Zapier, Omnifocus and Taskcreation

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I like to automate creation of OF tasks based on data from my calendar. So far the only way I’ve found, is to use Zapier to push calendar invites into my OF inbox. Works fine, but I’d like to use information from my O365 or Google Calendar to automatic set a defer date in a task (meeting date -2 days)

I had the idea that I could write a Zapier Template using TaskPaper format, but that does not really seem to work.

Anyone with suggestions for using TaskPaper format in Zapier templates or other approaches that produces similar automation ?

-mic

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What I do is I use the formatter in Zapier to URL encode anything that needs it, and then I create a URL for omnifocus:/// to add a project or task with the URL encoded information - this could also paste TaskPaper (URL encoded) if you wanted. As right now the only part of OmniFocus Zapier can integrate with is the maildrop this seems easiest to me.

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Possibly a dumb question—I haven’t looked into Zapier much—but what do you do with the URL once it has been created by Zapier? Where does it go? (Presumably somewhere you have to click/press on it to get it into the actual Omnifocus app?)

I have a few ideas for Omnifocus automations based on other parts of the internet—for example, I’m trying to read more so I thought perhaps whenever I finish a book in Goodreads I could add a task to OF to remind me to choose another book to read next. But I didn’t look into it much because I couldn’t think of a way to get the task anywhere other than into my inbox, and it wouldn’t be worth the overhead of moving it to where I wanted it, setting up tags, etc, etc. But if I could use Zapier to create an URL with all the necessary details and then get it into OF from somewhere (which sounds like kind of what you’re doing?) that would open up some more possibilities.

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I use PushBullet to send myself a notification (link), and then when I tap that it opens PushBullet, then OmniFocus. You can also send these things to MailDrop, and have the task be “run URL in note”.

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Thanks! I will have to experiment…:slight_smile: Yet another rabbit-hole to fall down, thanks as always @RosemaryOrchard!

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Quick follow-up question—tried Googling but didn’t find anything—if I want to use curly brackets {} in my Omnifocus link in Zapier (to be pushed to Pushbullet), how do I do that? It seems to be trying to turn them into a variable, is there a way to avoid that? Maybe it’s something to do with the URL encoding?

I did try googling quickly but couldn’t find anything…and since you already seem to have this mastered…:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Ack, never mind, I just need to not try and copy and paste the URL from Launch Center Pro. That’ll teach me for cheating!

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Launch Center Pro will URL encode items inside of the double curly braces, nothing else does :wink:

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