Looking at this string going back several months it does look like Omni just asleep at the wheel. For what we pay to have this capability on desktop, mobile device, tablet…it is not only incredibly poor UX design, but lazy customer service not to fix it.
I am afraid Brian is just apologizing for the ineptitude.
“Asleep at the wheel,” “lazy,” “poor user design.” Have you read the other discussions regarding this UI request? Patience is still a virtue, right? If you really feel as strongly as your words suggest then there’s probably another GTD solution out there that would make you happier.
I’m pretty happy with the progress I’m seeing and how it’s positively impacting my work. I’m not I saying couldn’t be happier, but I just wanted to speak your strong negative statements to which you’re certainly entitled; Omnifocus has never looked better and functioned more intuitively for me than it does right now. I’m loving it, using it successfully, and looking forward to seeing how it will be tweaked by Omnigroup who appear to me to be the opposite of how you described them.
You can, however, multi-select tasks in the inbox while holding the command key. Then assigned a project in the inspector will send all of them there simultaneously.
Or possibly fixing it isn’t a trivial task. As @danlandrum suggested, maybe you’d be better moving on
Fixing this is not that hard, and there are a few easy ways to do it. The only thing they would have to do is show the hierarchy that already exists in projects in the inbox view, or conversely just show the inbox in projects just like OF1 did. I’m with @SteveW on this one, apologizing for bad design and ignoring your customers doesn’t make the product better. If this is that monumental of a fix we all better move on.
I can’t tell you how annoying this is getting. I keep forgetting to check my inbox (I usually add things to it by quick entry) and I am missing doing things because I don’t know they’re there. When the inbox is part of another perspective, I can’t help but know it’s there.
I’d like to add my voice to those who feel that this is URGENT for Omni to fix. You’ve made something that was once very simple in OF1 highly unworkable in OF2. Moving items from the inbox to the projects list is something that we all do DOZENS OF TIMES a day - this should be basic bread and butter for an app like OF. The suggestion to open a copy of the inbox in another window is completely impractical if you work in full-screen view.
I upgraded to OF2 because I was very happy with OF1 and as a loyal customer I thought I should have the current version of a program that I use every day. So far I haven’t found a single feature of OF2 that is a big improvement to my workflow, and this one change is a HUGE ANNOYANCE.
Please fix this. You have a very loyal base of customers. Don’t be one of those companies that fritters away your customer base by taking us for granted.
Thank you,
Abe Z.
I agree this should be fixed, but I’m getting the idea that Omni has its own agenda, and isn’t very responsive to customer needs.
I have given up on using the InBox at all. I set up a project called [InBox], which lives beside other projects in the project view. When I capture something in the Quick Entry, I type a [ in the project field, and send it right over to my [InBox] list.
Phantastic workaround! thanks for that!
Perhaps a solution would be to have left sidebar tabs “spring loaded” the way OSX allows an item to be dragged over a directory - which then opens up? IE, drag inbox item onto Projects in left side bar - which temporarily opens up to reveal projects that item is then dragged into. Projects view disappears after dropping item.
~Kidtreo
Let’s say that I have ten projects. All of them are fleshed out and pretty, ready to go and being worked upon. Then after a burst of creative energy I have 50 items in my Inbox. Five for each project. I go through the Inbox and assign them to the correct project. When I go back to the projects, everything is just a mess. I have to really clean up and spend lots of time to clean up.
I love OmniFocus. But since I have a tendency to have a billion Inbox items (I am a bit too creative…), almost every project I have, gets out of hand very fast. I see that people have had issues with this for a long time, not being able to drag things from the Inbox.
This creates such clutter, so fast, that I am close to just switching to something else. Most likely a mind map (Project overview), Reminders (Action Lists) and Notes (Inbox).
Although I really enjoy the program in many ways (Review feature, adding Inbox items), certain elements and ways of doing things make the workflow inefficient and very cumbersome. In that way I don’t trust the system because everything becomes a mess too fast, and you know how GTD feels about trusted systems.
I’ve just upgraded to OF 2 for mac, after using OF 1 for at least a couple of years. In OF 1 I could take actions from my inbox and easily drag them to wherever I wanted in my folder tree of projects because the sidebar was expandable. But in OF 2, as far as I can tell, I have to drag the item on to the Projects tab and then it adds it into the project list at the very bottom. Then I have to open the projects list (by clicking the projects tab), get myself to the bottom to find the newly added item, and then put it wherever I want it in my project hierarchy. Of course I can also do that from within the inbox by directly assigning it to a project (and perhaps that’s what the designers of OF 2 intended) but this is often inconvenient because I might not remember the name of the project I want to put the action in. I keep thinking there must be someway to see the entire folder tree of projects in the sidebar, as there was before, but I haven’t found it yet. Any suggestions? Please don’t tell me that this is an intentional change or “improvement” because so far I’ve been a bit stumped trying to figure out what is new and better about OF 2 (admittedly I’m still finding my way with it, but so far it mainly seems to be cosmetic changes), so if this is really a “feature” of OF 2 I will be very sad (and mystified).
Many thanks for any suggestions.
Abraham Z.
Hi amz1,
You’re not the first to encounter this ‘feature’ of OF2. There’s a related thread here: Viewing the Inbox at the same time as Projects? [Available in v2.10]
A.
Many thanks.
Hear, hear.
A really good workaround, would be to let us define a default project for quick entry.
I was wondering if you have any update on this? Would love to be able to do all of this in one screen rather than two. Less clutter means more productivity. Heck - that’s why I got Omni-Focus 1 two years ago. :)
I think we would really love a fix in the next update!
Unfortunately I think this became the biggest problem in OmniFocus, if you want to keep it the way it is for the initial design, that is fine, but then let us have a special perspective to include the INBOX as part of Projects.
At this point this has become such a bad thing that I have created a project called 00-Inbox (so it would be on top in any list, and have set up the setting to automatically move things in to it with a project present.
Then as I clip things and do things I just move things to the INBOX project and work from there.
Not the optimal solution but I waste so much time switching OVER that it is just easier to do that.
To this I would like to add that it would be really cool to be able to open two or more extra sidebars, and being able to place them on different locations on the screen, to make the sorting of projects easier. Mind you: just the extra sidebars, not complete OF windows. Thanks!
So what’s the latest on this topic now that people have been using OF2 for a while? If you were one of the people like me who really wanted this workflow, did you find an acceptable workaround? Did you just get used to it? And is there any hint from omni about when/whether we can expect them to provide a one-window solution?
