hold on to OmniFocus 1 until then.

Please add it in!!

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Yes. Please, please, please, Omni people, put the ā€˜estimated timeā€™ field back. FAST!

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[just sent this email to OF support, and thought Iā€™d share it here too]

Hi OmniFocus peeps!

First off, I love your product. It still crushes Asana and other emerging competitorsā€“if only because itā€™s so incredibly easy to schedule complex projects. Daily email notifications of whatā€™s due (instead of just calendar syncā€“which can get messy sometimes) as well as shared tasks via a web interface and/or integration to systems like JIRA would be fantastic additions to the software, but thatā€™s not why Iā€™m writing.

When I recently upgraded to OF2, I noticed that the Estimated Time field was removed from the general task view. It turns out that being able to quickly enter estimates against tasks (and seeing rolled-up totals) is a very important part of my project management workflow, and it seems like more than a few other users agree with me.

I know (and appreciate) that youā€™re trying to keep the UX nice and clean, but the addition of this feature to the basic task view would take up minimal space and would provide immense value. Hereā€™s what implementation might look like (yup, I mocked it up for ya):

Is this something you could implement into one of your next releases? Thanks for your consideration, and looking forward to hearing if you can put this feature into your product roadmap, and when we can expect its release.

Cheers,
Seth

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Absolutely beautiful, makes the app much more focused, seth it my be worth sending your mock up directly by email to the omnifocus team. omnifocus@omnigroup.com I would personally love to see your mock up implemented.

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Iā€™m so happy to see this field included in OmniFocus 2 on the iPad!

Now, can we get that field on the iPhone?

And, of course, back where it belongs on the Mac.

Thanks again for creating the best task manager in the Universe!

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That is the problem that Iā€™m interested.
I would also like to see the Time Estimate field introduced to the iOS devices, and made more prominent on OmniFocus 2 - or at least be provided a work-around workflow.
The Time Estimate field is useful when you only have so much time available and you want to have a look at tasks that you can quickly get done.

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@kcase please bring the feature back!

There are many (too many) people who need this featureā€¦

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Iā€™ll pay you $100 if you write a script to have it. I bet there are a couple more users who would do the same!

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@omnigroup @kcase please bring this feature to back

1 Like