The Omni Group’s Year In Review

Each year, Ken Case of The Omni Group takes a look back at the past year and ahead to what’s coming next for the company’s products. It was a good year for Omni, which released a major update of OmniGraffle for Mac as well as updates to OmniFocus for Mac and iOS and OmniPlan for iOS. The year concluded with OmniGraffle for Mac and OmniPlan for iOS making Apple’s ‘Best of 2016’ list.

In addition to planned updates to OmniGraffle for iOS, OmniOutliner for Mac, and OmniFocus, Ken Case outlined ambitious plans to bring new automation features to its iOS apps with some help from Sal Soghoian, who has been reviewing Omni’s efforts:

In 2016 we scratched the surface with URL automation on iOS, but in 2017 we plan to roll out user automation on iOS in a big way across all our apps with a much richer set of capabilities. This automation support won’t be limited to a simple set of URL primitives; instead, we’re adding support for running JavaScript code: code that has the same level of deep support for manipulating the data in our apps as we’ve previously exposed to AppleScript.

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We’re also adding support for background scripts which can automatically respond to document edits.

Omni is going further with URL schemes too:

Oh, and did I mention that we’re including support for calling out to other apps by their URL handler? So you’ll be able to tie into the Workflow app and its already great ecosystem of automation. In OmniFocus, imagine the possibilities that open up when you can trigger a workflow just by checking something off!

The prospect of desktop-class automation in The Omni Group’s iOS apps is exciting and right in line with its original vision for the iPad.