SUPPORT

What is Mail Drop?

Mail Drop is a new feature of the Omni Sync Server that lets you send emails directly into your OmniFocus Inbox. You can create multiple private send-to addresses in order to give access to third parties, and delete those addresses at any time.

Some Examples

• Forwarding actionable emails from your PC at work;
• Processing emails on your iPhone or iPad;
• Using IFTTT (If This Then That) to automate all kinds of internet-y things;
• Allowing a partner to delegate actions directly into your OmniFocus system.

How to get started

If you're already using the Omni Sync Server to sync OmniFocus, you can log in to the sync server web interface and create your first Mail Drop address. After logging in, just click the Create Address button to automatically generate the email address (a combination of your account name and a random string of characters)

If you don't have a Sync Server account yet, you can sign up here. The account creation process includes instructions for configuring OmniFocus to use your new account (it's as simple as tapping or clicking a link in an email).

What kind of information can I add to OmniFocus via Mail Drop?

When you send an email message to Mail Drop, the subject line of that message will become the name of your new Inbox item. The body of the message will become the note; it can contain text, attachments, and simple HTML (more complex formatting is stripped).

I'm already using the OmniFocus Mail Rule and Clip-O-Tron or send-to-omnifocus@omnigroup.com to process email.

Mail Drop is designed to have fewer external dependencies than our current solutions that involve Mail on OS X. Each time the OS has been updated recently, we have had to do a significant amount of work to keep basic functionality working, and in some cases have not been able to restore features. While Mail Drop's functionality is currently basic, we plan on using the time saved to add more features so that it has the best of all of the previous solutions.

Can I specify my own Mail Drop address?

The string of characters after your username in your Mail Drop address is random as a precaution against spam, malware, and other nefarious things from making their way to your OmniFocus inbox. (If you have a problem with an address, you can always delete that Mail Drop address from your Account Management page and create a new one to get a new unique string.) Adding the address to your Contacts makes it easy to use Mail Drop without having to remember the whole address.

If you'd prefer a custom address that's easier to give out, you could create an alias address through your email provider that forwards to your sync address. For more info, read: iCloud: Create or change email aliases

Please note: Since email attachments are included when you add to OmniFocus via Mail Drop, keep in mind that those attachments will add to the overall size of your database until removed. The larger your database is, the longer sync will take and the more data this will consume (if you're on a cellular connection). In other words, you might not want to set up a rule to automatically forward your entire email inbox to OmniFocus! If you're forwarding a lot of emails with attachments, we recommend cleaning out old attachments every so often, as outlined here.

The OmniFocus Clip-o-Tron is a handy tool for extending OmniFocus's interaction with Mail for Mac OS X. It lets use your Clippings shortcut to copy Mail messages to Quick Entry. In OmniFocus 1 it could be installed from OmniFocus Preferences, but due to new security features governing what data apps can touch outside their own domains (sandboxing) a new solution was required for OmniFocus 2. We present: the new Clip-o-Tron 3001!

Download the OmniFocus Clip-o-Tron v1.0.1 from Omni's servers

(Please note that if you're using Yosemite, the Clip-o-Tron requires OmniFocus v2.0.3 or later.)

• In OS X Mavericks, the Clip-o-Tron plugin will copy the subject, body and attachments from an email message, along with a link back to the original message.

• In OS X Yosemite, Apple Mail no longer copies message contents to the pasteboard, so Clip-o-Tron will copy the subject line and link back to the original message. (If Yosemite's Mail ever restores its support for copying email messages, then OmniFocus will start including that content again without any changes on our part.)

For users of OmniFocus 2, the Clip-o-Tron is now available in an installer that does two things:

1. It installs the Mail bundle (a plugin for the Mail app, essentially) that enables the more robust clipping capabilities required to grab entire mail messages.

2. It also optionally installs a Login item that checks to make sure Clip-o-Tron is still up to date with the version of OS X that you're running, and provides an update if necessary. If you choose not to install the Login item Clip-o-Tron will still install, but you'll have to download it again and update manually to keep it working with the latest changes in Mail.

To get started, download the disk image using the link above. Drag the OmniFocus Clip-o-Tron Installer app to your Applications folder and then double-click to launch it. You'll be asked to quit and restart Mail for the plugin to take effect.

Once installed, you can use your Clippings keyboard shortcut (customizable from OmniFocus Preferences) to a selected message in a Mail message list. The message will be added to OmniFocus Quick Entry as an item with the email subject as the title of the item, and a link back to the original message in the note.

You can remove Clip-o-Tron at any time by running the installer (the same one that's available above) and choosing Remove. When Clip-o-Tron isn't installed you can still clip content highlighted in Mail’s message content area using the Clippings shortcut set up in OmniFocus Preferences.

When an app on your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad is behaving an an unexpected way, our Support Humans may ask you to send along a Console Log. The log can tell us exactly what is going on behind the scenes and help get you back up and running quickly. In order to get the Console Log from your device, you'll need to download a special utility.

Step 1: Download and install the iOS Console application

LemonJar makes a free application called iOS Console, which is very handy for retrieving console logs from an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch.

Download the iOS Console application for Mac

Step 2: Connect your iOS Device

Launch iOS Console and plug your device into your computer. After a few moments, a window should appear that displays the console log.

Step 3: Copy the Console Log to an email

Copy and paste the console results in a reply to a message from the Support Human you're working with. We'll do the rest! If you get stuck at any point, don't forget that you can reach us by phone at +1 800-315-6664 between 10am and 5pm PST/PDT (GMT-8/GMT-7).

If you're using OmniFocus 2 on an iOS device with Siri (iPhone 4S and later, iPad 3rd generation and later, all iPad Minis, and iPod Touch 5th generation), and you would like it to keep track of the reminders you give to Siri, all you need to do is check a few settings on your device and you can start adding spoken items to your Inbox in no time.

To set up OmniFocus 2 so it captures your reminders from Siri:

• On your Siri-enabled device, drag down from near the top of the OmniFocus home screen to reveal a hidden menu bar.

• Tap Settings in the toolbar that appears.

• In the Capture section, tap Reminders.

• Finally, you'll see the Reminders screen. In OmniFocus for iPhone turn on the capture option to trigger the access-granting prompt, or in OmniFocus for iPad tap "Allow Access to Reminders" and confirm. If you have multiple Reminders lists set up, choose the list you want OmniFocus to capture from. (If you only have one reminders list, OmniFocus assumes that's the one you want).

Warning: You should only configure Reminders Capture on a single iOS device. If you rely on iCloud to sync your reminders across devices and you have OmniFocus on iPad and iPhone, you could end up with duplicate entries in your Inbox.

To record a new Inbox item with Siri, try these phrases:

• "Siri, remember to..." records a task to the system default Reminders list. OmniFocus grabs it from that list if it's the one you have chosen to capture.

• "Siri, remind me to...at (date and time)" records a task to the default list, and assigns a due date.

• In iOS 8, you can now use "remember to" and "remind me to" somewhat interchangeably. If you specify a time after either of these phrases, it will be assigned as a due date.

• "Siri, remind me when I get to (or leave)..." records a task to the default list with a contact location attached. If you choose a specific location, make sure it matches an OmniFocus context location.

Note: Use the small dot distance (200 meters/650 feet) if you would like OmniFocus to capture Siri-transcribed actions associated with that location.

• "Add ... to my OmniFocus list" records a task to a list named OmniFocus if you have one set up in Reminders. OmniFocus captures the task if that's the list you've chosen.

• Replace OmniFocus with the name of whatever list you'd prefer!

When OmniFocus captures a Reminder, it removes the item from the Reminders so that there’s no confusion about where it belongs. To keep your data safe, there are some Reminders items that OmniFocus will not claim. (Reminders will retain ownership of the data and it will not be lost.) These are items that have data beyond what OmniFocus can track, such as contact locations outside the set of small-size OmniFocus context radii you have established.

For this reason, the location-based aspects of capture are most effective when you tailor the locations of your OmniFocus contexts as closely as possible to your location-based Reminders contacts.

In July of 2012, Apple made changes in OS X Mountain Lion that interfered with the iCal Sync feature included in releases of OmniFocus for Mac prior to version 1.10.3. Because of this, the iCal sync option was removed. We apologize for the inconvenience this causes folks who were able to put the feature to use, but it had far outlived the intended original purpose, which was syncing to-dos with pre-iPhone PDAs. We didn't want additional customers building their workflows around it.

However, there's a separate feature with similar utility and which is still supported - it will put the due dates for your projects and actions on a new "OmniFocus Reminders" calendar.

If OmniFocus 2 for Mac is configured to sync with a server, you can enable this feature from the Notifications tab in the Preferences window. Just enable the "Publish due items as calendar alarms" setting, then press the Subscribe button once it activates; the app will walk you through the rest of the setup process.

Customers using version 1 of OmniFocus will want to visit OmniFocus > Preferences > Sync, then look for a similar "Publish Due reminders as a calendar" checkbox and button to subscribe Apple Calendar to the exported calendar file.

From now on, every time OmniFocus 1 or 2 syncs to your server account, it will also update the calendar file on the server with information on everything due in the next two weeks. This calendar is in a standard .ics format which is understood by many calendar applications, including Apple's.