Add Tasks Directly Into Outlook Using Your Cell Phone
Getting Things Done is all about having an airtight way of collecting ideas for things that need to be accomplished. But how do you capture ideas that occur at the most inconvenient times such as driving, in the board room, at your child's play, or while enjoying an evening out with your spouse? Using a new service called Jott, you can now seal up the cracks in the way you collect information by adding tasks directly into Outlook using an ordinary cellphone.
Here's how it works. Jott is a Web 2.0 service that allows you to call in with any phone, leave a message, and will save the message with its transcription into your Jott account. If you click an option to send yourself an e-mail whenever a new Jott is added, you will then receive an e-mail with a subject line of the message you just left.
Having an e-mail in your inbox with your transcribed thought as the subject is handy, but we take it a step further and set up a custom rule in Outlook to run a little bit of VBA code to convert this new e-mail into a task. Once you're back at the PC, you can interact with the task just as you would any other--assign a due date, add categories, etc.
Step 1: Sign up with Jott
This is the easy part. Jott is a free service. Head over to
http://www.jott.com/registration.aspx to register, using an e-mail address that is monitored by Outlook. After getting through the sign-in/e-mail confirmation procedure, go to the Settings page (available from the top right of your main account page).
Make sure "Receive Creation Receipts" is checked and "Do Not Transcribe My Jotts" is not checked. Jott is now completely set up.
Step 2: Add a VBA Function in Outlook
Open the VBA editor in Outlook (Alt-F11). In the default module space (probably Project1), right-click on Modules, and select Insert > Module. You can name it TaskModule, or really whatever you like. Then, copy and paste in the following code:
Sub MakeTaskFromJott(MyMail As Outlook.MailItem)
' You'll never call this function, Outlook will call it automatically
' as part of the rules process, and it will pass in the MyMail object
' without you ever having to worry about it.
Dim strID As String
Dim olNS As Outlook.NameSpace
Dim olMail As Outlook.MailItem
Dim objTask As Outlook.TaskItem
strID = MyMail.EntryID
Set olNS = Application.GetNamespace("MAPI")
Set olMail = olNS.GetItemFromID(strID)
Set objTask = Application.CreateItem(olTaskItem)
With objTask
' Remove the [Jott] tag that comes at the beginning of the subject
.Subject = Replace(olMail.Subject, "[Jott to Self]", "")
.Body = olMail.Body
End With
objTask.Save
Set objTask = Nothing
Set olMail = Nothing
Set olNS = Nothing
End Sub
Step 3: Create a Rule
Almost there! The last step is to create a new rule in Outlook. On the Tools menu, go to Rules and Alerts... and click the New Rule button. In the Rules Wizard, perform the following actions:
- Start from a blank rule, and make sure "Check messages when they arrive" is selected.
- Click Next and check From people or distribution list. In the bottom window, click the underlined "people or distribution list" link and enter the e-mail address notify@jott.com.
- Click Next, and what you do here is largely a matter of preference. When I get a new Jott task, I want to run a script (required), but also play a sound and delete the original e-mail. Check these items off in the list of actions, and click the links for the sound (select a WAV file) and the script. The VBA function you entered earlier should show up as a selection here, so put a check-mark in that box.
- Click Next to go to the Exceptions set up. You probably won't need to enter anything here, although you could if you want to receive jotts but not create tasks from them by including a key word in your jott and then specifying that as text to exclude (such as "low priority") or something.
- Click Next again to view the final options in the wizard. Give the rule a name such as "Task from Jott" and make sure the box "Turn on this rule" is checked.
You're done!
After clicking Finish, your new rule is ready to go. Set up the Jott phone number 1-877-568-8486 as a speed dial on your cellphone (on mine I just hold down the 5 button for a second). Call Jott, utter a quick comment into your cellphone, and wait for the system to work! Shortly your message will be transcribed, e-mailed to you, and processed into a task in Outlook, ready for you to categorize or act upon.
Labels: gtd, office, outlook, productivity, web 2.0
Quick Tip #1 - Keep Your Inbox Clean
Adherents to any type of productivity system know that one of the key concepts of their methodology is to process incoming e-mail items and get them out of the "collection" folder. Usually this means going through your inbox one or more times per day and deciding what to do with each e-mail, and either saving it for later or responding to it now.
Since it is not always realistic to expect to reply to all e-mails as you are processing them, you need a temporary place to put the ones that you'll want to come back to when you have more time. For this, I suggest creating a @RespondTo subfolder off of your inbox. As you are processing e-mail, drag items here that you are not quite ready to answer, but plan to at some point.
Any items remaining in either your inbox or @RespondTo folders should raise red flags that show that there are items in there that demand your attention. Unfortunately, Outlook, for one, is not configured to behave this way. A simple property change can remedy this, however. Right-click on the Inbox and @RespondTo folders and select "Show total number of items". Now any items remaining in these folders will cause it to show up in bold with a count of the total e-mails that need to be dealt with, even if they have already been read.
Productivity Articles Soon to Appear
In addition to writing, maintaining, and dreaming up ideas for more quality JavaScript components, I've come up with a few tricks to try to keep myself on the cutting edge of productivity. Rather than sit on these until they become obsolete, this year I've committed to posting a couple of them as articles. So I've taken over the Primoris Software news page and RSS feed and converted them to a blog.
Some ideas for articles this year include:
- Creating tasks in Outlook from your cellphone.
- Creating tasks, e-mails, appointments, etc. in Outlook from your Windows task bar.
- How to synchronize your documents on every Windows PC you own.
- Backing up your Subversion working copies without committing first.
So check back within the next week or two for the first article, or better yet, subscribe to the news feed with your favorite RSS/Atom reader.
DateClick 1.42 Released
Primoris Software is pleased to announce the latest update to DateClick, the web-based JavaScript date selection calendar. This update addresses some bug-fixes as well as adds some new features.
This update adds the following functionality to DateClick:
- The CSS file has been updated with a new class, 'today' that allows you to add a custom style for "today's" date. Additionally, every class in the CSS file now has an extended description in the comments so it is much easier to edit.
- Positioning the popup calendar is now easier and more flexible than ever before. X and Y parameters have been added to the configuration string that allow you to offset the placement of the calendar from its default position on the page. Setting X:25, for example, moves the calendar 25 pixels to the right, and -25 moves it 25 pixels to the left.
- There is another new configuration parameter POSITION. The default behavior for this parameter is still to show the calendar at the point of the mouse click. Setting this to 1, however, tries to place the calendar where the DateClick icon resides on the screen, and setting it to 2 defaults the position to the top left of the screen. Of course, the new X and Y parameters offset these new positions, so you have total control over where the calendar is displayed.
DateClick 1.4 Released
An update to DateClick is now available with three new powerful configuration options.
- STATIC: Setting STATIC to 1 sets DateClick into "Flat" mode--that is it's always visible rather than being popped up by clicking the icon.
- TOOLTIP: Set the default tool tip text to display while the mouse arrow hovers over the DateClick icon.
- FUNCTION: The FIELD parameter is now no longer required, as you can pass a callback function to handle the selected date. To use FUNCTION, pass the name of your custom function in this argument, and create a function in the script block of your page with the same name that accepts the clicked date as a Date type argument. You can then perform any processes on this date as necessary. You can either leave off the FIELD parameter, or include it and pass the date to both the field and the function.
DateClick 1.3 Released
All versions of DateClick have been updated with some stability enhancements for older browsers and new features!
The new DateClick includes two new configuration parameters. The first, INVALID, allows you to indicate that days in the past up to or including the current day can not be selected. The second, MASK, allows you to more precisely state how you want the date to be returned. This uses a format string that you define and can handle long date formats (e.g. January 1, 2005) and many others.
In addition to improvements in browser support, DateClick's internal date handling mechanism has been improved to better support other languages and formats. DateClick is available for download from the usual sources. Registered users, continue to use the links from your e-mail receipt.
DateClick 1.2 Released
A major upgrade to DateClick has been released today. The new release includes some significant new features.
The most radical improvement deals with how drop down selection box rendering has been changed. Previously DateClick's answer to the well-known IE5+ method of placing select boxes above all other web page elements was to hide all list boxes on the page when the popup DHTML calendar was shown. This is the most common method for getting around the display issue. We have worked hard to find a better way--and now DateClick uses clever new DHTML technology to make the calendar appear to be above all other elements--including drop down boxes in Internet Explorer. This makes the HIDELISTBOXES option obsolete.
In addition a new theme, Bluesteel, is now included with the paid versions of DateClick, and more themes will be added soon. Licensed users can get the update
now for free!
Make sure "Receive Creation Receipts" is checked and "Do Not Transcribe My Jotts" is not checked. Jott is now completely set up.
