[millieaux]

I would like to:
Setup a rule that fires on sent messages and evaluates a keyword added via MailTags and creates a new OF action with context 'WaitingFor' with the content of the mail in the note. This would be similar to Curt Clifton's great Mail.app to OF script, but I'm looking for something that could be used for mail I'm sending, not just receiving.

Thoughts on how one might be able to do that? And it doesn't have to use MailTags, just figured that could be an easy way to flag the message for processing.

[steve]

This is a great idea and would save me a lot of time. One work around is to use add a rule to invoke Curt's script to anything that you bcc yourself on. . .

[curt.clifton]

Glad you like the script.

I hacked around in Mail for a long time trying to set up something for auto-generating Waiting For actions. In the current version of Mail there are some problems with running scripts from regular rules. Scripts run fine from Mail Act-On rules, but occasionally a script triggered by a regular rule will fail silently or cause Mail to hang. Ultimately that behavior made me give up, though I still have an action deep on my list to research this further.

I'm hoping that the version of Mail in Leopard will better support scripting, but I'm not holding my breath. Apple's own applications are among the worst for Applescript support.

Hmm, here's an idea...

MailTags allows the user to assign tags to outgoing messages. One could create a WaitForInOF tag to apply to a message during sending. A separate script could find all the messages in Sent Mail with the WaitForInOF tag. It could generate OF Waiting For actions, then clear the WaitForInOF tags. Running this script as part of a daily review would generate Waiting For actions for all the applicable messages sent since the last run of the script.

The WaitForInOF tag might interact strangely with the MailTags feature that sends tags to and receives tags from other users, but it might be worth exploring.

[millieaux]

Yeah, I was thinking about your idea of tagging, and then manually running a script to process those tagged that are in sent, and then clear the tags. I'll noodle on that one and see if I can come up with something that works...

[Adam Sneller]

I have tried everything to implement a Tickler script in Mail. The script itself works fine and makes an awesome solution for Waiting For task... simply tickle them until you want to follow up!

The rub is that no matter what scheduling software I use: iCal, Anacron, Script Timer, iDoDo (whatever), I can't get Mail to fire the script!!! I think this has to do with the computer going into Sleep mode... but I don't know.

If you can figure out how to schedule scripts for use with Mail, I can give you the Tickler script...

Ideas?

[Adam Sneller]

Another variation on Curt's suggestion. You could do this without any AppleScript at all. Just create a smart folder titled @Inbox that shows all your Inbox messages or any messages with a due date < today. If you work out of this folder you can then use Act-On to create several rules to move your Tickled email to an @Tickler folder and tag it with various due dates.

E.g.,

Tickle 1 day
Tickle 4 days
Tickle 1 week

There was a really good post on this on Hawk Wings a while back...

[curt.clifton]

Adam,

I don't understand your suggestion for multiple folders in Mail. How do separate folders in Mail allow one to use OF to track Waiting For items? The goal is to only have to use Mail for processing incoming messages, writing outgoing messages, and looking up reference material. I don't want to have to check both OF and Mail to find Waiting For items or actions. That's double the work for system maintenance.