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.MailItemDim 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
posted by Readmore @ 12:31 PM
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