Hello - I’ve just purchased OmniFocus 2 after being a long-time Things user. Everything makes sense to me far, except the speed at which OmniFocus and OmniSync work.
My Scenario:
I attended a meeting and added a few tasks during it. At the end of the meeting, some 20min later, I went back to my desk and brought OF2 up on my Mac. It was already launched and just sitting in the background. My expectation was that I’d be able to process those tasks… 20m is more than enough time to sync, in my opinion.
The actual result is that none of the tasks have yet shown in the Mac version (but are still visible in the Inbox on my iPhone). Out of curiosity, I installed OF2 on my laptop, setup OmniSync, and the meeting tasks showed up on the first sync… so… they’re making it to OmniSync servers (it appears).
Any reason my LAN-connected Mac Pro has to have the ‘Sync’ button clicked in order for new tasks to show up?
Things is bad at a lot of, well, things… but sync isn’t one of them. When I create a new task, it syncs to all other devices in about 3 seconds. This sync delay would be a deal-breaker for me… my workflow has me creating tasks in lots of different places, and I usually process pretty quickly afterwards.
Thanks for any suggestions in advance!
Quick Update - It’s now 50m later and the tasks still have not shown up in OF2 on the Mac Pro. I clicked the sync button and the new tasks came right down.
It seems you are expecting things to auto-sync (like would happen with iCloud). As far as I know OF uses manual sync. In practice I don’t see this as a problem: press a button, or use the shortcut key (command-S).
It probably showed up on your laptop right away as it was the initial process and so there was a need to sync with existing database right away.
I’ve had zero delays or problems with syncing immediately: but I do I have to initiate the sync.
So you manually sync every time you want to use the applications? I suppose you could get it worked in to the overall flow but I find the copy in the application descriptions to be misleading this case:
“Syncs can even happen when you’re not actively using OmniFocus, so that your information is ready when you are.”
I think there is a bit of auto-sync built in based on the app descriptions. I’m not sure I’d be willing to click or tap a sync button every time I create/edit/delete a piece of data. That’s a recipe for missing tasks and open work periods where the software should be up-to-date on tasks and help you decide what you should be working on.
If I’m working on a “return emails” context and all the available tasks aren’t available on my Mac because I didn’t tap “sync” after adding them on my iPhone in a meeting two hours earlier, the time isn’t as productive as it could be.
I’ll try tapping manual sync for a day or two and see how it goes. But after having sync that works so fast and well in Things, it’ll be challenging.
I’m so used to command-S I really don’t think about it. But looking at things more carefully OF2 (on my end) syncs every time I start up on a Mac, and syncs every time I quit. So the only thing it doesn’t seem to do is auto-sync as I’m working. I can live with that.
Is OF on that one Mac of yours behaving differently? (i.e. not auto-syncing on startup or end)
Yes! Exactly what I needed! I got the Mac version syncing much faster… also thrilled it works on the iOS version! I’ll play with this today and see how it does. I’m willing to trade a bit of cellular data for keeping sync :-)
Thanks for the help, I’ll post back after some good testing…
