Anyone using Lotus Notes 8.5 with OmniFocus?
I am a recent Mac convert, and I'm looking for a GTD tool that will help me lasso everything into one place. I run Lotus Notes 8.5, which now has a very good "follow-up" tool, and Mac Mail's ToDo function. But this gives me two lists and neither terribly good at helping me organize and track my ToDo's in a GTD style. I found a year old thread where someone had gotten some integration with Lotus Notes 7, but nothing recent... and the linked DMG in that thread is now gone.... along with the user that posted it. Anyone doing this?
I am also waiting to join an iNotes pilot at work and to confirm if the email urls are persistant there... if so, then Safari's Service Menu might be the ticket... assuming I would want to run Notes in a browser when I have the full client available. OmniFocus may be the reason to do it. |
Just a bump to see if anyone has done anything with Notes. I still haven't gotten to use iNotes, but should have access to it on Wednesday. I have verified that iNotes uses persistent permanent urls for emails, so in theory I should be able to use Safari to run it and use the OmniFocus hook to Safari to add an iNotes email. Further, it may just be possible to use that url from the iPhone but that will be a stretch... I'll be testing it.
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I just realized I never followed up on this. I am using iNotes now via Safari. The clipping works fine with iNotes. When you first open an email, it is a Lotus Notes Tab. There is an icon in the upper right to expand the email into its own window. Once you do that and enable >View>Toolbar, you'll have revealed the unique persistent url to the email. Highlight it and use the service menu to clip it into OmniFocus. Works great. You can then file away the email to empty your inbasket. Later on in OmniFocus, clicking on the url will get you back to the email, even if iNotes isn't running at the time.
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Notes 8.5 & Omnifocus
Notes 8.5 and Omnifocus work pretty ok together. With both apps open I can drag an email into the notes section of an Omnifocus todo and it will create a clickable url to the original Notes email. The original mail can be filed in Notes and will still be opened when you click on the notes:// url in OmniFocus. I still need to type in the todo description however myself.
Nicer would have been to be able to post it like from Apple Mail with shift-ctrl-command-. but I guess that is upto IBM to arrange listening to those services. I tried dragging a Notes email and dropping it onto the Omnifocus icon in the dock. That results into a script error, too bad. Would have been very nice to see that work. So the net is: it works, but can be done nicer and more efficient. |
[QUOTE=psimoons;53967]Notes 8.5 and Omnifocus work pretty ok together. With both apps open I can drag an email into the notes section of an Omnifocus todo and it will create a clickable url to the original Notes email. The original mail can be filed in Notes and will still be opened when you click on the notes:// url in OmniFocus. I still need to type in the todo description however myself.[/QUOTE]
I too made this work. In addition, I was able to drag a message from Notes into OmniFocus and create a new ToDo. The title of the ToDo became the Notes:// URL. Seems like the best way at the moment is to drag the message into the comment field on an existing ToDo. Less work. Will have to investigate the Quick Entry window of OmniFocus to get a new ToDo into the Inbox, and then drag the message into the comments field of that new ToDo. Still need to file the original message in a Notes folder that makes sense. |
Lotus Notes and Omnifocus - Approach
I am using Lotus Notes and OMNIFOCUS. I have created a combination of a Lotus Notes Agent and AppleScript Folder action to manage the interaction. It is not the worlds most advanced but does help with the worflow I follow.
I drag items into a folder that I have created within notes named "Followup". The agent, once per minute, scans the view and creates files (with URL's in the files) on the file system. It then moves the notes to another folder (Processed Followup) in notes. This is the notes portion. I then have an applescript Folder Action for the folder that the agent writes to. It responds to new files by reading them and creating new inbox items. Combined I now just drag/drop the email from my Notes Inbox to the folder as I process my notes Inbox. The rest happens automatically. It has streamlined my email inbox processing a good bit. Step 1: Create the Agent: Select your Mail Inbox within Notes. Select the Memu Item Create -> Agent Name the agent Select Scheduled agent. Click on Schedule and set to every minute. Select Okay (Schedule dialog) Select Close Window (Red circle) to get to the editor in notes for the agent Select Initialize on the left side and replace the initial text with this agent script: Sub Initialize ' On Error Goto ErrorCleanup Dim session As New NotesSession Dim db As NotesDatabase Dim doc As NotesDocument Dim uniqueID As Variant Dim curView As NotesView Dim docCount As Integer Dim notesInputFolder As String Dim notesValidOutputFolder As String Dim notesErrorOutputFolder As String Dim outputFolder As String Dim fileNum As Integer Dim bodyRichText As NotesRichTextItem Dim bodyUnformattedText As String Dim subjectText As NotesItem ''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' 'INPUT OUTPUT LOCATIONS notesInputFolder = "Followup" notesValidOutputFolder = "Processed Followup" ''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' Set db = session.CurrentDatabase Set curview = db.GetView(notesInputFolder ) Set doc = curview.GetFirstDocument() While Not ( doc Is Nothing ) Set subjectText = doc.GetFirstItem("Subject") Dim msgText As String Dim sender As String Dim docDate As String ' docDate = doc.GetFirstItem("Date").text sender = doc.From(0) ' GetFirstItem("From") ' Move to processed folder Call doc.PutInFolder(notesValidOutputFolder) Call doc.RemoveFromFolder(notesInputFolder) ' Dim BodyRichText As NotesRichTextItem Set bodyRichText = doc.GetFirstItem("Body") ' Grab info for output file bodyUnformattedText = bodyRichText.GetUnformattedText() urlDatabase = "notes:///mail3/%YOURFILE%.nsf/0/" + Lcase(doc.UniversalID) Dim openURL As String openUrl = "toof://====" + urlDatabase + "====" + subjectText.Text fileNum% = Freefile() Dim fileName As String fileName = "/Users/%YOURUSERNAME%/tools/notes_to_omnifocus/" & doc.UniversalID Open fileName For Output As fileNum% Print #fileNum%, "Subject: " & subjectText.Text Print #fileNum%, "From: " & sender Print #fileNum%, "Date: " & doc.ColumnValues(9) Print #fileNum%, "URL: " & urlDatabase Print #fileNum%, bodyUnformattedText Close fileNum% Set doc = curview.GetFirstDocument() Wend End Sub <COPY UP UNTIL BUT NOT INCLUDING THIS LINE> NOTES: Replace %YOURFILE% with the name for your mail file. Replace the MAIL3 just before with the correct mail location as well. Replace %YOURUSERNAME% with your user name on the mac (which matches your home directory name. The above agent expects you to have a folder under your user diretory of Users/%YOURUSERNAME%/tools/notes_to_omnifocus you must create the directory tools and notes_to_omnifocus or change the directory name in the agent to something else as desired. The above agent expects you to place email in the "Followup" folder in notes for processing. And it will place the email into the "Processed Followup" folder when it completes. You must create these folders and should use the folder design from your inbox. You can also choose different folder names. Folder Action Script: If you have not done so before you will need to create the directory Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts This is under your user directory. Then open the AppleSript Editor (Applications -> Utilities) Paste the following into the empty script window: on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving these_items repeat with i from 1 to number of items in these_items set this_item to item i of these_items set readfile to open for access this_item set fileContents to (read readfile) close access readfile set Pos to offset of "From:" in fileContents set theSubject to characters 1 thru (Pos - 2) of fileContents as string set theNote to characters (Pos) through end of fileContents as string tell front document of application "OmniFocus" make new inbox task with properties {name:theSubject, note:theNote} end tell end repeat repeat with i from 1 to number of items in these_items set this_item to item i of these_items -- tell application "Finder" -- delete the this_item -- end tell end repeat end adding folder items to <COPY UP UNTIL BUT NOT INCLUDING THIS LINE> Choose Save as and name this omnifocusnotes. Place this under the Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts directory. Now use finder to locate the folder notes_to_omnifocus. Which should have been created earlier when setting up the notes agent. Right click on the folder and select services -> Folder Action Setup... You should see a list of actions. Scroll down and select omnifocusnotes (the name you used in the apple script editor) Okay. You should be done. If necesary insure that your local notes setup has running scheduled agents configured. Go to Lotus Notes->Preferences and choose Basic Notes Client Config. Insure that the "Enable Local Scheduled Agents" is selected. Now go move some email into your new Followup Folder. Watch as this turns into inbox items. And they have URL:s back to the original email in notes. And the email is moved to the processed folder for you. Please post if you have problems/etc. Enjoy |
New to Notes
I have the steps here finished except the mail location. I don't know really where to locate that part (the mail3 and the %.nsf file). I've looked in Application Support folder, but can't seem to find the info. Thanks!
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This is the location of your mail file on your local system/server. You can find this in your location document within notes. If you look for the mail tab on your current location document you should see something. For me this is mail3/russbl1.nsf as this is my short name and the one that was setup by the domino admin. I am not sure how to cut/paste pictures so I would just recommend that you search on location document / mail file with google if you need any information on how to get to this page. For me on 8.5 I click on the lower right bottom of the window where it shows my current location. This pops up a list of locations and I select "Edit current...". I then select the mail tab from the document that was opened. Please note if you do not use a local replica I am not sure how to set up this value so your links work correctly.
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Thank you
This is great stuff.
One thing that I've done is to just forward the email to my omnifocus email. I'm not sure if this feature is still in beta, but it's great. Go here for more details. I'm a new member on this forum, so it won't let me add a URL quite yet. Do a google search for "OmniFocus Mail Drop Service". It's very handy! |
I just tried the Maildrop Service. Is it supposed to attach the mail file? Sure would be helpful if you could double click it, and open it in Notes.
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