Question to forum: What process do you use to create GoodTask tasks from Outlook emails?

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#1

My primary emails, both work and personal, are in Exchange / Outlook accounts. For a number of reasons, I far prefer that service to iCloud.

The only issue is that the syncing of tasks between Exchange and iOS devices via Reminders sucks big time. It's very slow, and unreliable. For a while I was using MS ToDo, which while not nearly in the same league as GoodTask, was usable and cross platform. However it eventually ended with a major data loss. So I moved my tasks to iOS.

I am trying to find a way to create tasks from Outlook emails. There just doesn't seem to be a good way of doing this. A very clunky workaround I am using now is to extract the PDF of email from Print preview, and share it with GoodTask as an attachment. However, this method "nukes" all links in emails. Are there any better ways ?

I may end up just moving all tasks back to the Outlook account, and hope for the best. I suspect that my data loss was due to syncing the same task database via both MS Todo and Reminders. If I move them back to Outlook.com I will just use one service. But I'd rather keep them in iOS Reminders if there's a way to easily copy email to task.

#2

I use outlook tasks as my main to do list. With emails I copy the email into tasks from my desktop and create a task that way. Sadly it can’t be done with GoodTask. With Toodledo you could forward an email to a tasks and it created a task for you from this

One fir the suggestion box.

#3

I might totally misunderstand, but I'm using Spark email app (on ipad and iphone) and there you can share emails (gmail, outlook) to Reminders in different ways. I have a swipe action and it works great. You can share the whole email or as a link. Sorry, if this is not what you meant.

#4

Thanks. I am aware of Spark, however I don't like the fact that they store users' emails on their servers. They are AFAIK located in Ukraine, so not subject to either the US or EU consumer protection or privacy laws. Not to say that I have anything against Readdle, they are a great company with many fantastic products, but email is a little too personal and tied to personal ID security.

#5

Yes, copying from desktop is doable, however I am not using a personal desktop most of the time, getting by with iPad.

There's got to be a better way... I understand that Apple is trying to force all users into Apple devices and services, but this is simply not feasible in 2020, everyone has to juggle multiple devices and accounts that they have no direct control over, work and school and personal etc., so any successful service should be as cross platform as possible. MS had really dropped the ball converting Wunderlist into Todo, they had a market leader there which they just killed via sheer incompetence.

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#6

I understand and I've read about privacy concerns for Spark for many years. I'm not an expert myself, but i think they are actually not doing anything that other e-mail apps aren't doing too. And I think i read somewhere that they are using US servers so I looked it up on their homepage. It says:

Where are Spark’s servers located? Are they safe?
To make everything as safe as possible, we don’t use our own servers. Instead, we rely on Google Cloud service, one of the most secure solutions available in the industry. Leading tech companies like PayPal, Twitter, and Atlassian also use Google Cloud to process user data.

Our cloud infrastructure is hosted by Google in the US, which is fully SOC-2 and ISO 27001 certified. Google Cloud service is also covered by US-EU Privacy Shield and is therefore compliant with the EU GDPR.

But I totally get it that there might be better solutions when it comes to privacy. :slight_smile: Cheers.

#7

So, this is an issue of trust. The actual server location is irrelevant if the key people with access to these servers are located elsewhere. After all, if the server is located in the US but the company headquarters are in China, how is it different from the servers being in China ? It's not like they can say "no" when the government tells them to jump.

Now, Ukraine is no China. But it's still a foreign country. If it was based in the EU, I'd be more inclined to trust them with my data, as EU has very robust consumer protection and privacy laws. But it's not. And the problem with email is that many services still use it for 2FA, plus it holds a lot of sensitive info about you. So, I'd be very hesitant with trusting my email to anyone that is not a major provider based in the US or EU. A small company can get bought off, can have a leadership change, a lot of things may happen behind the scenes that the end user is unaware of. If they have a copy all of my emails, there's no saying what will happen with all that data in 5, 10, 20 years. And a lot of it is still going to remain sensitive. So, I tend to avoid 3rd party email clients. (I don't consider Outlook to be a 3rd party).

This is just a personal choice.

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#8

Just to add to the thread - I ended up just switching my email client back to Apple Mail from Outlook, and using "Siri remind me about this email" voice command to create tasks. (Still using Outlook as my main email, just not the app). Not sure if the functionality in GoodTask was expanded, or I just didn't notice this before, but the resulting link to the original email works from within GoodTask. I wish there was a way to turn the emails from 3rd party services into tasks by flagging, but this will do for now.

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