People, access, and being told
Replying by email
Reply to any email about a task and your reply becomes a note on it: no signing in, no copying and pasting, and nothing to set up first.
When sjTasks emails you about a task — a note somebody wrote, work that became yours, a due date coming up — you can answer it the way you answer any email. Hit Reply, type, send. What you wrote becomes a note on that task, from you, and the people who follow the task hear about it the same way they would if you had typed it on the page.
There is nothing to set up. Every email about a task already has the right reply address on it.
What becomes the note
Only what you typed. sjTasks trims the rest before it saves anything:
- The quoted copy of the email you are answering — the part your mail program adds underneath, starting "On Sunday, … wrote:" or "From: … Sent: …" or "-----Original Message-----".
- Your signature, when it sits under the usual
--line, and the "Sent from my phone" lines. - Any line that starts with
>.
If you answer in between the quoted lines, your answers are kept and the quoted lines are not, which is what you meant. If nothing is left once the trimming is done, nothing is saved.
The note is saved exactly as you wrote it, and the same formatting rules apply as when you type a note on the page — see Notes on tasks.
Only from the address we emailed
A reply is added to the task only when it comes from the address the email was sent to. That is what makes this safe: the reply address on your copy of the email is yours, and it does nothing in anybody else's hands.
So a reply is not added when:
- it is sent from a different address than the one sjTasks writes to you at — if you use more than one, reply from that one;
- somebody forwards the email and replies from their own address — they should open the task and write the note there, or reply to their own copy of the email;
- you are no longer on the team the task belongs to;
- the email is more than 30 days old — reply to a newer one, or add the note on the page.
Whenever a reply is not added, sjTasks emails you back to say so and what to do instead. You are never left wondering whether it went in.
New tasks by email
Every project can have an email address of its own. An admin makes it on the project's
Integrations page — it looks like acme-7f3kq2mn@in.sjtasks.com, the project's key and a
few letters that keep it private. Send that address an email from the address you sign in with
and the message becomes a task in the project:
- The subject is the title. A leading Fwd: or Re: is dropped.
- The message is the description. Quoted history and signatures are trimmed the same way a reply is, so forwarding a client's email gives you a task with their words in it.
- Attachments come along as files on the task — the same limits as an upload from the task page apply, and a file that will not fit is left off while the task is still made.
- You are the creator, the task is open and unassigned, and everyone watching the project hears about it exactly as if you had typed it in.
Only admins and members can make tasks this way. A guest's email — or anyone's from an address that is not on the team — is not turned into a task, and they are emailed once to say so. If the address gets out, an admin makes a new one on the same page and the old one stops working at once.
A message to a project's address is only accepted when your email provider vouches for it — the check most providers already make on every message they send. If yours does not, the message is not turned into a task and no reply is sent; write the task on the page instead, or use your own address from your profile.
A message over 9 MB in all, attachments included, is bounced back to you with a note that says so; add big files on the page instead.
Your own address
You can also have an address that is yours alone, whatever project the task is for. On your
profile page, under Your address for tasks, choose Create my address; it looks like
me+7f3kq2mn@in.sjtasks.com. Email it from any account — your phone, a second work address, a
forward of a client's message — and the message becomes a task from you, in your team's
catch-all project. Start the subject with a project's key, acme Fix the nav, and the task lands
in that project instead, with the key taken off the title. The title, the description and the
files work exactly as they do for a project's address.
Because the address is yours, it is how sjTasks knows the task is from you, so the letters after the plus sign are worth keeping to yourself. If the address gets out, choose Get a new address on the same page; the old one stops working at once. It also stops working if your access to the team is turned off, and it does nothing for a guest.
A reply is a note, and only a note
A reply becomes a note on the task and changes nothing else about it. A file attached to a
reply is not put on the task — send a new task with the file, or add it from the task page; see
Files on tasks. Words like done or due friday in a reply are saved as the
note, not acted on; finish or reschedule the task from its page.