Idea: OmniOutliner "Inbox" a la OmniFocus

#1

In a future update (likely, a X.0) of OmniOutliner, I’d love to see the addition of an “Inbox” into OmniOutliner.

This would serve to link all of the OmniOutliner documents together, as OmniFocus links all of its projects together into one ecosystem.

Benefits and added functionality:

  • “Add to OO Inbox” becomes a powerful capture tool. (vs. OF inbox, which should only be for TASK capturing)
  • This becomes a place to send items without having to go through the time and hassle of finding exactly where they belong… THEN you can batch clear your OO Inbox to organize items into their appropriate outlines.
  • It becomes easier to automate “Add to OO” Scripts (eg. from Drafts), without having to worry so much about the destination document.

Is this something that is interesting to anyone? Would love to hear some thoughts.

For me, this feature would turn OO from the program I feel I should be using more often, to the everyday essential I believe it could be.

#2

Ideally, I see my project maturation workflow to look like this:

  1. Initially capture the idea in Drafts
  2. Move the budding project to OO for further thought and clarification (for all my half-baked ideas that are not quite actionable)
  3. Move outlines (or elements of it) into OF once tangible action steps have been identified and committed to. (sufficient maturation of the project)

*) The outline for that project maintains as project support material (ideally, with an automated linkage to the corresponding OF project).

#3

Technically, I think, you can make this yourself using Row Links. Grab the top row link in each of the files you want and paste that into your Inbox outline. There’s probably ways of automating this with Keyboard Maestro or scripting.

Unfortunately I think row links aren’t available in iOS.

Still, neat idea. Be sure to email it in to Omni, forum posts aren’t strictly monitored for feature requests!