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Automatic tasks creation from flagged email

One convenient feature that keeps me using the Microsoft To Do app is its integration with Outlook. Whenever I flag email for a follow-up it automatically adds it to my To Do list.

It would be a great feature to support this functionality with major email providers, e.g., Outlook and Gmail. Flagging an email for a follow-up is essentially a task by itself, so why not add it to your Capabilities Tasks? Flagging in most email clients also provides additional information, e.g., the Due Date, which can be assigned to the newly created task in Capacities. To separate manually created tasks from Flagged Email, you can create groups or filters, as the Microsoft To Do app does.

The integration with Microsoft To Do also works both ways—once the tasks is ticked off, it also marks the linked email complete.

2 Comments

Unknown User·4 months ago

+1 on automatic task creation from flagged emails — flagging is essentially creating a follow-up task, so routing it into Capacities Tasks (with the flag's due date mapped over, and ideally two-way completion sync) would be genuinely useful.

My main ask: rather than building this only as a native Outlook/Gmail integration, please expose task creation through the public API. A native integration solves it for two providers; an API endpoint solves it for everyone — any mail client, Zapier/Make, custom scripts, or in-house tools — and you'd no longer have to build and maintain each connector yourself.

A few technical observations that I think make this low-hanging fruit:

The task type already exists in the API data model — RootTask is present in the structureId enum returned by the schema. The concept is modeled; it's just not writable from outside.
There's currently no create-object or create-task endpoint. The only task-ish workaround is POST /save-to-daily-note with a markdown checkbox ([ ] ...), but that creates a checkbox block, not a real Task object — so no status, priority, deadline or context, and no completion sync back to the source.
"Create Task" already shipped natively in the Raycast extension, so the capability clearly exists internally — it just isn't surfaced as a REST endpoint.

A generic create-task endpoint (status, priority, deadline, context, plus a source/link field for the originating email) would cover the flagged-email case and unlock a wide range of community integrations at once. Thanks for considering it!

Pavel Golodoniuc·5 months ago

Now, with the Due Dates implemented in Capacities, it can be used to map the follow-up due date directly.