I downloaded the free trial and bought the iphone versions of omnifocus and I REALLY like what I see. However, before jumping all in, I need to know the best / recommended way to handle follow ups on emails. A very large portion of my inbox relates to a follow or to do, so by using the outlook follow up flag and date, I am (in 2 clicks) able to “defer” that email to a future date. That email then shows up on my daily TO DO list in outlook.
This really is life-saving functionality for me. Although I am also losing a lot through the other limitations of outlook. I’m am considering moving to mac mail and omni focus, but really need an easy way to do this. Sometimes, I do this 100 times per day.
Are you syncing through the Omni Sync Server? If so, you might consider using OmniFocus Mail Drop – it lets you create a custom email address, then creates Inbox items for every email you send to that address. Once it’s set up, following up on an email is as simple as forwarding that email to your Mail Drop address, then processing it in OmniFocus as you would any other task.
I have been using OmniFocus Mail Drop, but the OP brings up a good point. Is there a way to add a date to add to the forwarded action that will correspond to a due date in OmniFocus? I understand I will still have to process my INBOX, but I would love to add the due date while I am still in the email application.
It’s one of the feature requests the Sync Server team has on their radar screen, but we don’t have a specific ETA for when or if we might be able to add it…
Thanks Brian. I add my voice to this request. This feature (and the possibility to assign a folder) is a critical gap in the existing features today. Many basic task managers have this feature live for many years now (Toodledo, ToDo,…) and makes me prefer using them as a consequence, despite the many other benefits of your services.
Quickly moving items from my email inbox into OF, including attaching dates, projects, contexts etc., (and without having to remember loads of funky syntax) was so important to me that I moved my email client to Airmail—both on my Mac and on my iPhone. It has wonderful out of the box integration with OF that allows me to create OF tasks, complete with any data, directly from a mailbox. My workflow is now really slick.
Worth a look if you are prepared to move email client.
