Agenda integration with OmniFocus

Greetings all!

Here’s a link to documentation and download for an Omni Automation plug-in for OmniFocus that creates and links a new Agenda note based upon the data from the currently selected OmniFocus project or task.

After creating the Agenda note, a link-back to the Agenda note is automatically prepended to the note of the OmniFocus item — so there’s always an easy way to switch between the two apps!

NOTE: this plug-in requires use of OmniFocus 4, which is currently in public beta on all Apple devices.

Here’s the plug-in’s documentation page from the OmniFocus plug-in collection of the OmniFocus Omni Automation website. More information regarding the beta is available on the Omni Slack channel.

Your comments, suggestions, and ideas for other plug-ins are most welcome! — Cheers!

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It doesn’t work the first time it is invoked, but it does work on the second and subsequent invocations.

The Agenda link added to OF4 is useful, how about adding an OF4 link to the Agenda note that is created, otherwise it’s only a one-way street?

Downside is, it creates a new Agenda note every time the automation is invoked on an OF task. User error, of course, but why let users make the error?

Thank you for the feedback! Added the link to the OmniFocus item to the Agenda note as well.

Hmm. Are you saying that a new Agenda note is created every time the link-back in the OmniFocus note is activated?

NOTE TO THREAD:

The note field for projects and tasks in OmniFocus 4 (beta) supports RTF (Rich Text Format) which is used by Agenda when the “Copy As… Note Text” option is selected.

So… you can copy and paste your Agenda note into the OmniFocus note field and retain the look and formatting!

w00t!

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Nice one, thanks for sharing the plug-in! :raised_hands:

You’re welcome!

And thank you for supporting the community by ensuring that Automation is a priority in Agenda. It’s always fascinating and heartening to see the life-enhancing tools customers create with your product when Automation is made a focus.

Keep up the good work!

— Sal

P.S. When I get a bit of free time, I’ll convert the plug-in into a Voice Command, and add it to the OmniFocus voice commands collection. I truly believe that the combination of spoken commands blended with keyboard interaction is the next wave to paddle to!

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No, I’m saying that if you select an OF task and click the Automation plugin to create an Agenda, and then select the OF task again and click the plugin again, a second Agenda note is created. That is “user error” but it is easy to do and it would be helpful to prevent this if the plugin warned “are you sure? an Agenda note for this task already exists”.

Ah, d’oh! Thanks for the clarification.

The feature you request requires either:

  1. Storing a bit of data somewhere in OmniFocus that keeps track of if an Agenda item has been previously created. Of course the stored data would be inccorect if the user made changes in Agenda.
  2. Or a query to Agenda to see if a note with the same name exists, which I’m not sure is possible and would be a lot of flashing between the two apps since URLs are being used in place of a system event structure like Apple Events.
  3. And, the user may wish to intentionally have multiple copies/variations to work with.

An alternate solution is the second plug-in I added to the documentation page for searching Agenda for an existing note matching the title of the selected project or task!
If for some reason the embedded Agenda link is removed from the OmniFocus item, this plug-in will still get you to the matched Agenda note.

Your suggestion does point out the potential for interaction between the two apps. Since OmniFocus uses Omni Automaton, where every featue of the app is exposed to automation, as well as REST APIs, Bookmarks, Credentials, etc. – the possiblities are plentiful.

Thank you for the brainstorm! Cheers.

It’s time to speak up!

OmniFocus Voice Command: Add Item to Agenda

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Here’s another example plug-in for linking Agenda notes with OmniFocus tasks.

New Task for Selected Agenda Note

This plug-in creates a new task based upon the currently selected Agenda note.

A link-back to the selected Agenda item is prepended to the OmniFocus task’s note. And a link-back to the created OmniFocus task is appended to the selected Agenda item’s note. You can then use these links to easily copy and transfer content between the two elements.

– Enjoy!

Wow, you’re on a roll, great stuff! :raised_hands:

You’ll also be pleased to hear that Agenda 16 greatly improves the App Shortcuts available in the Shortcuts app (and Apple has fixed a bunch of bugs making them work better when connecting them together).

app intents are a creative approach to expanding the “vocabulary” used by workflows. It should become more popular as it gains initial support from forward-visioning developers like Agenda. The more support you provide, the more loyal the customer response is returned.

The existing Shortcuts support in Omni applications continues to enable the creative transfer and use of increased 3rd-party automation integration. Now it’s time to observe the creative tools and connections customers make as they integrate our apps in their workflows. w00t!

“The power of the computer should reside in the hands of the one using it.”

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I’m wondering how many Agenda users are also using OF? I’m 2 months into planting myself in Agenda and a long time OF user. It’s looking like I’ll be creating todo items and tasks (I differentiate) along w/ their notes in Agenda and work on a shortcut to get the task basics like project, task, tags and date into OF. I’m also trying TaskPaper format as a conduit to OF but can’t get it to work yet. There is an existing module for getting tasks from Craft into OF that I’m trying to modify as a stopgap until OF4 is released. The module mentioned in this feed by @Otto-Automator would be great but 4 is like waiting on Bear 2!
Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Greetings Bruce!

The updated Shortcuts support in Agenda looks like it would work well with the built-in in Shortcuts support in OmniFocus, especially with the “Omni Automation Script” action, which basically enables any type of element creation or modification.

Do you have an example workflow in mind?

Omni Automation Shortcuts Documentation

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Thanks for the reply,

I’ve been thru Evernote, Bear, Craft, and now the one I’ve been looking for, Agenda. I have always kept everything in the note app and OmniFocus for projects/tasks. Late in Bear I started sharing to OF rather than entry or c&p. What I would like to do is enter into Agenda a project, **tasks, tags, due and note. I have been using a link between the tasks notes created in Agenda and the notes field in OF to get back to Agenda. If it would work better I could switch to creating the task in OF and move the data to Agenda. With OF always on top quick entry it wouldn’t be a terrible break in the work flow. Tags could(should) be omitted in either direction to prevent duplication?

Again,Many Thanks

Bruce, if I’m understanding your request correctly, you basically want what the OmniFocus plug-in currently does – WITH the addition of “tags” AND the creation of a PROJECT instead of a NOTE?

Let me check the Agenda URL support documentation to see if it supports projects and tags. If not then perhpas the latest Shortcuts actions could provide a mechanism — specifically, a Shortcuts workflow called by the OF plug-in.

Looking at the updated Shortcuts support in Agenda, it seems that a good approach would be to create a workflow similar to this one that generates a project with a note that includes text and a due date. The parameters could be passed to the workflow when it is called via a URL or from the command line.

NOTE: I don’t see how “tags” are set though, perhaps you know?

The existing plugin states it requires OF v4 but. Other than that it would be fine. I can see how tags could get complicated.

After a little more investigation, it looks like Shortcuts is the ticket that will work with OF3 or 4!

The Omni Automation Script action for OmniFocus only needs to return a JSON record containing the data about the selected project or task and then pass that data onto the Agenda Shortcuts actions!

Here’s the concept:

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