Request: Collaboration feature for OmniFocus

Where is OmniFocus in terms of being able to collaborate with other users? It seems that this has been a long-standing request from customers that has gone unanswered.

YES please let us know what your plans are on COLLABORATION! - it is SO ESSENTIAL for us to continue to stick with the Omni suite. Thanks!

I have no affiliation with OmniGroup, but I don’t see OmniFocus getting multi-user support anytime soon. It’s really set up for individuals.

For bigger projects and teams, there’s OmniPlan which is very powerful.

What I’m hoping for in future updates is some sort of interactivity between OmniPlan and OmniFocus. Even if OmniGroup doesn’t add that functionality right away, we might be able to do something with the forthcoming javascript support. (Which, come to think of it, might allow you to interact with Todoist or other web-based team task managers).

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Collaboration is not as simple as trading off lists between two or more users. There will need to be OmniFocus server software that needs to be developed. It might have to be housed by the Omnigroup services which would also mean that a subscription fee might be needed just to maintain server costs and bandwidth. Then there is probably a need for server software to be developed for groups that don’t trust third party servers and want to host it themselves for security reasons.

To make collaboration more widespread, there will probably be a need to have the web server software to have an interface to let people log in and check off their tasks in the project and probably submit projects/tasks to particular users. That might satisfy users who want a web interface and/or don’t have a Mac and/or iOS device. Maybe it doesn’t have to be as powerful as OmniFocus’ full feature set (contexts, perspectives). Most likely, users might just want a checklist of a project’s tasks and who is it assigned to. There could probably an area for notes and attachments. And finally, a way to check off the task and add any additional notes and follow-ups. This type of user probably could care less about contexts, parallel/sequential projects. They just want to see what they have to do and check it off. This might negate the need for Android or Windows software if served in this manner - a stripped down checklist version of OmniFocus.

There is a simple solution that is currently available. It’s called Mail Drop.

If you are subscribed to Omnigroup’s sync server, you can create an e-mail address that allows people to send e-mails with the necessary project/task details. On your next OmniFocus sync, it will get captured into your inbox for you to see. From there, you can develop the project or task further,

This is the OmniFocus Mail Drop documentation here:

https://support.omnigroup.com/omnifocus-mail-drop/

You will be in charge of your own OmniFocus inbox. Develop the project or task in your own way.

Thanks for the mention of OmniPlan. I didn’t think about that program. I’m looking more for smaller projects with a spouse or personal business. For example, my fiancée and I want to plan our wedding together as well as collaborate on a number of other items. We’d rather collect all those “to dos” for individual projects one one location.

Thanks for the reply. That is way too clunky. Users should not have to find workarounds to sync projects, especially when all of the major competition have a collaboration feature. It can’t be that hard because companies much smaller than OmniGroup are doing it. Sync should be automatic, which is exactly how other major apps work in Mac OS (mail, calendars, reminders, etc). We don’t want to be sending each other 10-20 emails per day if we both made multiple iterations to a list throughout a day.

Sadly, this collaboration feature is the only problem I can find with OmniFocus. Otherwise, it is hands-down the best software I can find to manage to do lists. The longer they wait to add this feature, the more time they’re giving competition to catch up and pass them. I don’t work in business, but I often wonder what sort of internal situations (meetings, committees, individuals) keep specific innovations out of programs like this. Is it one person who personally finds a particular feature unimportant and is acting as the anchor? Another example of programs being nearly perfect but lacking one or two core features is Microsoft’s OneNote for Mac users.

One major obstacle is to get other people to adopt OmniFocus as their task manager of choice. As much as I collaborate with my wife and co-workers, most of them don’t like to use OmniFocus. They find it too complex for their needs. They just need a simple checklist. Some of them don’t want to use iOS devices or Macs (some loyal Android users and/or Windows users). They all have their own ways of taking care of their work. Oftentimes, I’ll have to check Asana and have to print out this week’s workload. Then from there, they’ll come back to me and I’ll have to enter it into Asana as completed along with photo attachments, PDFs, and any notes that need to be entered.

At one of my jobs, I use Asana with my co-workers and am perfectly happy using Asana for tasks related to that job site. Otherwise, OmniFocus is perfect for me.

Each one of our work situations will be different and won’t always be met by any project/task manager.

I’d sign up for OmniFocus collaboration. But it also depends on whether my co-workers and my wife will be taking up OmniFocus as well.

Send an e-mail to Omnigroup Support Humans at omnifocus@omnigroup.com for any feature requests or bug reports. They will record your e-mail into their internal database to help prioritize future OmniFocus development.

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Come on, emailing someone a task is not even remotely a workable solution for collaboration. For delegating, sure, where there’s a project owner – but that’s total overkill for many situations.

Example: my fiance and I are planning a big trip, with many tasks that either of us could either think of or complete on our own. So how does you workflow work? I email her a link to add it to her Omnifocus, she does the task, then tells me she did it so we can each separately mark it complete? That’s a non-starter and I think that’s pretty obvious.

Right now, we’re using iPhone Reminders lists which at least sync two ways – but it breaks the core principle for me of having everything I’m responsible for in Omnifocus. And it’s not like my finace would need to use Omnifocus for everything – she could easily adopt it for only things we shared, and then I’d get to keep my task tracking from spreading out over multiple apps.

I’d be totally down to subscribe to a sync service if it existed, if it let me properly share individual projects with her.

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