Turning emails into actions: send-to-omnifocus@omnigroup.com
 

One of the most-requested features for the iOS editions of OmniFocus is a way to process information from other apps into OmniFocus action items. (Email, for example.)

One option is to use applications that support the Send to OmniFocus feature, but what if you're using an app that doesn't support it, like the built-in Mail app on your iPad?

(If you're interested in apps that do support the feature, check [URL="http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=18931"]this thread[/URL].)

Starting today, if you can turn the information into an email, you can add it to your OmniFocus inbox. Send an email from your PC, then tap a link on your iPad to add that email to your database.

To try out the feature, send a message to [email]send-to-omnifocus@omnigroup.com[/email]. Within a few minutes, you'll receive an auto-response from us which includes a "Send to OmniFocus" link.

When you get back to your OmniFocus device of choice, open that mail message and tap or click the "Send to OmniFocus" link. At that point, OmniFocus will launch on your device and add the the subject and text of the original email to your database. (Attachments don't go along for the ride, but that also means that your sync times stay fast.)

(Note that this works best if you use a dedicated mail application - Mail for OS X/iPhone/iPad - as opposed to viewing your mail inside a browser. Web browsers don't seem to handle the custom link type as well as the native apps do.)

We'll probably do more work in this area for future versions of OmniFocus and/or the [URL="http://www.omnigroup.com/sync/"]Omni Sync Server[/URL]; this was just a quick/easy way we could improve the experience for folks that do a lot of work on non-Apple platforms. Hope it helps, and as always, we'd love to hear your feedback.


[B]Update on 12/3/2012[/B]:

Closing this thread, as we're rolling out a new Omni Sync Server feature that's a significant improvement over this method. See [URL="http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=27277"]this thread[/URL] for more info.

This seems to work well, but the body of text I'm getting back from the server seems corrupted - jumbled letters.

[QUOTE=ksrhee;90566]This seems to work well, but the body of text I'm getting back from the server seems corrupted - jumbled letters.[/QUOTE]

If you can forward the original message along to the [EMAIL="omnifocus-ipad@omnigroup.com"]support ninjas[/EMAIL], we'd love to take a look at that. Possible a different encoding is being used than the server-side script expects...

[QUOTE=Brian;90567]If you can forward the original message along to the [EMAIL="omnifocus-ipad@omnigroup.com"]support ninjas[/EMAIL], we'd love to take a look at that. Possible a different encoding is being used than the server-side script expects...[/QUOTE]

I forward it, but it looks like mails forwarded from my Mac is working fine, but if I forward it from my iPad, it comes back all jumbled up. Perhaps this gives you a better idea?

Strangely, although Ipad body doesn't generally come back, emails from Iphone work ok. I'llcontinue testing to see if I can refine the reasons.

When I tried it this morning from my iPhone it worked fine, but now the mails I send to the omnifocus email adress are not returned, is the mailserver down?

[QUOTE=Nicolas_Thomsen;90582]When I tried it this morning from my iPhone it worked fine, but now the mails I send to the omnifocus email adress are not returned, is the mailserver down?[/QUOTE]

Tried it out just a minute ago, and it seemed to be responding fine. Still having trouble?

[QUOTE=ksrhee;90572]I forward it, but it looks like mails forwarded from my Mac is working fine, but if I forward it from my iPad, it comes back all jumbled up. Perhaps this gives you a better idea?[/QUOTE]

Oooh, yeah, that's a useful clue. Information added to the bug we opened on this. Thanks!

[QUOTE=Nicolas_Thomsen;90582]When I tried it this morning from my iPhone it worked fine, but now the mails I send to the omnifocus email adress are not returned, is the mailserver down?[/QUOTE]

Checked with the server admin - we haven't had any downtime today....

[QUOTE=Brian;90595]Checked with the server admin - we haven't had any downtime today....[/QUOTE]

How long is it supposed to take before you get the mail back? I sent 5 out yesterday, only one of them came back and it took an hour for it to arrive.

i get mine back in seconds but still garbled

I just tried again today, it took an hour and a half before I got the mail, and I have turned push on. It was only the first mail I sent out when I tried it at first that came back instantly.

Seems to work except that it lost its attachment along the way.

It doesn't do attachments, as Brian mentioned on the iPhone thread, but apparently not this one.

Thanks. This is a big help. Stating the obvious, I created a contact called "OmniFocus Action Item" with that email address making it easy to forward.

It responds quickly for me using my iPad and its mail app and gmail.

Great that it includes the full message header and the body of the message. That makes it easy to find the email in the mail app if I need to.

Obviously not as efficient or slick as the Clip-O-Tron, but a usable substitute.

I am still having problems with the subject and/or the body of the message returning gobbledegook when the link is emailed back to me. Often the body of the message is empty.

This is when sending from Ipad. Windows Outlook seems better and the Iphone also seems a little better.

How about posting a screenshot of a message you've composed before you send it to the send-to-omnifocus service?

[QUOTE=ksrhee;90566]This seems to work well, but the body of text I'm getting back from the server seems corrupted - jumbled letters.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Royp;90611]i get mine back in seconds but still garbled[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=lexden;90634]I am still having problems with the subject and/or the body of the message returning gobbledegook when the link is emailed back to me. Often the body of the message is empty.

This is when sending from Ipad. Windows Outlook seems better and the Iphone also seems a little better.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for reporting this! The send-to-omnifocus email address should be able to properly decode headers and message text now.

[QUOTE=Nicolas_Thomsen;90613]I just tried again today, it took an hour and a half before I got the mail, and I have turned push on. It was only the first mail I sent out when I tried it at first that came back instantly.[/QUOTE]

As a general rule, email doesn't make any guarantees about delivery times since a server could be congested or temporarily unavailable. But our server will process a message and send back a reply as soon as it receives a message. (In fact, our send-to-omnifocus autoresponder never even records a copy of the message, it just processes it in memory and immediately starts sending the reply. Of course, if the place we're trying to send the message back to isn't accepting email there could still be a delay before it's delivered, and during that delay the message would be temporarily stored on our server's disk.)

I did notice that some messages were being delayed by our [URL="http://sqlgrey.sourceforge.net/"]spam greylisting[/URL] service (in cases where people hadn't sent any other email to omnigroup.com recently)—for a minimum of 5 minutes, but sometimes as long as an hour or more (depending on how often the sending email server retries failed delivery attempts). I've turned off the greylisting service for the send-to-omnifocus autoresponder now, so that delay should no longer happen.

[QUOTE=whpalmer4;90618]It doesn't do attachments, as Brian mentioned on the iPhone thread, but apparently not this one.[/QUOTE]

Darnit, I totally meant to add that. Fixing... Thanks. :-)

[QUOTE=Ken Case;90675]As a general rule, email doesn't make any guarantees about delivery times since a server could be congested or temporarily unavailable. But our server will process a message and send back a reply as soon as it receives a message. (In fact, our send-to-omnifocus autoresponder never even records a copy of the message, it just processes it in memory and immediately starts sending the reply. Of course, if the place we're trying to send the message back to isn't accepting email there could still be a delay before it's delivered, and during that delay the message would be temporarily stored on our server's disk.)

I did notice that some messages were being delayed by our [URL="http://sqlgrey.sourceforge.net/"]spam greylisting[/URL] service (in cases where people hadn't sent any other email to omnigroup.com recently)—for a minimum of 5 minutes, but sometimes as long as an hour or more (depending on how often the sending email server retries failed delivery attempts). I've turned off the greylisting service for the send-to-omnifocus autoresponder now, so that delay should no longer happen.[/QUOTE]

Hi Ken I just tried it again and it came back almost instantly, thanks a lot, you guys are great! :)

iPad note uses URL encoding
 

This is a very cool and very appreciated service.

Sending and getting the email back works well, except that I lose the paragraphs.

However, when I click the link to add to OF iPad, the note contains the text with URL encoding - i.e. spaces are rendered as %20. This makes the note virtually unreadable.

What are you using to compose your email? And do you do anything at all to the email between receiving it from the Omni server and clicking on the link? I just tried a couple of test cases, sending from Mail on the Mac and gmail in a browser, multiple paragraphs, plain text or rich text, and processing the resulting email on Mac, iPad, and iPod touch. All of them worked perfectly (though the rich text formatting is stripped). If the problem persists, you'll probably need to send them some examples.

I was sending the email from my iPad.

Actually, as I did more testing, it appears to be this one email. I'll probably send it to the support ninjas.

As I tried other emails, they worked fine.

This really is a cool added feature. Thanks for the implementation. It's working very well for me.

iPad mail bounce back option
 

Hi,

Just wondering how safe and confidential are the bounce back options using Omnifocus on iPad?

Thanks

Stephane, [URL="http://forums.omnigroup.com/showpost.php?p=90675&postcount=19"]this post[/URL] has the information you're looking for, at least as far as our server goes. At a bare minimum, your mail server and ours is involved in a transaction like this; in most cases, there are going to be one or more intermediary steps/servers, as well.

We can't control what your mail server or the intermediary ones do with the mail during/after sending to you, but ours forgets all about the information as soon as we can verify that we've successfully sent it.

Hope this helps!

Closing this thread, as we're rolling out a new Omni Sync Server feature that's a significant improvement over this method. See [URL="http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=27277"]this thread[/URL] for more info.