OutLinker received a major overhaul this weekend with several new features added and its interface cleaned up.
Option to pick from 5 archive folders
Fields for up to 9 contexts and 20 tags (use for context, area, category, destination keyword, etc)
Ability to process OutLook 2007 RSS folders
Ability to create appointments with message as attachment
Greatly improved ability to [...]
A reader writes by email…
Dear AO,
I use your "Put it in Front of the Door” script daily and I find it very useful. I would like to add a feature to the script, which is synchronizing the dashboard with my tasks in Microsoft Outlook using the “Export task info to Outlook” feature of MM. [...]
…or begin with the beginning (next action) in mind. It's your choice.
Whether you are following Habit 2 of the Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People or the "Next Action" mindset of Getting things done (GTD), is all about learning to identify and break down the sequence of individual steps [...]
When you are faced with 100 messages in Microsoft OutLook, it will often be due to the presence of several conversations spread across the Inbox with various entries containing different replies and different attachments. Your first step in processing may be to thin the the list down to only the most recent messages in [...]
OutLinker has always worked with MindManager 7, but the recently implemented installer defaulted to using the MindManager 8 type library, so users would need to go in and set this reference in the visual basic editor themselves. There is now a dedicated installation program (download) for MindManager 7 users that eliminates that step. [...]
I thought it was done, but one last someday/maybe feature creeped into OutLinker last evening. OutLinker now has buttons to allow you to set the context for the task associated with the message quickly.
Note that the contexts assigned with the buttons (or by just putting the @context in the next action) are now [...]
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A picture is worth a thousand words. If you have been on the sidelines, give OutLinker a try. Make sure you grab the latest version of MindReader to take full advantage of it.
A big thanks to all the victims beta testers of the new form-based version developed [...]
OutLinker came into being as a means for creating MindManager hyperlinks to archived Microsoft Outlook messages. It faccilitates the Getting Things Done (GTD) process of empyting your inbox and can be optionally enhanced by GyroQ and MindReader.
The program was recently enhanced with the option to create Outlook tasks with message [...]
Before the days of OutLinker, I optimized my inbox by diverting "bulk mail" to a separate OutLook folder for reading "in bulk" at a later time rather than having them provide mid-day distraction or swelling an otherwise full inbox. In this case I'm referring to legitimate bulk mail from vendors I'm largely interested in [...]
Awhile back an OutLinker user ran into trouble transferring a large Microsoft OutLook message into MindManager via GyroQ. We determined the shear size of the transfer was the problem. We don't know precisely how big is too big, but in order to minimize the risk of that happening, OutLinker now has an upper [...]
Outlinker has evolved quite a bit as I've gotten more familiar with the capabilities of VBA in Microsoft OutLook and gained the advantages that the installation program provides in making forms easier to deliver.
The latest release of OutLinker uses a form to set configuration options rather than the OutLook notes folder. The configuration [...]
Several new options have trickled into the OutLinker GUI interface as it has gotten some use. These are available in the latest Beta download from the OutLinker Installation page.
If you review the screen shot above most are self explanatory, but here is some background:
There are four ways you can "send" the [...]
The OutLinker script for processing your Microsoft Outlook inbox into GTD next actions and MindManager links now has the default option of using a form instead of an input box as a user interface:
The installation program for the software is on the wiki.
This means you can now:
Interact with messages directly while program is running [...]
OutLinker now has a user-friendly installation program (outlinker.exe) similar to the one developed for MindReader. This should enable you to get rolling with the software without fiddling with macro code or references as well as to update existing installations with latest code. Visit the OutLinker for download instructions.
An [...]
After a few weeks of shakedown and clean-up, it seems the setup.exe program created to install MindReader, Mark Task Complete, and Next Action Analysis and their associated Gyronix GyroQ tags is just about ready for prime time.
If you are a MindManager user and have wanted to give these tools a try in the [...]
I just noticed that today (December 3rd) is OutLinker's 1 year anniversary, at least by its current name. It evolved from a set of macros that Mike over at nodeglue.com had created.
It has changed my work practices significantly, with an empty inbox at home and work becoming more the norm than [...]
Things have gotten a bit quiet in "gyrospace" lately. Perhaps this is because folks have given up on their new year's resolutions or moved on to other tools. I'm hoping it is because we are all successfully focusing on Getting Things Done rather than tinkering with our systems and surfing blogs.
After [...]
The 31Mar08 version of OutLinker I posted about yesterday had a last minute bug introduced. See comments on previous post for instructions to fixing your queue if needed. The latest version (1Apr08) is a roll-back that should work better. My apologies.
It is actually more like version 122, but "2.0" sounds better. It has been about four months since my last post on OutLinker and I wanted to let folks know that several improvements and bug fixes have trickled onto the wiki since then.
The macro now defaults to routing transfers to MindManager through [...]
Chuck Brown posted some questions on GTD and MindReader as a comment on AO-Pack blog entry. I thought answering via a post would make sense as it provides some elbow room and an opportunity for others to chime in.
… I understand that GTD is not a set of absolute rules, but tools to [...]
Back on New Year's day I proposed Five Metrics for assessing the state of your GTD system. The idea was to assess the Freshness, Focus, Feasibility, Foresight, and Finishing (5F's) of your current next actions and combine these into an overall score.
The Next Action Analysis macro calculates and sorts these metrics [...]
In a message on the GTD-MindManager Yahoo group, Juan asked about ways of getting tasks into MindManager from his new PDA. I thought it might be useful to cross-post a reply here for posterity:
Here are four options for getting items into your maps from a mobile device.
Use bitbucket.org to mail yourself task [...]
One handy feature of MindReader is its ability to set the current contents of the clipboard as a task's hyperlink or note if you include a keyword (isnote, see note, islink, see link). As currently configured it always grabs the contents of the clipboard and puts it in the queue file because it [...]
I've used OutLinker to process a couple thousand email messages, and generally it is working well, but I recently noticed a couple capture maps that it had sent tasks to would crash MindManager if I brought certain topics into view. I discovered today that the problem is that these tasks happen to have [...]
If you are using OutLinker you may have achieved Inbox Zero for the first time in awhile. Don't stop there.
While your inbox contains a mixture of spam, bulk mail, info-only cc's, and perhaps 10% actionable information, your "Sent Items" will tend to have a much more concentrated set of …
commitments [...]
MindReader turns one year old Sunday. The initial version ("Let GyroQ read your mind") only recognized 13 keywords. Its vocabulary has grown quite a bit over time. As MindReader grows up, there are a few keywords that need to be revised or added.
Projects and Sub-Projects
Earlier versions [...]
OutLinker is a Microsoft Outlook Macro for rapidly processing as set of Microsoft Outlook Tasks, Appointments, and Messages and transferring the content/links for the items you choose into MindManager for organization and tracking.
The initial version required MindReader and GyroQ, which narrowed the potential user base quite to a small niche of power users. [...]
The latest version of OutLinker will let you select a set of upcoming Microsoft Outlook appointments and process them into MindManager so that ResultsManager can remind you to get prepared for them. The default next action is set to "Prepare for /meeting subject/" but can be modified. The deadline for the [...]
I noticed I began experiencing frequent "The application has been requested to terminate"-type crashes since upgrading to the SP1 release for MindManager 7 where as the original release was pretty stable. I was a bit worried this was due to MindReader or OutLinker, but realized this evening it is likely due [...]
I made a few big improvements to the OutLinker macro today.
It now stores its configuration settings in a notes folder so it is easier to upgrade/configure without editing code. It will also prompt user for the archive store/folder if it doesn’t find them.
For fun it counts the number of messages you have processed [...]
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