Linking Email to Tasks

Email conversations often result in the need to create one or more tasks. For example, an email exchange with a vendor may require updates to price sheets or shipping requirements. Perhaps an email from a significant other mentions an upcoming birthday or anniversary. Because of this, SmarterMail includes the ability to create a new task right from within an email message. This is called "linking" an email message to a task, and it has a real advantage over creating a standalone task: the task and the email stay connected, so you can jump from one to the other at any time. The email that prompted the task — with all its details, attachments, and history — is always one click away.

Creating a Task from a Message

Follow these steps to generate and link a task from an email message:

1. Log into SmarterMail as a user and go to your Inbox, or whichever folder contains the email message you wish to link to a task.
2. Open the message, either in the Preview Pane or in its own window.
3. From the Actions (⋮) dropdown menu, select Add Task. (Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+T)
4. A new window will pop out containing the standard task editor. Here, you create the task by filling out the pertinent details:
   • Subject - A name for the task. The subject starts blank, so give it something actionable — e.g., "Update price sheet for Acme" rather than the email's subject line.
   • Description - Full details for the task, with complete text formatting available.
   • Source - The task list/folder where the task is saved.
   • Start and due times - Enabling this toggle displays Start and Due date pickers. By default, a new task starts now and is due an hour later, so adjust these to fit the real deadline.
   • Reminder - Enabling this toggle lets you set a date and time to be reminded about the task.
   • Priority and Status - The task's priority (0–10) and its status: Not Started, In Progress, Completed, or Canceled.
   • % Complete - How far along the task is, from 0 to 100.
5. Once saved, the task is created and automatically linked to the email. In the task's details, the message appears under Related Item, showing the email's Subject, From, To, and Date.

A single email can be linked to multiple tasks — simply repeat the process. For example, a project kickoff email might generate separate tasks for "Draft proposal", "Schedule site visit", and "Send contract", all linked back to the same message.

Working with Linked Emails and Tasks

Once a task is linked to a message, the connection is visible from both sides:

• On the email - A notice appears at the top of the message reading, for example, "1 Task is related to this email." Clicking the linked text opens a Tasks window listing each related task with its subject, start date, and due date. Clicking any task in that list pops it out in the task editor, where it can be reviewed or updated. In addition, messages with linked tasks display a small check icon in the messages list.
• On the task - The task's Related Item card displays the linked email's subject, sender, recipient, and date. Clicking the card opens the original message in its own window. This means that when you're working through your task list days later, the context behind each task is immediately available — no searching required.

There is no separate "unlink" action: to remove the association, simply delete the task. When a linked task is deleted — or when the last of several linked tasks is removed — the notice on the email disappears automatically. Tasks created from email are otherwise completely normal tasks: they appear in the Tasks area alongside all of your other tasks and can be edited, completed, or deleted there just like any other.

Finding Messages with Linked Tasks

To quickly view all messages that are linked to tasks, use the Filter menu at the top of the messages list and select Linked to Tasks. Filtering in this way will only display emails in the current folder that have been linked to tasks. (The same menu offers other filters as well, such as Unread, Flagged, and Attachments, and the active filter is displayed above the messages list so you always know when a filter is applied.) This filter is a handy way to review everything actionable that came in by email — for instance, at the end of the week you can filter your Inbox by Linked to Tasks to double-check that each task-generating conversation was followed up on.