OmniFocus 4.7 includes new and enhanced features that make it easier and more convenient to manage your tasks than ever before.
Here’s a summary of the key additions and enhancements. We’ll be covering these in more detail in articles, videos, and courses on Learn OmniFocus.
Scheduling Tasks Using Planned Dates
OmniFocus has had defer and due dates since the beginning. The defer date allows you to specify when something will become available to be worked on, and the due date can be used to track a required completion date and time.
Historically, people have used the defer date to specify when they want to work on a task. This can be problematic, as there will inevitably be instances where the deferred date doesn’t line up with the date you want to accomplish the task.
For example, let’s say you have an action to “Shop at Home Depot”. You don’t plan on being at Home Depot until Saturday, so you defer the action to Saturday to avoid cluttering your active actions. However, if you happen to be driving by the store on Thursday, you might miss the opportunity to do your shopping, as the “Shop at Home Depot” action hasn’t become active yet.
This is where planned dates come in. You can specify the date, and even the time, you plan to do something without having to defer it arbitrarily. Going back to the Home Depot example, you could set the planned date to Saturday while still keeping this action available.
Watch the following video to see Planned Dates in action. Also, check out our updated Custom Perspectives for OmniFocus resource; it contains new perspectives that take advantage of planned dates, including On Deck, Today: Later, and Future Plans.
Mutually Exclusive Tags
OmniFocus allows you to group related tags. For example, you might have a tag called “Communications” that includes nested tags like “Email”, “Message,” and “Phone.” It may also be helpful to have a tag called “Home” that includes “Inside” and “Outside”, so you can easily separate rainy day actions from those best done when the sun is shining.
In some instances, it only makes sense that one tag in a group be selected at a time. This is where mutually exclusive tags become useful. To create a mutually exclusive tag, select the tag group and enable “Mutually Exclusive” in the inspector. Mutually exclusive tags have a solid purple background to distinguish them from other tags.
For example, let’s say you have an action to “Contact John about hiking on Saturday” that’s tagged with “Phone.” You don’t get to this action earlier in the day and, as you’re reviewing your actions for today, realize that it’s probably too late to call John. If you apply the “Email” tag to this action, OmniFocus will automatically remove the “Phone” tag so you don’t end up with an action that’s tagged with both “Phone” and “Email.”
Watch the following video to see Mutually Exclusive Tags in action.
Repeat Enhancements
The repeat feature in OmniFocus has become increasingly flexible over time. For example, in previous versions of OmniFocus, you could specify that an item repeat on the first Monday of every month or each week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
The repeat user interface has been reimagined in OmniFocus 4.7. Repeats are now configured in a more intuitive interface. As before, OmniFocus uses progressive disclosure to only reveal options that make sense. If you specify a frequency of “Week,” you’ll see options that make sense for tasks that repeat weekly. Different options will appear if the frequency is set to “Month”.
OmniFocus 4.7 adds a new “End” option. If set to “On Date,” you’ll be prompted to specify the date the repeat ends. If you select “After”, you’ll be prompted to specify how many times this item should repeat.
To share a practical example, suppose your neighbour, Jean, is going to be out of town from September 1 to September 8, and you’ve agreed to feed Jean’s cat while they’re away. You could create a “Feed Jean’s Cat” action that’s deferred until September 1 and repeats daily with an end date of September 8. The repeat will end automatically when Jean’s back in town.
Other enhancements to the repeat feature include an option to “Catch up automatically”, improved flexibility for items that repeat on a specific schedule, and a summary of the configured repeat settings in the inspector.
Watch the following video to see Repeat Enhancements in action.
Forecast Enhancements
The Forecast perspective got some love as well.
You can now configure the Forecast perspective to show items on their planned date. This helps ensure that you’re not planning too many (or too few) actions on a given day.
You can set aside time for these tasks by dragging your planned items into your calendar app of choice. If you drag something from OmniFocus to Apple’s Calendar app, a new appointment will be created with a link back to OmniFocus. Fantastical and BusyCal take this a step further; the length of the appointment is adjusted automatically based on the estimated time you specify in OmniFocus.
You can change the defer, planned and due dates by selecting one or more items and dragging them to a new date in the Forecast perspective. Hold down ⌘ when dragging to change the due date, ⌥ to change the defer date, and ⇧ to change the planned date.
If you drag to a date without holding down any modifier keys or add an item to the selected day in the Forecast, OmniFocus will set the due date by default. There’s now a “Add or drag to assign” option in Settings > Organization that allows you to make the defer or planned date the default.
There are also new settings that allow you to specify what’s displayed in the Forecast calendar. Historically, the number shown in this calendar corresponded to the number of items that were due on that day. If you choose, this count can now display a count corresponding to all of the items that are shown in Forecast. Go to Settings > Notifications and uncheck “Only count due items” if you want the count to include everything that’s enabled in the View setting, “In Forecast, include”.
In Settings > Notifications, you’ll also find a “Hide summary dots” option. If it’s unchecked, dots will appear in the Forecast date tiles to give you an idea of what’s in store for the future. Yellow dots indicate items that are due soon, and red dots draw your attention to overdue items.
Thanks, Omni!
Many thanks to The Omni Group for all of the hard work that went into these thoughtfully designed new features and enhancements.