Script to select random task from current perspective

flight16 · July 14, 2015, 1:23pm

I’m trying to create a script that will randomly print/display/return a task from the current perspective. Can anybody lend a helping hand?

I found http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=5181 that is similar, but for OF1 from 2007. I also checked out OmniFocus’s AppleScript guide, and while there were many examples for adding tasks, I couldn’t find one for selecting all tasks into a list.

What I have so far that isn’t working is

tell application "OmniFocus"
	tell the default document to tell the front document window
		set perspective name to "Home"
		activate "OmniFocus"
		tell content
			set theVisibleTasks to tasks
		end tell
	end tell
end tell

which returns the error error “OmniFocus got an error: Can’t get every task of content of document window 1 of default document.” number -1728 from every task of content of document window 1 of default document"

Update: This looks like it could be a good reference: https://github.com/Matthewspear/OFList/blob/master/OFList.scpt

flight16 · July 15, 2015, 11:31am

I continued to Google and ended up writing the script myself. You can find it here:

github.com

flight16/OmniFocusScripts/blob/master/Select random task.applescript

-- Run this script to select a random task in your current view.  It probably won't work with nested tasks.
tell application id "com.omnigroup.OmniFocus2"
	tell default document
		tell the front document window
			set theTasks to tree of content
			set randIdx to random number from 1 to the length of theTasks
			repeat with aTask in theTasks
				set aTask's selected to false
			end repeat
			set theTask to item randIdx of theTasks
			set theTask's selected to true
			return theTask's name
		end tell
	end tell
end tell

essentiae · May 13, 2019, 12:20am

This was great. Thanks. It works equally well when just changing the tell to

tell application id "com.omnigroup.OmniFocus3"

And although it only selects a random task from the top level in the perspective, it was easy to create a perspective with only tasks and no group hierarchies from which it could pick a random one. Thanks for this!!