Supercharging Mail’s workflow with Automator
Jochen Wolters at MacDevCenter likes 
the new to-do and notes features in Leopard Mail. He thinks that
The addition of to-do’s and notes to Mail may indicate that Apple has some useful ideas for enhancing a “non-glamourous†application like Mail beyond just beautiful eye candy.
But his ambitions for Mail don’t stop there. He would like to see the development of “Folder action”-like workflows through AppleScript and Automator. Some of this is already here, he notes, with Mail Act-on and other plugins. Nonetheless,
I’d love to see the equivalent to the Finder’s Folder Actions for every mailbox in Mail, multiple varieties for core functionality like ‘Reply’…, message threading across mailboxes, automatic filing of messages based on those threads, etc…
…Adding workflows which average users could create and edit, and which would advance automated email handling in ways that makes even die-hard productivity geeks smile, could make Apple Mail stand out from the crowd for more than just its good-looking UI.
Similar Posts:
- Automator Action to email files quickly
- Automator actions for Mail.app
- Email a file directly from Finder
- Pictures, PDFs and Mail: More Automator Goodness
- Shortcuts 1.0: Contextual menu hotkeys
Tags: Apple Mail, applescript, Automator, filing, folder actions, mail.app, Productivity, rules, workflow
August 15th, 2006 at 1:26 am
this would be cool. something i’ve been doing, that leopard mail with notes and tasks will make better is using spotlight as my project manager. one key component to this is spotlight comments via automator actions saved as folder action plug-ins.
the above mention automator folder action serves as a reminder (via pop-up window to add spotlight comment) each time a file is dragged into or saved into a project folder.
the idea is to make the entire operating system, via spotlight, function as a project manager for all files. via keyword comments in ical event/todo notes, contact notes, and file spotlight comments, this already works very well in tiger.
August 15th, 2006 at 3:34 am
The notion of mailbox-attached filters sounds an awful lot like Mailsmith’s distributed filtering.