I figured I’d aim for the lowest common denominator, and add actions manually in OmniFocus for more complex cases. Some complex cases will have more deadlines. This is the template that I will use every time I need to enter dates from a Case Management Order.
The various references tell the workflow to prompt me for the due dates of the different tasks. The words : Case Management Deadline)” tell the workflow the name of the context to use in OmniFocus. In my document, «ClientName» tells the Editorial workflow to prompt me for a client name. Basically, anything you see either surrounded in brackets, or following an symbol, passes information to the Editorial workflow. I pieced the document together using a post in the OmniFocus forums.
I first needed to install this Editorial Workflow, which is a workflow to send TaskPaper-formatted documents from Editorial to OmniFocus.Īfter installing that workflow, I created the following Editorial document: I started with Editoral for iOS, creating a TaskPaper-formatted document. Getting those deadlines into my trusted system would be a big help. Every civil suit filed in my county ends up with a unique case management order, which for many lawyers has resulted in pages of deadlines we have to monitor and manage on a regular basis. I quickly hit on the answer – getting our county’s case management deadlines into OmniFocus. I decided to find an activity in my work life that I repeat with some frequency, and see if I could use automation in OmniFocus to make it easier. This was irresistible for me, so I dove in, albeit at a very basic level. That version dramatically improved automation in OmniFocus for iOS, adding support for two-way communication with other iOS apps. The Omni Group released a new version of OmniFocus for iOS yesterday. You can find the updated template to download, along with an explanation, in this post. Research Mother's Day gifts !() -Flowers are boringĪsparagus can install the action into your own Drafts.app from the action directory.UPDATE (): I’ve updated this template to calculate defer dates, add flags to tasks, and make the project parallel instead of sequential.
Full Featured (and contrived) Example: Write presentation !Friday #work
If a task already has tags assigned to it, then the global tag(s) will be combined with the other tags. Similarly, if you create a new line with a #, then that tag will be added to ALL tasks. However, if you add a new line that begins with a or ! then that defer or due date will be applied to ALL tasks without their own explicitly assigned date. Global Defer/Due Dates:īy default, tasks will only be assigned defer/due dates that are on the same line as the task title. If you want to use a date format that includes characters other than letters, numbers, and a dash (-), you'll need to enclose it in parenthesis like this: 5, 2019) or !(). The defer and due dates support any syntax/format that OmniFocus can parse.
If you use them, the only requirement is that they come AFTER the task's title and the "note contents" must be LAST. The defer date, due date, tags, and note are all optional. Instructions:Įach line in your draft becomes a new task in OmniFocus, with the exception of "global" tags and dates, which I'll describe later.Įach task goes on its own line and looks like this: Some task title !due-date #tag1 #tag2 -An optional note The format this action uses isn't as feature-rich, but it does everything I need and with less typing. Yes, you could also do this by writing your tasks in TaskPaper format directly, but I find its syntax (while innovative!) a bit cumbersome for quick entry.
This removes the need to confirm each individual action separately. It does this by parsing a compact, easy-to-write syntax that I've adopted from other OmniFocus actions and tweaked to my liking and then converting it into TaskPaper format, which can be "pasted" into OmniFocus in one go. This allows you to create multiple tasks in OmniFocus with defer dates, due dates, and tags in one step. Following-up on my previous post about using Drafts to create new GitHub issues, here's another action I built and use all the time.