OmniGroup's OmniFocus is one of the most popular GTD/Todo/Task managers for keeping you organized and productive on iOS and the Mac.
Drafts can work with OmniFocus as a front-end capture tool in a number of ways. This article discusses a few of them to help get you started.
URL-Based Actions
- Pros: OmniFocus opens, and you can further categorize the new task (assign project, due date, etc). Does not require network connection.
- Cons: Leaves drafts. Can only handle one task at a time.
The OmniFocus iPhone and iPad apps support URL schemes to add tasks. When using one of these actions in Drafts, your draft text will be added to a specially constructed URL in the background, and the OmniFocus app will launch, and open to a quick entry screen with the text from your draft already filled in. Two sample URL-based actions for OmniFocus are provided in our directory, ready for install – simply visit these links on your iOS device and tap install:
- OmniFocus : This version of the action will forward the entire text of your current draft to OmniFocus, with the first line used as the task name, and the remainder of the body of the draft used as a note attached to the task.
- OmniFocus (selection) : This version can be used to select just part of a larger draft, and send that selected text to OmniFocus as a new task. Notes cannot be included with this version of the action.
OmniFocus Mail Drop
- Pros: Immediately sends task in background without leaving Drafts.
- Cons: Requires network connection (to send in background). Requires using OmniGroup's own sync services. Goes to inbox, no way to categorize ahead of time.
If you use OmniGroup's own sync service for OmniFocus, you have a "Mail Drop" email address you can use to email tasks into OmniFocus. For details on getting your Mail Drop address, read Omni's documentation.
This Mail Drop address works great with Drafts' email action steps. You can configure an email action that sends in the background to your Mail Drop address, and with a single tap, forward a task you captured in Drafts. In most cases the default values in a new email step will work find for the content, just change the "To" address to your OmniFocus Mail Drop address and enable "Send in Background" on the step.
This is a super quick and easy way to create a task in OmniFocus without leaving Drafts.
Drafts > Reminders > OmniFocus
- Pros: Create many tasks quickly.
Drafts "List in Reminders" action allows you to quickly type up a list of items, one per line, in a draft, and send them to the built-in iOS Reminders app as a list.
OmniFocus has the ability to import tasks from the iOS Reminders app.
If you have configured OmniFocus to import from Reminders, you can use these two features together to send the lines of a Draft to OmniFocus quickly. To setup:
Install the OmniFocus via Reminders action from the Action Directory.
Configure OmniFocus to import from a list named "OmniFocus" in Reminder (Omni's docs). Or, if you already have OmniFocus configured to use a different list name, edit the imported action and change the "List name" field on the "List in Reminders" action step to the name of the the list OmniFocus imports from.
Write a list in a draft, and tap the action. The Reminders list will be created, then OmniFocus launched and it should immediately import the list into your inbox.
To include notes, individual lines can use the | delimiter to separate the task name from the notes. For example, the line "Get Milk|Milk on sale at Whole Foods" would be send to Reminders as a task with the title "Get Milk" and notes "Milk on sale at Whole Foods" – and would be imported into OmniFocus this way.
OmniFocus Share Extension
- Pros: Allows selection of project, context.
- Cons: Requires a few extra taps to navigation to the proper extension.
OmniFocus also provides an iOS Share extension for capturing. Drafts can access share extensions via the "Share" action, which will bring up the the iOS system share dialog. If you have OmniFocus installed, you can enable it's extension, and it will be available in this dialog. If you tap it, it will open with your text ready as a task name.
Because this share extension is provided by OmniFocus, it allows you more control over where the task will go, allowing you to selection from your projects and contexts before creating the task.
The default "Share" action that ships with Drafts will send the full text of your draft to the share extension. If you would like to use OmniFocus's (or other) Share extension with only a text selection from your draft, you can also install the "Share (selection)" action from the Action Directory which uses the Share step's template to only send your last text selection.
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