Aha, so my “no project” tasks were going to (staying in?) the Inbox because my cleanup settings were set to both project and context. I already had a Miscellaneous single-action list; now I’ve just renamed it to Inbox and moved it to the top of my projects list, so that gives me most of what I was asking for. Setting a context for quick entry or mail drop tasks does remain as a needless extra step. If there were a way to set a global default context for those we’d be pretty much there. I suppose I could write an AppleScript and run it periodically…
Can anyone tell me how to move an action/project from the inbox into a folder? This is possible in Omni1. So far, the only way I can see to move an action/project from the inbox to a folder is to have two Omni2 windows open. Is there something I’m missing?
I just made a project called Inbox and made it my first project
Voila, now I can see my ‘inbox’ and my entire structure, and drag things from project ‘Inbox’ to my other projects
I’m going to do this instead and ignore the ‘real’ inbox altogether, and just live in project view
:)
To add to what I’ve just stated, I’ve also turned off the Inbox perspective and created my own one, showing my inbox ‘project’ instead, and moved the ‘projects’ tab to the top.
Easy! Just bypass the inbox altogether…
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Great idea. However, if you clip from Mail or other areas on the Mac or use the email service, you will still have tasks in the ‘real’ inbox I believe. I still hope that this is something that Omni can resolve.
This may be a solution to keep from opening two windows. In the inbox, set to remove anything with a project or context. Process items into contexts (not projects) and then click over to Projects and drag and drop the items in “Miscellaneous” into projects or folders.
The basic idea has already been mentioned by Ken: work on the task in the inbox:
- tab into the project area of the task and the start typing your project. You will receive a selection of choices based on your input,just hit return and your task no longer is in the inbox (depending on Your settings in prefs).
- Your task is really a project? drag it onto the projects tab and it will turn into one
If not, well, it wasn’t broken so don’t fix it.
It actually was broken, in a way. If you had any perspectives set to open in “Project view mode” and a new window, the Inbox would appear (first) in that window even if you had set a focus or selection in the perspective. It sure confused me.
This is a bug of course, but it is also probably a result of a question that the seemingly simple suggestion “Show the Inbox as a project” poses – when should it be visible and when should it not? If I make a perspective with focus on a folder and “Use project hierarchy”, should that perspective include the Inbox? I might want this if I want to use this focused perspective for planning and processing, but I might not want this if I want to use the perspective as a checklist for some routine tasks.
So I can totally see why OmniGroup isn’t just adding this without a second thought. That said, it might still be of so great use that it is worth a setting on all Project Hierarchy based perspectives.
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In OF1 I use a Perspective with the Inbox on top and a certain set of projects below, focused from a Folder in the Library. By the time I sit down to work through that Perspective there are many items in the Inbox which need to first be distributed, not just put at the bottom like an automatic clean up would do, but manually into an assortment of task groups. I tried the two window method and stopped using it–too much work to set up (no multi-window Perspective?). Now I use the Inbox to assign Projects and Contexts then go to the Perspective and move all those new items from the bottom to where they belong so I can get to work in the right sequence. More work than OF1 and now I find that sometimes I’ll do part one (assigning/clean up) and then part two (sorting) at a later time.
Why the complexity? many items that I pull from the Inbox have Waiting For contexts so the task group that gets my attention depends on which WF’s I can check off and not anything that can be automatically sorted. Waiting for the WF’s to appear doesn’t work since the due dates are highly variable and cannot be predetermined (I’d have to Review a couple times a day to keep due dates accurate, tried that approach a long time ago).
The whole idea of Inbox is a place from which to either do or file. The file part is much harder now.
What if I could I shift-click both the Inbox and Project tabs to have one appear above the other?
How about Inbox and Context? and even Inbox and Forecast? so Inbox items can be dragged into place when looking at a Project hierarchy, a Context list, or a calendar? Better still, also shift-click Inbox and myPerspective in the sidebar and see one above the other? (like OF1) And if I could do that, then I’d make a newPerspective with the Inbox and myPerspective selected in the sidebar and see the Inbox items above the focused Project view–even more flexible than OF1! Take it one step further and let any combination of tabs be simultaneously selected and parse out the middle panel into horizontal sections so I could see Inbox, Projects, and Forecasts at the same time for example and then I could drag Inbox Items to Projects and then from Projects to Forecast to assign a date. (begin snark) oh, wait, the data density would make it difficult to see all that stuff at the same time without a lot of scrolling (end snark)
I do think isolating the Inbox was a step back.
I’m sure Omni will figure out a better way.
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@kcase Thanks for your explanations, however the lack of this OF1 key feature in version 2 is still a design error given its use in a clean, frequent work flow and review process.
It is all good and well saying you will fix this omission in 2.1, however my concern is when will that be, version 2 has been in dev for a very long time - I am sure I am not the only one that is curious how long we will need to wait to get back to where we are with the OF1?
OF2 is great in many ways which make the removal of this feature a real mystery!
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Matt, it is true that the Inbox can be worked in that way. I actually do it two different ways, as do many others from what I read here on the forum. First, if I know the project, I simply tab, type and select. Add a context and I’m done.
Next, if it should be a new project, I can drag it to the Projects tab. I’m still OK, and I actually like this capability.
I’m fine then except for one thing - do I already have a project for this? I currently have 256 projects. My work is incredibly complex; that is why I use OF in the first place. This is why I would like to be able to scan the project list to ensure I’m not duplicating something. A quick scan is all it takes. Plus, when I find that I have already established a project, I’d just like to drop it in after the scan. Simple stuff. Instead, I now have to create it as a project, then move to the Projects tab to deal with it to scan, move, delete, etc. Two steps, not one.
The essence is that one workflow is keyboard and memory based; the other is based on visualizing and scanning the structure of your projects list. Everyone is wired differently, and one way only of doing this seems limiting, especially as the capability to do this already exists in the current version of OF1.
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(Please don’t read any snark into this reply, because I assure you none is intended.)
One of my hobbies is console/PC games. I used to get really excited about games months before they came out. The publisher would dangle some sort of “exclusive bonus” content - levels, extra characters to play, whatever - and I’d pre-order the game. More than a few times, the product I ended up getting didn’t meet my expectations for one reason or another.
Over the years, those episodes of buyers’ remorse have made me much more cautious about spending money on software that doesn’t exist yet, in other words. These days, it’s very rare for me to pre-order a game. I’d rather wait for it to ship, know exactly what I’m getting and what’s going to cost, and then make a decision at that point.
If this breaks your workflow and makes you less productive, switching before we address your concern seems like it’s not in your best interest. For some people, version 1 may be a better tool than 2.0 - and until 2-point-whatever exists, I wouldn’t recommend those people switch.
Obviously, we want that group to be as small as possible, and we’re going to work as quickly as we can to address as many concerns as we can. But any guess we make could turn out to be wrong.
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Oh how well you’re understood! But basically it is dead simple: the project title will somehow be related to what you expect your already existing project will be, right? You can see the project field in the task like a supersmart project search box: if there already is a project like this, it will retrieve it much faster than by skimming through 256 projects visually. If not, then either cmd- enter your new project for the task or drag and drop to the projects.
It really took me a while to drop that " i need visual feedback" habit, but i feel a lot faster this way…
This works ok, but the fact that the inbox is also not in the review causes a problem. The inbox should at least be a part of the review so you can see its items and projects at the same time. Having to do two two reviews, one of projects and one of the inbox, seems to fly in the face of what OmniFocus is built to do.
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@kcase: here’s an idea for how to have a more useful single window inspector: use a split view.
Essentially, the inbox is a bit different to every other perspective, in that you are much more likely to want to see the inbox at the same time as something else. You’re also likely to want to open the inbox fairly transiently, without interrupting what else you’re doing.
So, make it so the inbox is (only) accessible from a toolbar button, which toggles it to appear and disappear. The inbox appears a hove the main working area (including above the sidebar), but does not affect the inspector. The divider line between the inbox and the main workspace is draggable, like in any split view. See the mockup below.
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Personally, I’m saddened by this. For a moment there, I though that at last we had a great solution, powerful but with a sleek UI. And then I tried to process my Inbox, 90% of which gets there via clipping, the Clip-O-Tron, or Quick Entry.
Not being able to see Inbox and Projects: that’s a dealbreaker.
The problem is threefold.
- The separation of Inbox and Projects visually creates a cognitive gap. I don’t think I am the only one who doesn’t think this item goes in this project and that context when I’m dumping into the Inbox; I just think this needs to be attended to. It’s if you like a perceptual input. The cognitive processing comes later; but if you put an artificial gap between perception and cognition, you gain nothing and lose much.
- The crucial paradigm is broken: Drag-and-drop. We need workarounds. Workarounds by their very nature are barely-satisfactory solution to fundamental fitness-for-purpose problems.
- E.g., things like the special My Own Lash-Up Inbox Project, which breaks the clipping and Quick Entry process, which still ends up in the Inbox
- This gives us two Inboxen to process, one (relatively) easy to do but you can’t get stuff in, and one (relatively) tricky to do but that’s where much or your stuff is dumped into.
- E.g. 2, things like the two-pane or Use The Inspector or type in what you think (from memory) might be the name of the Project the thing belongs in.
- This slows down the process, and (except the two-pane approach, which breaks the Fullscreen idea) relieves users of the GUI and returns us to the old times of dBase, whose UI consisted of a tiny period in the top left corner of the screen. You started typing; and God help you if you couldn’t remember what to type. In a GUI the optional bit is keyboard entry, not graphical manipulation. Omni has, IMO, gone the wrong way in this one.
- The poster who cited the paradigm of email clients – the closest thing to the OF process, probably – was spot on. Imagine if you could only see either your Inbox or everything else in Mail.app; we’d be yelling at Sir Ive to brace the hell up or get back to hardware.
- It introduces friction. The point of these systems is to reduce friction, surely? And for a v2 product, especially after a fairly lengthy development cycle, to increase friction between the intention and the action, is odd. A feature – no, not a feature; a benefit – of v1 has been removed with no better solution put in its place. Omni’s position is “Well, sorry, you can’t do that any more” and the reasoning appears to be “We want to get this out and pull in some licence fees”. Fair enough. They need to make rent and payroll. But I had my partner use OF2 for a while, a complete newcomer, and she said, after an hour or so, “How come I can’t drag new stuff from the Inbox onto where it’s going to live?”
So.
tl;dr This is a dealbreaker. I can’t go back to OF1 because I found it powerful but so annoyingly convoluted I couldn’t trust it (“where’d my STUFF go?”) so I stopped using it. I thought OF2 solved the problems elegantly, breathed a sigh of relief, and started polishing up my credit card ready for The Day. Now I’m back to square one. Blast.
The odd thing is that it should prove so hard to produce a good solution, cross-platform on iOS and Mac OS, for such a commonplace process which is conceptually easy even if clearly hard to implement.
It’s been a difficult few weeks with me and Omni. OmniOutliner 4 was barely a point upgrade with very little substantial difference from v3, except you can’t clip stuff any more; and now this. I’m beginning to feel edgy. Do they still love me? Are they seeing someone else, and everyone knows but me? Honestly, I sometimes wonder whether we shouldn’t just, you know, call it a day. So sad after all these years, but that’s life. Yet… would I ever find anyone else? I flirted with Neo. I had a thing with Things but it didn’t go anywhere. Me and Hit List went to a couple of shows out Mulholland way but, you know, the magic wasn’t there. 2Do and I, we just fought. I guess I’ll just die sad and alone, with a whole bunch of stuff left undone. I’d make a note to think about it, except I’d never get it out of the Inbox and into context…
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I’ve already said that we plan to support this in a one-window workflow in a post-2.0 update, but in the meantime have you tried using two windows when you need to drag and drop from the Inbox? If that isn’t working for you, could you explain why?
(We’ve always thought drag-and-drop from the Inbox was important, which is why we implemented it! No need to convince us of that, since that already works!)
Because it’s inconsistent with the way the (more elegant if less flexible) four-pane window everywhere else works.
Because I work in fullscreen. Because I work on a MacBook. Because there’s lower data density (as others have pointed out) and so I can with difficulty (real estate) use a two-window setup but I certainly can’t use any more. Because I think having the Inbox conceptually as an island apart from the rest of the OF2 continent is intuitively and inherently ugly.
Because to set things up on my MacBook Pro 15" so that the two-window workaround works takes at least 10 click and 8 drags and I can’t save my windows state via System Preferences (“Close windows when quitting an application” unchecked) because that’s a universal preference and in the majority of cases (Safari, Tinderbox etc) I don’t want my window states saved.
Because (and this shouldn’t be important but it is, because there’s a cleaner way as in OF1) it’s inelegant and crufty.
Because when you say you isolated the Inbox because “Inbox items aren’t really Projects”, I think that’s a debatable proposition; the important thing is that most of them are going end up in, or as, Projects and that should be a simple, instant-on, one-click procedure.
But NOT because it’s new. I’m too old a dog to yell because Things Have Changed Damnit.
It just doesn’t feel right. It feels like a mistake which has somehow slipped through the net.
You may be right; people may not care; but I can’t think of an analogy (except one, which is still in private beta so I can’t talk about it, but that one is every bit as big a problem).
I could bang on. I have already banged on. I’ll stop banging on.
If that doesn’t help explain, Ken, come back at me and I’ll try again.
I suppose I’m feeling a bit thwarted; I was so looking forward to getting the power of OF back again without the wild ride of OF1 but it’s not happening for me; not on this iteration, at least. I’m not trying to be nasty, just honest (which is one of those things you say during breakups… I’ll be telling you it’s not you, it’s me, next, you know? Like, you deserve better…).
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Thanks! That’s much more useful feedback. And, as I’ve noted before, fixing this is right near the top of our priority list for updates after 2.0 ships.
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I’m in no way glossing over the other pain points you have mentioned, I just wanted to share something that helped me with this issue on my 11" Air and 15" MBP. I use a little app called Moom (there are others that do much the same thing) to quickly reset windows where I want them. It’ll automatically rearrange my windows when I switch from laptop + monitor to just laptop, and gives me short cut keys to quickly resize windows into my preferred sizes. For me, it really cuts down on the friction of getting windows organized and getting back to work. YMMV
