A Milky Outlook
(closed account) says:
So, MilkSync for Outlook is finally here. A lot of people have been waiting a long time for this (785 posts in the “Outlook Sync Progress?” forum thread since Jan 10th 2007!), so this should make a lot of people happy.
Syncing RTM with Outlook was never going to be ideal for some, as there is no support for locations or URLs in Outlook tasks, but Bob and the team have got it working as best as it can, with syncing for: RTM lists & tags to Outlook categories, due dates, recurrence, time estimate, priorities & notes (multiple RTM notes get separated out in the Outlook task’s note field.
I've been beta testing the MilkSync for Outlook app for the past 6 weeks, and this is how I've been using it.
Historically, with RTM, I have used tags and locations along with smart lists, but as these don’t get carried over to Outlook, I’ve had to rethink how I manage my GTD-based task management system.
In Outlook, I want to see my task list reflect my different GTD list types: Action, Next, Someday, Scheduled, Objectives & Reference.
Previously, I used smart lists to generate these lists, where priority 1 tasks went to the Action list, priority 2 to the Next list, and priority 3 to the Someday list, tasks with a due date (and any priority) went to Scheduled, then a task with no priority and a note attached went to Reference, and tasks with a tag starting with +q went to Objectives (e.g. the tag +q1.10 was used for my work 1st quarter objectives in 2010).
To get this mirrored in Outlook, I changed things as follows:
* Created new static lists in RTM for @action, @next, @someday, @scheduled, @objectives & @reference
* Moved all tasks in each smart list to the corresponding static list in RTM
* Removed all smart lists from RTM
* Installed and synced all my RTM tasks to Outlook with the MilkSync for Outlook application (rtm tags and lists get automatically created in Outlook after the first sync, I coloured the list categories after)
* Set my Outlook To-Do Bar to display the fields Priority, Task Subject, Recurrence, Due Date, Categories; then group by categories (ascending), sort by priority (ascending), and filter out completed tasks.
...ends up looking something like this:
* That’s it! It all might seem a bit convoluted, but once I got it setup how I liked, it's worked pretty seamlessly, and I can brain dump into my inbox (create quick tasks in the outlook to-do bar) over the course of the day, and come back and categorise and prioritise later.
So far, I’m pretty happy with this system and I think it should work well for me; maybe others might find it useful, even if just to help generate ideas for how to go about getting their own system adapted.
One thing I’d like to see is the URL field of an RTM task get synced to the notes field of an Outlook task.
Other than that, I’m really pleased to see that the RTM team are listening to our feedback, and I can see this is going to be really beneficial to a lot of RTM users.
And I like having the cow watching over me from my Windows taskbar :)
Syncing RTM with Outlook was never going to be ideal for some, as there is no support for locations or URLs in Outlook tasks, but Bob and the team have got it working as best as it can, with syncing for: RTM lists & tags to Outlook categories, due dates, recurrence, time estimate, priorities & notes (multiple RTM notes get separated out in the Outlook task’s note field.
I've been beta testing the MilkSync for Outlook app for the past 6 weeks, and this is how I've been using it.
Historically, with RTM, I have used tags and locations along with smart lists, but as these don’t get carried over to Outlook, I’ve had to rethink how I manage my GTD-based task management system.
In Outlook, I want to see my task list reflect my different GTD list types: Action, Next, Someday, Scheduled, Objectives & Reference.
Previously, I used smart lists to generate these lists, where priority 1 tasks went to the Action list, priority 2 to the Next list, and priority 3 to the Someday list, tasks with a due date (and any priority) went to Scheduled, then a task with no priority and a note attached went to Reference, and tasks with a tag starting with +q went to Objectives (e.g. the tag +q1.10 was used for my work 1st quarter objectives in 2010).
To get this mirrored in Outlook, I changed things as follows:
* Created new static lists in RTM for @action, @next, @someday, @scheduled, @objectives & @reference
* Moved all tasks in each smart list to the corresponding static list in RTM
* Removed all smart lists from RTM
* Installed and synced all my RTM tasks to Outlook with the MilkSync for Outlook application (rtm tags and lists get automatically created in Outlook after the first sync, I coloured the list categories after)
* Set my Outlook To-Do Bar to display the fields Priority, Task Subject, Recurrence, Due Date, Categories; then group by categories (ascending), sort by priority (ascending), and filter out completed tasks.
...ends up looking something like this:
* That’s it! It all might seem a bit convoluted, but once I got it setup how I liked, it's worked pretty seamlessly, and I can brain dump into my inbox (create quick tasks in the outlook to-do bar) over the course of the day, and come back and categorise and prioritise later.
So far, I’m pretty happy with this system and I think it should work well for me; maybe others might find it useful, even if just to help generate ideas for how to go about getting their own system adapted.
One thing I’d like to see is the URL field of an RTM task get synced to the notes field of an Outlook task.
Other than that, I’m really pleased to see that the RTM team are listening to our feedback, and I can see this is going to be really beneficial to a lot of RTM users.
And I like having the cow watching over me from my Windows taskbar :)
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