In my organisation, we’ve had to switch to GTD lists in GoogleDocs, and OmniFocus is now redundant for me.
As a long-time user (since Kinkless days), I long for the day when OmniFocus will allow me and my team to collaborate and track projects and work progress using its great GTD structure and features.
Until then, we’ve had to knock up an approximation of the OmniFocus structure in GoogleDocs, to allow a shared overview of project progress and for team task allocation across multiple projects.
Please, stop with the (to me) pointless but, I’m sure, very fun to create bells and whistles, and get the focus back onto core functionality. Many of us are working online and collaboratively, these days. Please don’t ignore this reality.
I’m glad that Omnifocus is designed for individual use, e.g. as part of Getting Things Done, and not for shared use in the workplace in companies.
As a former software developer, I imagine what would happen if the Omnigroup converted Omnifocus into a multi-user system: 😩😩😩
Here is a small selection: Masses of demands for rights management to be set up for access to data, extension for use with Scrum, addition of project cost planning, working time management and so on …
Maybe you should use Omniplan and not Omnifocus.
Tomorrow I will call my bike shop and make it clear that we are in 2023 and they still have not supplied my mountain bike with an outboard motor for sea use. 😆
Respectfully, please for the love of god “no”. I want my Omnifocus private and encrypted, and I don’t want a bunch of collaborative features bloating up the app and interface.
There’s so many collaborative task management and project management apps already out there. I don’t want this one ruined. There’s…Trello, Asana, ClickUp, Notion, Nozbe, Todoist, Taskade, TickTick, MeisterTask, Ayoa, Basecamp, Monday, ProofHub, Wrike, Ora, etc. Take your pick.
Finally, some clarity!
So OmniFocus is intended for teams of one. There will be no scope for task delegation or shared projects.
Now that is clear, we can move on. I’m afraid all our/my work is collaborative (research, design development and NPD), and OF no longer cuts it. ‘Connected works’, so I will search out a collaborative solution.
Best of luck with everything and goodbye.
A.
There’s a wide gap between “no collaboration” and “full on business apps”.
My wife and I both use OmniFocus to manage our personal tasks. However, there’s often recurring household tasks that either one of us could do. Or, critical reminders like kid’s medication.
So… we use Apple Reminders. It’s OK, but not great. We had incredible recurring sync issues where I would log in on my wife’s laptop once every few months, and iCloud would reset the sync database generating hundreds of duplicate reminders. And of course, there’s no concept of projects or any of the great features in OmniFocus.
Other apps have kept their focus by supporting collaboration for small teams and families. I wish OmniFocus would do the same. Even basics such as:
Sending a task to someone else’s Inbox from OmniFocus. We do this currently with the email forwarding setup, but a “Send to…” feature built in would be so handy.
Notify another user when a task is complete. Even just a notification of “<person> completed <task>” would be very helpful.
Enable showing of Reminders in Forecast (seems doable given OmniFocus can already ingest tasks from Reminders).
The real thing this does is limit adoption by individuals already invested in Apple’s Reminders app, who are probably the most likely users to want to upgrade to something more powerful. All of my other family members use Reminders and shared lists, and wouldn’t consider OmniFocus without that functionality.
I think the market with collaborating tools is huge and dominated by choices companies we work for, make, f.e. an Office 365 environment you can use and MS Teams as collaboration tool, other apps are not allowed because of security concerns/ measures. These tools are great but not offering the rich and flexible functionality of OmniFocus.
I tried to find a solution by connecting OmniFocus with MS Teams → MS Planner and using Kanban boards. For three years now it is possible for me managing my teams with MS Teams/ MS Planner and having OmniFocus at the heart of my “management system” pushing and pulling to/ from MS Teams/ MS Planner.
It would be great to have a couple “out of the box” Omni Automation scripts enabling the flow from OmniFocus to Reminders and vice versa, I am now using Keyboard Maestro macro’s for this.
It makes sense that you want to drive a point home and you did it well in the list you gave.
I think you have very valid points. I personally would love to see a little bit of collaboration in being able to share a project with a specific user like a spouse and they and I can mark things off on it. I like the suggestion of OmniPlan though that is overkill and like the simplicity of OmniFocus (though many might argue OmniFocus is simple). This would add complexity to some extent for certain.
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It is nice to have clearity and hear from OmniFocus that it is only going to be for a team of one. This forum can be kind of harsh at times but also very helpful so I guess that comes with getting some help and advice. I hate the mocking tones that often come when people disagree or try to shut someone down. I think that came because they felt your request was too demanding though you did change some things in your post.
Fantantisc list and very helpful to see the many options for this. It is kind of nice to just have a dedicated app for the things you want to colaborate on. It is about as easy to go to another app as just click on a project and wonder if this is set with the permissions to collaborate or not to collaborate.
OmniFocus like Apple has to filter through all the requests and see what is really overall helpful rather than all the things people are requesting (i.e. iPad having swappable batteries, SD cards etc.).
I would love to see your Keyboard Maestro macros if you care to upload them.
It mirrors my setup of Reminder list and Kanban Boards so you have to tailor this to your own setup.
If OmniGroup would invest in some “Omni Automation plug-ins” to f.e. Reminders with push and pull functionality this will be great. (Skipping the KBM marco’s and mail processing).
