Moving from OF 1 to OF 2 Pro

OmniFocus
#1

My thought is to comment on my switch. As a naive user, these comments may give insight to the developers.

Version: I’ve just upgraded my install to 2.7. Took several attempts. Not sure why. I am on erratic connection to the world.

I’m doing a mix right now of a review and reading the guide.

###First Looks
The opening screen uses way too much screen. Fortunately I can change views and change fonts. (Nova is ugly)

I turned to classic view with everything checked, just to give me a visual indicator of what is available. In general Mac has been going to ‘hidden things’ You have to click or option click in a certain way to find things. Out of sight out of mind. Not a good way to start a new program.

I like the blue mini-icons in the sidebar. I don’t like the pale grey checkoff circles. In general the new program is low contrast

How can I get notes to show by default? (Aha! There’s a show all notes in view.)

I like the new perspectives. This gives me some of the things I wished for. But can I please have the option to add a customer perspective to the sidebar permanently? Aha! I can! click the star next to it. in Show Perspectives

Date Formats Showing a date as 2016-10-16 is less useful than it could be.

  • Firstly if the date is near, I don’t need to be told that it’s 2016.
  • Secondly, for me the day of the week is important. I have different people on different days. Saturdays are often a mess from customers coming in, so far less work gets done. Can I get dates to show up as “Wed the 28th” if it’s under 2 weeks in the future?

I like the multicolour aspect of status circles. Might be a good idea to have a more verbose status on mouse over. Takes a while to learn the codes.

Love the Forecast view. Provides some incentive to put due dates on things.

Haven’t figured out a way to NOT include all the calendars. I keep separate calendars for my work and private life. Some kind of focus needed here? Found it.

And also found that View in the Toolbar is NOT the as View in the menu bar. I don’t like that. If they are different, give them different names.

I’m trying to add dates and contexts. Being able to create perspectives that show “No context set” or sort by context.

Print. Has a datestamp at the top, but STILL NO NUMBERED PAGES!

Hmm. Guide is pretty good, but it doesn’t seem to be searchable. Command F brings up a search window, but even with Help as the active window doesn’t seem to search. Wanted to pause an action. Turns out only projects can be paused.

Ok. Enough for now. I’ll add to this later. Will likely answer most of my own questions and problems.

#2

Thanks to some other advice in this forum this is the structure I’m currently attempting:

Top Level Folders:

####Someday
Projects and ideas that are far off and nebulous. By default all of these are on hold, but I may flesh them out as time goes by.

####Spring – Snowmelt to Trees Arriving
All those chores to either get ready (priority 1) or get tidy for the Big Rush.

####Spring – May to mid June.
Mostly potting plugs and bare root trees, organizing shipments, sales. About half my sales occur in these 6 weeks.

####Summer – June-September
Transplanting, watering, weeding

####Fall – October to Snowfall (typically mid November)
Ideally all the transplanting is done. Hah. Also prefilling pots for spring, shutting down the irrigation system, last mowing of the lawn. Machinery maintenance goes here.

####Winter --From snow that sticks to snow that’s gone
Self education, pre-sales, tradeshows, reworking my web page, setting up kijiji ads.

####Recurring
These are things like mowing, weeding, watering that repeated have a repeat every, and defers.

Within each one, I have projects. I’m trying to set it up so that many of them are chunks that can be finished in a few days. E.g. I can get one pair of workers to “Walk the lines” from 2 until quitting time. (I have 4000 drip irrigators. They need to be checked that they are working. In a month about 1% get clogged. To fix, you take apart the dripper and put it back together. You often get wet doing it, hence doing it on hot afternoons.

#3

I have a project called ‘Monthlies’ Actions that I want to do every month – check a certain website, take progress pix on the farm.

How can I copy defer/due/repeat status from either an action to another action, or apply to all actions in a project?

Doing it to all at once is easy: Select them all, and fill fields in inspector. But copying from one to another doesn’t seem to work. My present workaround is to apply the attributes to a blank action, then duplicate the action. Is there a better way