Email importing

Usage Questions
1

It seems it isn’t possible to import emails into Everdo, right? I’d be looking for a functionality to forward emails to @everdo.net, alternatively handling this through IFTTT/Zapier. Are there any such plans?

5 Likes
2

It would be a great improvement!

1 Like
3

I’m not sure about OP, but dragging and dropping web browser links or links from Outlook would actually be preferable for me.

Like many mid-big businesses I work entirely in Microsoft products, so being able to drag an email from Outlook into Everdo and have it create a task. My Life Organized and Swift To Do List both do this, IIRC.

1 Like
4

Dragging from Outlook is also an improvement, but a different one.

Email importing allows you to setup automated process to a much greater extent (I use for example Outlook quick-actions to automate several steps, Taskclone to import Evernote-tasks and more).

Dragging from Outlook adds the advantage of the email-id being copied so you can open it directly.

I see these as complementing features, not competing ones. And email import is essential in order for your todo-app not to live in its own world.

1 Like
5

There are a few other topics discussing integration options. I would like Everdo to work with other apps as much as possible, but don’t have a specific solution for now. All options will be considered, including Email, IFTTT, API, etc.

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6

Thumbs up for email drag and drop

7

Any other apps implement this? Want to get a better idea of the UX.

8

For example MyLifeOrganized does this (it also does email import which is a standard among all task managers).

9

Thanks, I’ll take a look!

10

Hi Andrei!

At first - thanks for creating such simple, practical and nice tool like EverDo is!

To the point - There’s a way how to enable references to Outlook objects like Emails - look for “outlook:GUID” URI scheme - which is used e.g. by ToDoList by AbstractSpoon Software and works for me in Outlook 2016 @ Win10 - when I drag Outlook object into the task record, this special hyperlink is inserted there.

Workaround for me would be to generate these outside EverDo (e.g via VBA) or use helper utilities like Linker™ for Windows® by TeamScope Software (is disappearing now)

Note:
It may require extra Outlook configuration to be fully functional depending on the user situation (to enable the scheme, switch off warnings or enforce usage of existing instance instead of the opening new one)

References:
https://superuser.com/questions/71786/can-i-create-a-link-to-a-specific-email-message-in-outlook
https://github.com/jaap-karssenberg/zim-wiki/wiki/Create-Hyperlinks-to-Outlook-Messages-in-Zim
or search the web for “outlook:guid” or “microsoft 158135” keywords…

11

Does opening a link in the format outlook://GUID work correctly? I mean opening in the browser.

Unfortunately, this simply cannot be implemented in Everdo because of a limitation in underlying technology. An alternative way to add such items to Everdo could be via a script in Outlook that utilizes an Everdo API endpoint (once it’s released).

12

The outlook://GUID links are being opened directly in the desktop Outlook app thanks to proper URI handling (either by OS or TaskMgmt app). When I try to open them in the browser it fails, at minimum in IE and FF (= they don’t know how handle this “protocol”).

Thanks for fast reply. Then I need to stick with AbstractSpoon’s ToDolist for my corp work.

Best regards,
Jan

13

Hi

I thumb up this topic !

I’m looking for a solution to have only one inbox.
If we can have a email @everdo.net like nirvanahq, we can use ifttt to :

  • forward gmail to everdo
  • forward outlook to everdo
  • forward SMS to everdo
  • forward voicemail to everdo
  • forward braintoss to everdo
  • forward Alexa to everdo
    And many more with ifttt !

That’s way, everdo become the control center of all inputs !

1 Like
14

This is not forgotten. Email importing will probably be a ESS feature because a central server is needed for that.

15

Just adding my 2 cents - tried most GTD-compatible systems that are available, lately coming from FacileThings. They haven’t implemented the “share to” function in Android - the ONLY way to share content to FT is by sharing to email, then sending the content to a unique address. It actually works quite well but is often way too cumbersome. You can also add inline commands in the copy to add multiple tasks that way.
Considering your penchant for ease of use, it would certainly be the easiest way to create tasks based on incoming emails.
Many systems have this feature.
It is also much better than sharing URLs from Outlook etc. Someone said above that many small businesses use Outlook - I beg to differ. We for example are all in on Google suite. The share by email is simple, easy and universal.
Thanks for an otherwise great product!

16

Hello. Moving from Omnifocus since I need cross platform. The only feature I’m missing is adding from another app. I’m a heavy user of Drafts on the Apple platform.

I’d love to see a URL scheme added to the Everdo app to add new todo items. On iOS this would be used by apps like Drafts to hand off a todo item to Everdo’s Inbox.

This could also be (ab)used on macOS in a Mail.app rule to achieve email importing by calling the Everdo mac app’s URL scheme.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/inter-process_communication/allowing_apps_and_websites_to_link_to_your_content/defining_a_custom_url_scheme_for_your_app

17

Have you tried the usual share workflow from the source app to Everdo? Any selectable text can also be shared to Everdo, including email titles.

Could you please clarify how linking can work for importing content?

How do you see an email imported to Everdo? Do you mean plain text emails only?

18

Thank you for showing me this, I hadn’t seen it before since iOS buries new apps in the share sheet. This will be very useful and gets me almost everything I need, besides one use case I’ll describe below.

Sure, since I am familiar with OmniFocus I will use their implementation as an example.

omnifocus:///add?name=[[title]]¬e=[[body]]

Drafts replaces the content in between the double brackets, then opens the resulting URL. https://actions.getdrafts.com/a/1RI

OmniFocus has a URL at omnifocus:///add that takes parameters passed to it to create a new task in the Inbox using the contents of those variables that Drafts filled in. Your share sheet accomplishes this just fine, but I hope it explains the basic functionality that a URL scheme can provide.

My specific use case is to send each line typed as individual Inbox items. This is very useful for doing a brain dump; just type it all out line by line, then use this URL scheme to create an Inbox item out of each line. Here’s a Drafts script to build an array of each line to be pushed to OmniFocus: https://actions.getdrafts.com/a/1DD

And OmniFocus has a URL at omnifocus:///paste that takes the array, and creates new Inbox items out of each value. This, specifically, is the piece I am requesting that you consider implementing.

I am not a developer so please take my advice with a grain of salt, but I think the simplest implementation of this would be a URL scheme like everdo:///import?content=. You could decide on a known line-break character, so all content up to that character would be one Inbox item and repeat until there’s no more content.

Curious to hear your thoughts on this. The ability to add a new Inbox item per line of text is pretty crucial to my workflow and is the one thing I can’t seem to figure out with Everdo. I am, of course, open to other ideas to accomplish this as well.

With a URL scheme in place on the macos app, I imagine one could setup their own email account in Mail.app with a rule like “from me to me” or “contains certain character in subject line” that appends the mail body to everdo:///import?content= and opens the resulting URL.

You make a very good point that the email would either have to be in plain text format, or some sort of parsing would need to happen before the result is opened.

19

Thanks for the clarifications.

I think it would be a good idea to tweak the current sharing functionality so that the first line of the imported text is used as the title and have the rest of the lines go to the description. As it works right now, everything goes to the title, which is not optimal.

1 Like
20

Hi Andrei,

I agree, that would be a welcome change, but I am still looking for a method to import multiple separate items.

Another idea to accomplish this would be a way to import items from the stock Reminders app? Adding To-Dos via Apple Reminders - Things Support