Omnifocus & Omniplan Integration Rant

I just downloaded version 3 demo and cannot find any integration with Omnifocus. Am I missing it?

I ended up purchasing Project Merlin 3 months ago so I could send info to Omnifocus; interesting that the company could not do it but a competitor could. It would be nice to everything under one umbrella.

Your not the one missing it ā€¦

Not the greatest, but exporting to Omni Outliner from OmniPlan and then Importing to OmniFocus seemed to do most of my heavy lifting. I then have to assign projects and contexts, but at least theyā€™re all listed in ā€œInboxā€.

1 Like

Great idea and troubleshoot. But for me Iā€™m interested in an easy sync option as incorporating a third app isnā€™t efficient and I could see me frustrating the hell out of it

Agreed. IT should be a straightforward integration. To clarify though, I donā€™t use a third app for this work around. I just export as filetype omnioutliner and then omnifocus has the option ā€œimport omnioutliner documentā€.

Yeah I know what you mean. Iā€™m just saying it should be two apps not three. No one from Omni seems to want to address this and I donā€™t understand why

1 Like

Iā€™m not 100% convinced of the utility of Omni Outliner vs something like Evernote (which handles ALL doc sync automatically on the account level) - regrettably, and multiple export imports is a hack work around.

What I think is needed is a ā€œfluidā€ cross application strategy that allows users a different environment for planning (possibly processing and reviewing as well) that updates OF for doing and GTDing.

My biggest complaint with OF (and Iā€™ve been trying for many years to get better at it) is I think it could and very much should have different environment / view options for planning. OP could *should?) very well be that solution - especially given itā€™s ability to ā€œlevelā€ resources and hopefully more things in the future to make it easier to find, and plan the most efficient next action structure and time table possible.

In a perfect world, OP and OF would speak together and even update each other! (i.e. update project actions / deadlines etc in OP and OF updates automatically. Perhaps contexts etc - items specifically dealing with efficiency in getting each action done are exclusively OF while project management / resources / general calendar etc is handled in OP?

Iā€™d guess that the vast majority of OF users focus on their business needs as OF is really way more than a grocery list / To Do app so providing this integration for Entrepreneurs and professionals very much seems a no brainer.

I really like OG but feel this is evolving too slowly and if theyā€™re not careful, some forward thinking new company will take the ball and run with it.

OG - what say you other than ā€œthese 2 apps donā€™t work together at allā€? Where is your future thinking strategy???

Thank you!

There is a very simple solution to this, and I canā€™t understand why they havenā€™t developed it yet.

Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you OmniEverything! The single app that just does everything. No more messing about with multiple apps, this is integration of everything: tasks, outlines, project plans, web browsing, email, vector drawing, database construction, spreadsheets, word-processing, email backups, quirky utilities such as Enigma machines, messaging app to all platforms, gaming, CAD, the list goes on.

There is nothing this app canā€™t do. Buy a mac with the OS installed and install OmniEverything and every problem is solved.

Come on OG guys and girls, get with the program.

Suggested price 99usd, with discount for users of any OG app.

ā€¦ Is it ready yet?

Andy

4 Likes

I would like to request for such integration, too!

Dear OG experts, please consider.

I think they should design the two softwares to compliment each other. They do different things but itā€™s very obvious how one could benefit from the intergration with one another.

Similar to how many professionals use software. Itā€™s rare to do everything all in one software. (Video editing, graphic design, publishing).

with omni plan 3 going out it was shocking to see that major features that people have been requesting have been ignored. Although some of the new views are very cool.

I think now that thereā€™s more competition in tech industry. Companies need to listen to the customer base (forums, social media, email support). Beloved Evernote has been one of the most recent examples of what happens when a company doesnā€™t stay in tune with the needs of the fan base that make up they loyal customers that come back again and again. I just hope that they start to take customer feature requests a little more seriously before other companies fill the gap of features people request.

Problem is, you canā€™t reverse the procedure (from what I can tell). Am I missing some way to get OF info into OO? Then will OP let you pull from OO more cleanly?

Iā€™m at a loss to understand why this isnā€™t already a feature of both products. Even MSFT Project can send tasks allocated to team members to their Outlook task lists and then receive % done updates and automatically update the project. This kind of functionality removes a massive amount of admin overhead from the project manager for all but the most simple projects.

2 Likes

But this OO/OF integration would only benefit users who use both OmniFocus and OmniPlan. The hard sell is to get users to want to use both. There will be many users who have their own personal task manager of choice and will shy away from using OF.

I think using some standard such as the TaskPaper format would be something that would be used to transfer something from OO to OF (or whatever task manager) when needed. I donā€™t use the TaskPaper format but it is starting to sound like it is a popular format to use. This is similar to how OPML has slowly started to become adopted as a standard in the outlining/mindmapping community.

The OO/OF integration would be nice but it sounds like it is a lower priority objective for OmniGroup because it will benefit a smaller subset of users who have both OO and OF.

It may be a small whom would use it or it may be a great percentage. But, really why wouldnā€™t you add that as a benefit/feature? It just makes sense. You design both softwares, there is a need/demand and it is an incentive to have both because you could use them together (someone with one may want to get the other because they sync).

Is it just me that thinks this?

1 Like

If we have enough people sending a feature request to omnifocus@omnigroup.com to add to the vote tally for OO/OF integration, this would boost this up the ladder to get it in sooner.

Only Omnigroup knows what the vote tally is for this feature request over other suggestions.

I have omnifocus 2 and found I could right click a task and send it to my ā€œinboxā€ where omnifocus would automatically create a project and task with a link to the omniplan task. Maybe youā€™re looking for Omnifocus 1 integration, to which I canā€™t say one way or the other. Sorry.

HI All
I just had a look at another forum before landing here and commented that there are many apps for the windows platform that seem to be doing just these things. I totally agree that it would bring great satisfaction and joy to the omni fanclub here if there was a quick and easy way to integrate the different aspects of project management with one or two clicks of a button. Using intermediary apps just seems to defy the object and the logic of having a ā€œsuiteā€.

Anyway, here are my (very basic) ideas as to make a start somewhereā€¦
The "skeleton would not be too hard to imagine:

  1. A function that grabs an outlined task-or action list from both omniplan and omnifocus, whichever app you are working in at the time.
  2. Filter functions by headers like date, category or whatever is relevant
  3. Algorithm that compares the different fileversions defined by date last opened and/or modified
  4. Write capabilities to both programs

There are various apps of this kind for the windows platform (allways sync and 4 Team outlook sync software for example)
I would imagine that in this day and age where there is an increasing amount of software written on platforms that can be operated both in mac and windows, that it would not be too hard to work out compatible scripts that do the same job in an osx environment. Unfortunately, I have only just started to understand scripting, so I am not( yet) clever enough to come up with a workable draft. Surely, someone out in the crowd would be able to do it?