You don’t have to be a geek (or nerd, or goober) to use the new features (see Enhancements below). Anyone with Entourage and an iDisk will be able to use the attachments functionality.

The installation is still the same as the first release. Here are the previous instructions:

1. Unzip and save in “~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Entourage Script Menu Items”
2. Rename “Create Task from Message\cT.scpt” to “Create Task from Message.scpt”
3. Start Entourage (you do not need to restart if its already running).
4. Highlight a message and hit ^T.
5. Follow the onscreen instructions.
6. Get organized!

I don’t like to repeat myself, so here’s the release notes, which covers the new features:

Version History
v0.2 – July 6, 2008
- Enhancements
- Ability to configure a remote disk to store files, and add the URL to the RTM task’s URL field.
- Tested only with iDisk.
- Requires the remote disk to be mountable via WebDAV.
- The URL will be http://[remoteURL you enter]/RTM-Attachments
- You can change the name of the folder via the remoteDiskFolder variable in the properties declaration section below
- Uploads may take a while, depending on speed, size of upload, and other factor that I can’t predict. Be patient.
- Stuff you can store on the remote drive:
- One or more, or all, of the attachments of an email
- The entire email, as a .eml file
-
- Only the text/plain parts of a message are added to the notes of a task, gone is all the formatted stuff that didn’t look right anyways and was pretty unlegible.
- Large notes are broken up, instead of truncated, and fed into RTM in reverse order, so that the notes can be read just like the original email.
- Known issues
- useEmailToCreateTasks doesn’t work when using the remote disk folder and attachments. The task gets created, but everything (list name and URL) end up in the notes. However, try the new API functionality, as it’s way improved with the breakdown of large notes.
v0.1 – Initial release

Here’s the high level logic for creating attachments, for the interested parties. (Click for a bigger picture)

I’ll do my best to answer your questions in the comments.

Get it here.

Update: Updated the version, as the previous one had a bug with certain special characters in filenames and/or subject lines. I had also (accidentally) distributed the last scpt as read-only.

Update 2: Added a screen walkthrough here.

Update 3: A few more fixes and enhancements:

v0.2c – July 6, 2008
- Enhancements
- Allows for configurable task title naming during task creation
- See editTaskTitle below
- Bug Fixes
- More special character handling
v0.2b – July 6, 2008
- Bug Fixes
-Replaced certain special characters in filenames and subjects to avoid filesystem errors

Technorati Tags: Attachments, Entourage, Organize, Remember the Milk, RTM, simplify

All caught up? Good. I played with RTM a bit more and decided I’m going to give it a try. It seems to work really well and lots of people have written integrations for it.

Add to this story that I’ve decided to use Entourage instead of Parallels & Outlook at work. Unfortunately, Entourage’s task management is abysmal.

Starting to see where I’m going with this?

While I found lots of integrations available for RTM and other applications, I couldn’t find anything for Entourage. AppleScript to the rescue!

Without getting into all the gory details, the script (see link below) will allow you to highlight a message in Entourage and create a task in RTM based on the message. The message’s subject will be the task name and the message’s body will end up as a note.

Instructions:
1. Unzip and save in “~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Entourage Script Menu Items”
2. Rename “Create Task from Message\cT.scpt” to “Create Task from Message.scpt”
3. Start Entourage (you do not need to restart if its already running).
4. Highlight a message and hit ^T.
5. Follow the onscreen instructions.
6. Get organized!

[Updated 2/24/2008] Added more steps for clarity.

(More information after the jump)

Create RTM Task\cT.scpt.zip

[poll=3]

Some requirements, also included in the script:

Script requirements (basically, my configuration… your milage may vary):
- Mac OS X 10.5.2
- Microsoft Mac Office 2008 w/Entourage
- XMLLIB osax by Satimage (Smile companion), available here: http://www.satimage.fr/software/en/downloads/downloads_companion_osaxen.html
- XML Tools 2.9 by Nate Night Software, available here: http://www.latenightsw.com/freeware/XMLTools2/

FAQ:
- Q1: What if I want to change the email address associated with my RTM account?
- A1: Open a terminal window and run this “defaults delete com.apple.Entourage-RTM”. You will quickly go through the authentication process again and be asked the email address you would like to send to.

(send me questions and I’ll expand the FAQ)

There are also some user-configurable settings:

User configurable variables

Use email or use the API to create RTM tasks?
Pros of API: not dependent on email transmission, instant notification of failures.
Cons of API: Not very robust, cannot handle large notes.
Pros of email: Assuming you’re using this for entourage, you already have email open. Very robust, can send in any variable for the task (see http://www.rememberthemilk.com/help/answers/sending/emailinbox.rtm). Even if the connection is temporarily lost, the email will queue and will eventually show up as a task.
Cons of email: You have these emails in your Sent Items. Clogging up the internet with email.

default setting: true
available settings: true, false

IMPORTANT!! If you plan to use the API, make sure this file exists at ~/Library/Application Support/Entourage-RTM.
The file should be named “encodeurl.sh”. You can copy this text and paste it into a new file.

#!/usr/bin/tclsh
package require http
puts [::http::formatQuery [lindex $argv 0] [lindex $argv 1]]

property useEmailToCreateTasks : true

Parsing is only relevant to the API calls. If set to 1, RTM will attempt to find a due date in the task subject. Probably not really useful, but I don’t see a big downside to it, either.
default setting: “1″
available settings: “1″, “0″

property chooseParse : “1″

ADVANCED USAGE ONLY. Will display a whole lot of popups during the task creation.

default setting: false
available settings: true, false

property debugOn : false

Good luck!

Technorati Tags: Applescript, automate, Entourage, Remember the Milk, RTM, Task