My Workflow with Agenda, DevonThink and OmniFocus

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As a Pastor, I need to keep lots of information and I need to stay on top of my tasks. For years, I used evernote as a general dumping ground for thoughts, information and data. It also takes links and photos and has a rudimentary task list. Then it changed CEOs, got business centered, raised their price and got very confusing to use. So I moved to DevonThink. DevonThink is a document manager with a stellar search. I would take notes at meeting in ByWord and save the document to DevonThink. Because DevinThink takes all sorts of documents, it handles HTML and links very nicely and manages photos great. I Would store all my sermons and Bible studies and notes in DevonThink.

All Action items go in OmniFocus. I have a workflow system with OmniFocus that keeps me on top of my prayer list, shopping list, sermon prep, visitation schedule and every other thing I DO as a pastor.

Every year I look at Apple’s design awards and this year there was something called Agenda. I downloaded it and it looks like Apple was right, this thing looks amazing. It still needs Photos and attachments, which they know and are working on. I used Agenda for the first time at a leadership meeting yesterday. Action items are thrown out at meetings like this and so I was able to track who said that would do what, with people tags. I was also able to take action items myself, adding a tag (action) to everything assigned to me. I was able to create a solid bulletted set of minutes for my meeting and it was attached to my calendar for that meeting so I will be able to find those notes.

When I got home, I transferred all my (action) items to OmniFocus, creating projects and tasks.

I will never use the checklist feature of Agenda because it cannot compete with the power and workflow of OmniFocus. I will still use DevonThink for long term storage. People send me articles and links all the time, that have no notes attached to them, and I just need a place to store them long term.

So, Agenda, when it gets photos and attachments, will be my default note taking app. OmniFocus will be my tsk and project manager and DevonThink will be my cold storage. All I need from Agenda is a stellar interface with OmniFocus so I can put things in the OmniFocus inbox from inside the app. Cureently the share sheet allows me to push stuff to DevonThink as a PDF or text file, which is great.

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Thanks for sharing, glad to hear you like Agenda so much!

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@antiduplicity How did you transfer the tasks to OmniFocus after the meeting? Did you do this part manually or have you figured out a way to automate it?

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Currently it is a manual typing job. I take the time to fill in the details and notes and get things in the right projects. My hope and my dream is that a slick integration with OmniFocus is coming where Agenda puts them in the inbox, or a project I name, then I can fill in the details. We work with what we have

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If it’s useful, I made this Workflow (I guess it’ll be called a Shortcut in iOS12?) which takes Markdown-formatted text (so requires a purchased Agenda), organizes notes, actions, and completed actions into both TaskPaper format to feed in to OmniFocus and in to an email (so that I can share my notes with other meeting participants).

Perhaps it might help or at least serve as a starting point?

Also mentioning @mkrgrs, as this sounds like it might be helpful regarding your post in the other thread.

Cheers,

ScottyJ

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Thanks for sharing, @heyscottyj! I replied to the other post with an update about my progress creating a Workflow that does what I’m looking for.

I’ll look at yours, too, to see if I can learn anything. Thanks!

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really agree with you @antiduplicity an integration with omnifocus would be fantastic along with ability to add images / snapshots etc. these would certainly make agenda the “go to” app for me!

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Well, it seems the integration with OmniFocus became a reality…. :sunglasses:

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This is cool, but Omnifocus’s share extension is a little anemic so far — no support of adding the project or tags or anything. It just dumps the selected text into the Omnifocus Inbox. I personally get more value out of copying said text, opening the Quick Entry window and pasting it in there where I can quickly put it where it needs to go.

Not sure about others, but what I’d love is the ability to actually tag things in Agenda and have them show up with the same tag in Omnifocus.

Still, I’m finding Agenda an awesome “higher level” workspace and journal for various creative projects, while dropping the actual doable actions into Omnifocus with everything else I’m responsible for.

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I agree, as a new Agenda user I’m trying to figure out how to effectively integrate the app into a workflow that requires windows collaboration and task management of OmniFocus

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One thing I’ve found quite helpful, at least in one direction: you can right-click on a task in OmniFocus and select “copy as link” and you’ll get something like

omnifocus:///task/p6tABrwjY90

which you can paste into Agenda — clicking on it will take you right back to that item in OmniFocus. I’m still figuring out how to make that really work without introducing too much friction, but this is a helpful puzzle piece.

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To anyone interested in using Agenda and Omnifocus in combination I encourage to have a look at the below video:

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Works with DEVONthink too.

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Does anyone have a shortcut that will take an Agenda to-do item and turn it into an OmniFocus task?

I’m taking notes in Agenda, and If I’ve got actions items, I turn those notes into to-do items (using the checkbox). I found a shortcut that will export to Things, but I want to use OF.

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I have a Shortcut for this!

My Meeting Wrap-Up Shortcut grabs all the actions from an Agenda note, sends them to OmniFocus, and also organizes the note content into an email to meeting participants.

Both of these functions are optional, because I have found the need to re-email others without generating OF actions, as well as cases where I want OF actions, but don’t need to send an email.

Hope this helps!

ScottyJ

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