It doesn’t have to be cards necessarily but a redesign that gives the UI a fresh look and feel. Similar to what Cultured Code has done with Things 3.
I like what they have done with Things 3, but would prefer OF to remain powerful and have a very different look, nothing like Things.
Things has nice animations, but after the 3rd time you see then… they become tiring.
If Omni would ever come with that, I’d love to see options to turn them off. But that’s maybe just me :)
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Yeah I couldn’t disagree more. I don’t think beautiful design and delightful/thoughtful animations mean the software can’t be powerful. I think you can have the best of both worlds. iOS is full of beautiful animations that I never get sick of. It’s the most powerful mobile OS on the planet and they haven’t compromised on either.
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Agree. It can surely be beautiful yet powerful.
What I don’t want/like is the “similar to Things” part: don’t want it to be similar, nor have those slow animations that can’t be turned off. :)
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Fully agreed. I will flag occasionally as a marker of priority. But other than that, I will not struggle with a “Today” list.
By the way, I feel like too many apps force you into a due date game. In my opinion you should only ever mark things due if they are hard deadlines: “Pay bill x”, “Finish report y”, etc. And only ever on that day.
Arbitrary due dates are counterproductive and a sure sign of misaligned priorities. You’ll never be able to keep up and focus on what matters.
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Whether you like it or not, due dates play an important role, especially for those that have to deal with contracts/agreements/etc. such as IT. In IT you always set a due date to any service request that comes in. The due date that is set is determined by the Service Level Agreement for that particular customer/component/application/etc. Not meeting the due date will can have serious repercussions. If you are lucky you only have an unhappy customer, if you are unlucky you have to pay a fine or you get sued for breach of contract. There are certifications where setting a due date to the issues is mandatory. Some of these certifications are required by law (when you deal with certain amounts of money, medical data, etc.) or by customers.
The reason for saying this is something like the following topic: Jira - Omnifocus Sync. Jira is a well known issue tracker from the Australian company Atlassian and used by many. It can be used for both developers, system engineers and the IT servicedesk. It can show a list of issues sorted by due date which gives a good overview of what needs to be done first. These issues can be quite specific but they can also be generic. The generic ones you may want to split up into multiple parts if needed. OmniFocus would be a great place for doing that and keeping track of all the various things you need to do but it will require due dates.
IT can be very chaotic at times since things can change at a moments notice. Applications can suddenly crash and some are more important than others so the priority and due dates shift a lot. If you work in IT you really need to be flexible and you really need to have good tools that give you a good overview of all the issues and due dates on them else you do indeed lose track of them. Keeping up though…in IT that is never possible; when you check off one issue you’ll be greeted with 2 new ones… Such is life. 🤷♂️
Using both Jira and OF daily (we’re in the testing phase of a major project), I would argue very strongly against the idea of attempting to use OF to manage Jira issues. IT ticket management is too reactive and (as you suggest) unpredictable to fit into the OF model of capture, plan execute.
Jira itself provides plenty of facilities to set due dates, get reminders, generate filtered lists of tasks and so on. There is, in my ind, no point in attempting to replicate that in OF. Where OF does provide added value is when you need to think about something beyond the tickets themselves - patterns of issues suggesting an underlying problem, management issues around maintaining the service level - in other words, a slightly higher level view.
Example: in my project we have maybe 50 tickets around user alerts. The tickets and the tracking status in Jira; OF has a set of actions about investigating the underlying cause of all these issues and the consequences of various fix strategies. OF also has the actions for producing the statistics I need for management and reporting to stakeholders.
In general, I agree with the proposition that you don’t allocate due dates unless they’re needed in OF - otherwise, you lose much of the control you’re looking for in how you plan your work. If you’re working in a due-date driven environment, then perhaps OF isn’t the right tool.
Hope that all makes sense
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Yep, that’s actually what I meant. I’m looking at it like a git repository which you can simply clone and then go nuts because that repo is for you only. OmniFocus is your own personal task manager that allows you to deep dive into tasks/issues (more on that in the last paragraph, it may not mean what you think it means!) assigned to you.
And that is the entire issue with OmniFocus. You cannot use it in an environment that uses project management or any other system that holds the tasks and where due dates are set (changing those due dates or not having the correct due dates can be quite dangerous since it is false information or you change the entire planning of the project). In that scenario you end up juggling between various kinds of tools and that degrades the overview you have of your work. I see a lot of people ending up with pen and paper to do their planning because of it.
The other thing is that you really shouldn’t be using due dates to plan your work. Due dates are meant to be used for those cases where it is adamant to have something done at or before a specific time/date (which is the case when working with contracts, SLA, etc.). The other option OmniFocus offers is “defer” which is only meant to be used to denote that you cannot do something before that time/date. In other words, OmniFocus only allows you to set a time frame when you can do something and when it has to be finished. There is no option for planning, something that is also discussed in this topic: Feature request: Today list.
Be careful when you talk about Jira and IT ticket management! They aren’t only for incident management like you are mentioning (where you are fixing problems). They also have to allow for feature/service requests, requests for information (getting a quote is an example of that) and so on even though they are all called “issues” (iow you need to be careful with the terminology here). Jira comes with its own planning tool for projects as well so you can manage the project itself. In that scenario you’d use OmniFocus as your personal task manager. And yes, all those non-issue issues can have a due date as well.
Just wanted to chime in and say that I love this developer but hate the UI. I’ve moved into things 3, but I decided to try omnifocus 2 again because it’s so feature packed and has a dark theme. It’s impossible for me to go back now, because it feels like too much work to use omnifocus 2 and I know many others feel the same way. The whole reason why I used to hate phones and love the iPhone is because it’s easy and effortless to use, unlike my old blackberry pearl phone.
Omnifocus 2 is what omnifocus one should’ve been, and now that things 3 is out, it seems like a lot of people moved on, and of 2 dropped on the charts. I’m actually not a fan of cultured code though because they stay silent on updates and take so long to release up to date features, but things 3 is so good to the point where I don’t feel it’s missing out on a needed feature for me. I’m sure die hard GTD users won’t like things 3, but I’m not one of them, and it’s honestly one of the best designed apps I’ve used since the launch of the App Store in 2009.
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I’m pleased to see people choosing to move to Things 3 where it work for them - that’s how these things ought to work. But I’m always puzzled by the need to dump on Omni as they go. Cultured Code took years to provide a new version of Things and simply changed the UI without dealing with any of the amy outstanding feature requests. Their support is via Twitter (really?). Their user forum was killed off years ago because they could handle the criticism, and the nearest they have now is a user-only subreddit. Meanwhile, omni provide updates and new features several times a year and support this very active user forum, as well providing direct access to a responsive support team.
If you prefer Things, fine, but don’t try and hide it behind “OF is only for die-hard GTD users” and “a lot of people have moved on”. There’s room in this world for both.
As a final point - I’m resolutely not die-hard GTD and I’ve tried Things serval times. I think the supposed marvellous UI is awful - it looks very pretty, but it works very badly indeed - for me.
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Having switched to Things 3, I really don’t think the two pieces of software are comparable products. I moved not because OmniFocus is broken in any specific way, or that Things is inherently a “better” piece of software. I moved because Things is a better tool for what I’m doing right now. A lot of the things that make OmniFocus powerful and useful get in my way at the moment.
If my situation changes and I need more complexity and power, I’ll put down the tool I’m currently using and pick up a more suitable tool. I don’t break down my cardboard boxes for recycling with my chain saw – the box cutter is much better :).
I have the exact opposite reaction with the UI in Things. Sooo much easier for me on my iPad right now.
@kcase
While I would never give up Omnifocus and its perspectives, reviews and true hierarchies, I was curious about Things 3 and tried it on the Iphone. After the initial joy, I found that the finish in the details wasn’t always what I would have expected. One example: as Things packs most of the information about a task in one line in the task list, the task names easily become so shortened that they are incomprehensible.
Still, there are certainly things The Omni Group could learn from Things 3 for Iphone:
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The swipe left gesture elegantly combines activation of multi-selection mode with selecting the first task and showing a bottom bar for scheduling, moving and deleting tasks. To me, this is better use of the gesture than Omnifocus has.
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After selecting multiple tasks, it’s possible to drag them directly as a group. This would be a great model when multiselecting becomes possible in Omnifocus, rather than having to choose ”Move” from a menu as in Omnioutliner (that menu allows more choices, though).
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While I like the Omnifocus way to show a separate screen for editing tasks (and there allowing the user to go directly to the next task by tapping the down arrow), I wish that Omnifocus in some way would indicate where in the task list I was while I return to the list. As Things opens the tasks for editing directly in the task list, you never get lost in the lists.
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While scrolling downwards in a project with a long task list, the project name always stays on top of the screen as a reminder (as it in fact does on the Ipad version of Omnifocus, but not on the Iphone).
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If one sets a start date (defer date in Omnifocus) in the future for a task, the task automatically jumps to the bottom of the otherwise only manually sorted task list. When the date has come, the task automatically jumps back to its original place in the list.
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The Upcoming view shows more than one date at a time. I prefer the look of the Forecast view in Omnifocus, but I still don’t understand why it only shows one date at a time – to me it would be so natural to tap on the word ”Forecast” to see all dates, and to tap on a day, as it works now, if I only would like to see tasks for a single day.
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I agree with your take on the Things 3 and would love to see some of the features make its way to Omnifocus. I gave Things 3 a month and while I did love some of the features I never got a sense of trust that I was seeing all the tasks that I needed and the lack of a review turned to be the deal breaker. As for the Upcoming perspective I loved the scrolling thru dates. I could quickly look at my upcoming week and plan and reorganize accordingly.
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+1 for a kanban view! (But I’ve said that before — fingers crossed!)
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Y’know I’ve been skeptical about the whole idea of a “waiting for” list or context for a long time. A “waiting for” is really just another deferred task (i.e. ❏ Follow up with Jones about that report that was supposed to be on my desk yesterday). If the thing I’m waiting for does show up on time, it gets processed like any other inbox item, and it’s easy enough just to delete or check off the follow-up task when it comes up. I very rarely have any need to “review” the things I’m waiting for before the expected due date — and even if there’s a person or situation that I have to keep tabs on in the interim, that too is just one more, potentially recurring, deferred task. I’ve never seen any advantage to having all these check-in and follow-up tasks gathered together in their own list.
Bumping to keep this alive. I’m not advocating that OF make drastic changes to the interface to compete with others, but a fresher design that acknowledges the UI changes that have come since iOS 7 was released (which I think was the last time OF on iOS got a visual refresh, if I recall?) would be very, very welcome.
+1 to everything @Jan_H said above regarding what Things does well that gave me pause for a few weeks while I used it.
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I understand your sketicism. But I find that having a “delegated” or “waiting for” list helpful when:
- the tasks I’ve asked others to do do not have a hard due date
- I have no control or influence over when a third party completes a task, but cannot begin my next step until that task is complete.
An example of the latter: I’m an attorney, and frequently I have to wait on a court to issue a decision before taking the next steps in a case. It’s helpful to know that I am “waiting for” a court to issue a decison (and thus cannot take the next step in a case) even though it would be unwise for me to “follow-up” with the court.
Generally though, I find it helpful to have a single place to see all the items on which I am waiting for others to do something, even if I also have separate tasks to “follow-up with X re Y.”
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Agreed. OF is ready for a UI refresh. It helps to keep the product in front of new users and stay ahead (or at least keep up) with the competition.
I would love to see the “mail to things” feature in Omnifocus 2+. I know it has mail drop but the Things version actually clips the link from the email(Apple Mail, iOS Mail to the bottom of the todo so that you can click on it and go back to the email on any device. Very nice!
Doesn’t OmniFocus already do this with the Clip-o-Tron?
