MS Outlook 2007 Integration

outlook_track_in_intask Send emails to InTask or let InTask track selected emails automatically for you collecting all the send and replies into one nicely presented report.

New to version 1.5 is the built in integration with Outlook 2007 email client application. Outlook is one of the most important applications in any organization; connecting people and help them organize their everyday work. The problem with outlook is that one can get tens or even hundreds of emails every day most of them can be ignored while others are highly important pieces of information or task requests. Since emails are not suit for task management but many people use them as such, we developed the Outlook-InTask integration.

Using our InTask Outlook integration you will be able to:

Send email to InTask – inserting a given email as a new task in InTask.
Track email in InTask – collect the information of a given email and all the replies you get for this email into one concentrated report. InTask will keep tracking the email item in real time until you decide to stop it, freeing you from collecting the information yourself.

Installing InTask Outlook Add-in

For the Outlook 2007 integration to work you need to have the following components installed:

InTaskOutlook2007Plugin – this component is included with InTask 1.5 and up and need no special installation.
InTaskOutlook2007Addin – this component extends Microsoft Outlook 2007 application and needs to install separately from our R&D web site.

Before starting the installation, we need to make InTask R&D site trusted by your operating system. This is because of the strict security policy of Microsoft office suite. The security seeting will be done using microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Set www.InTaskRnd.com as a trusted site in Internet Explorer – Open Internet Explorer browser application and select Tools/Internet Options
ie_tool_options

In the dialog shown, select the Security tab
ie_trusted_sites

Select the Trusted sites icon and click on the Sites button
A trusted sites dialog will show
ie_trusted_1

Add http://www.intaskrnd.com to the trusted websites collection
ie_trusted2

Don’t forget to uncheck the “Require server verification (https:) for all sites in this zone” and then, click the Add button.
ie_trusted_3

Now, close this dialog and navigate to: http://www.intaskrnd.com/downloads/intaskoutlook2007addin/publish/setup.exe
This will start a setup process
ie_security_warning

Click Run and wait until you see a security warning dialog
ie_security_warning2

Click Run again until the installer dialog is shown
ie_install1

Click Install to start the installation process
ie_install_process

At the end of the process a success message will show
ie_install_sucess

Close the dialog and restart Outlook 2007 application

Sending emails from Outlook to InTask

Right-click on any mail item in your Inbox and select "Send To InTask"

A confirmation message will show
send_confirm
this confirms that InTask created a new task based on the selected email.

Open InTask and select the "Outlook" folder

outlook_intask_folder

You can see that new task (number 3) has been added to your tasks list. When you select that task a "V" sign will appear on the "Outlook" tab indicating that it contains information.
Click the "Outlook" tab to see the information

outlook_report

Just as any other report in InTask, you can export it to all the common formats like: Excel, PDF, Rtf, Html etc

Now, that the task exists in the system, you can manage it as any other regular task

Tracking email item in InTask

Tracking email items, is an exciting feature of InTask - automatically collecting all the information regarding a given email subject into one concentrated report.

For example, assume you are releasing a product to the market and ask your team members to send their release notes. You send an email saying "Please send your release notes" in the subject.

To track this email, go to the Sent items folder in Outlook, right-click on the email you just sent and select "Track in InTask"

outlook_track_in_intask

A confirmation message will appear

track_confirm

Click OK and you're done!

That's it. From now on until you decide otherwise, all the replies regarding this email will be collected automatically by InTask into one nice report.

Open InTask Outlook folder, locate and select the newly created tracking task (number 6 in this case).

outlook_intask_folder2

You can see that the new task was created with a description beginning with the word "Track:" This will help you distinguish between a tracking task and a regular one.

If you click now on the "Outlook" tab page you will see the current exchange of letters collected so far by InTask.

outlook_report2

Now let's do a test and reply this email using Outlook's reply feature

outlook_reply

After the reply was sent, it is received in the initiator's inbox.

reply_in_inbox

Now, when we'll go back to InTask and look at the tracking task report we will see that the reply was automatically added to the thread.

report_with_reply

Notice that the emails are printed without all the "reply chain" - only the original message. This way we get a clear view of the discussion. The discussion is sorted by default in ascending order - last messages will be rendered first.

InTask Agile Project Management

Newsflash