I have a "dashboard’ perspective that shows me “available” tasks that are flagged or due. Works great at telling me what’s on tap for today.
However, I also like to plan ahead by setting tasks with deferred dates and flagging them. They then show up in the Dashboard perspective on the appropriate day.
What I would like to do is get a peek at upcoming days somehow. E.g., in plain English, “show me what my Dashboard perspective will look like tomorrow, or Friday”. Just like the Forecast allows.
Is this possible through filtering or focusing somehow? Or some other means?
This should be possible through AppleScript, with the list showing externally to OmniFocus. In the script, set the date for the view, collect all flagged tasks with defer dates after the view date, then show them in a list.
I’ve experimented with various ways of looking forward and have found that using the Forecast perspective with “Show deferred items” enabled works best.
On the Mac, you can also change defer and due dates by dragging and dropping (with the appropriate modified keys held down). You can also select which dates that you want to see in the outline view. This can be a continuous (e.g. the next three days) or non-continuous (e.g. next three Saturdays) set of days.
If I have a lot of items on my plate, I’ll sometimes use the Focus feature on the Mac (Pro edition) to focus on a specific part of the database (e.g. my “Personal” folder) and then use the Forecast perspective to look at tasks in this area of life that are coming down the pike.
Yes, I had high hopes for this feature as well. But I find that I have some items that are deferred and due on the same day (small, quick items). These are then listed twice on the Forecast view, which creates a lot of visual noise. Wish that “Due” trumped “deferred” and it was only shown once.
I agree that it would be nice to have a view option that consolidates deferred and due items that share the same date. If you haven’t already, I recommend contacting the Omni Group with this request (omnifocus@omnigroup.com).
I have missed this as well! Have all of you contacted the Omnigroup about this? That way they’ll add all the “votes” to the feature request :) I will do it asap👍🏼
What if when you double-clicked on the “Past” button in Forecast, it opened up a past calendar view like the future-oriented view (maybe a “Pastcast” view). That would keep a bunch of detail out of view but available if desired. It could also include an option for completed, so round out all the possible past date information options.
I use a variation of this Radar. I have a dashboard that shows Due or Flagged items that are available. And a ‘tomorrow’s dashboard’ that looks like the radar with the only difference that I filter on Due or Flagged. In the perspective I have all the periods collapsed except Tomorrow, giving me a nice insight in what my dashboard may look like tomorrow. A precondition for using this perspective is that I have emptied my today’s dashboard first by deferring or unflagging items. In my daily ritual I always first clear today’s dashboard before I look at my tomorrow’s dashboard.
did you go down this path @derekvan with a script?
Have often felt the need for this as well - be able to peek as to what tomorrow morning will look like in a perspective that is set to show available items…
