GTD Netcentrics add-in for 2016

[twofivepie]

For the best part of 10 years I used the NetCentrics GTD Outlook add-in. I found it a fabulous tool. But support for it stopped and when my org upgraded to 2016 I managed to lose the installation files and keys. Does anyone know if its still available anywhere?

There were three serious reasons why this tool was powerful and I have not found anything equivalent:

1. It worked on my organisations exchange
2. It supported filing actions (tasks) under projects
3. It allowed email replies to be automatically filed under tasks that had been created from the original email in the thread.

If its not available, could we use this forum to reconstruct the necessary VBA to put something equivalent together?

 

[Diane Poremsky]

If you had the key, you might be able to find the software somewhere... I'm not familiar with what all it did, but there are some addins that can do #3 - Quickfile and others. Filing Outlook Email Messages

on #2 - you had project folders and a Tasks folder under it?

 

[twofivepie]

Hi Diane,

The add-in had the concept of Projects (and sub-projects). These were custom fields in the standard mail, task and calendar records. This then allowed mails and calendar entries to be associated with a project.

For me the really, really neat bit was then that if an email came in that you needed to action, you had a button that allowed you to create a task through a dialog that allowed you to specify the project.

Mostly you then used the standard Outlook views and functionality, but you could review your projects in terms of filed emails, open actions and calendar appointments.

A small projects admin section allowed you stuff like, creating new project, renaming, moving sub-projects to projects and vice versa.

It would be great to be able to do this in 2016

 

[Diane Poremsky]

For me the really, really neat bit was then that if an email came in that you needed to action, you had a button that allowed you to create a task through a dialog that allowed you to specify the project.

That would be do-able. I have a macro that gets halfway there - this one Create Tasks from Email and move to different Task folders creates a new task from email and moves it to a specific task folder. The folders are pre-defined but you could use an input box or other method to choose a folder each time.

This copies the message body with formatting - Create Task or Appointment and Insert Selected Text

 

[GTDLvr]

Here is a link I found to a 2014 Version. Download Getting Things Done Outlook Add-In by NetCentrics Corporation
and here is a link to manual activation that Netcentrics and GTD put out last year.
GTDOA Forums • View topic - KB62-activate GTD without license key.

Good luck.

 

[John Ismyname]

Hello TwoFivePie; I empathize as I have been using GTDOA for at least a decade. As GTDOA will not run on future versions of Outlook, I have put together my own GTD for Outlook based on Outlook's robust functionality that goes beyond GTDOA.

However, I really miss GTDOA's ProjectCentral module as it was a mini project management program. My solace is that Outlook can still handle GTD methodology ("back of the envelope" projects really well! The best (and easiest) way to do this is to create a separate task folder for each project. (GTDOA does this for "someday maybe " items). Outlook's ToDo view presents all of your tasks in all of your task folders as a composite view. Assign an Outlook Category to each project.

GTDOAs use of categories was a problem. While I agree that it is the best Outlook function to address the GTD concept of contexts, GTDOA only allowed you to have one context per item and contexts are not mutually exclusive.

I got to know an employee at GTDOA's publisher (NetCentrics). He confirmed that the new owner (HayStax) would neither be selling it nor releasing a final non-copy protected version to buyers. I offered to buy the rights and the source-code to GTDOA but they would not consider selling it.

 

[john.ismyname]

Another function of GTDOA that I will really miss is being able to simulataneosly reply to an email message, create a task or appointment, and have that email reply linked to the task or appointment. There is an obvious work-around for this - 1. send my email message, 2. go to my send directory and open it, 3. press "forward" or "reply" 4. CTRL+A to "copy all" of this email 5. close out 6. start a task/appoint and paste into it. *Whew* that is a lot of work! I question if there is an easy way to automate this process.

 

[Diane Poremsky]

Another function of GTDOA that I will really miss is being able to simulataneosly reply to an email message, create a task or appointment, and have that email reply linked to the task or appointment. There is an obvious work-around for this - 1. send my email message, 2. go to my send directory and open it, 3. press "forward" or "reply" 4. CTRL+A to "copy all" of this email 5. close out 6. start a task/appoint and paste into it. *Whew* that is a lot of work! I question if there is an easy way to automate this process.

If you can use a macro, this is a fairly simple project. I have some code that already does part of this, it won't be too difficult add the rest.

I'd start with this macro to get the entry id of the sent item, then create the task.
How to set a flag to follow up using VBA


I use this to link a contact to a task... would use the same method to link the sent mail to a new task.... use vba forward the message, copy the text, close the message and paste the contents to the body....

Sub GetContactLink()
    Dim objContact As Outlook.ContactItem
    Dim objTask As Outlook.TaskItem
    Dim strID As String
    Dim strLink, strLinkText As String

Set objContact = Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection.Item(1)
    strID = objContact.EntryID
    strLink = "outlook:" & strID
    strLinkText = objContact.FullName

Set objTask = Application.CreateItem(olTaskItem)
    Set objInsp = objTask.GetInspector
    Set objDoc = objInsp.WordEditor
    Set objSel = objDoc.Windows(1).Selection

With objTask
    objDoc.Hyperlinks.Add objSel.Range, strLink, "", "", strLinkText, ""
    objSel.Range.InsertBefore "Link to "
   .Display   
End With

End Sub

 

[Diane Poremsky]

Ha... I already had a macro that does it at Automatically create a task when sending a message. I found it after I wrote a new one. I coulda saved a bit of time just editing it to add a link to the message and get a better formatted body.

The message body and recipients list is added to the task using that macro, but it uses the simple .body method, which can result in "ugly" formatting of HTML messages. It doesn't include the reply header, just a list of the addresses the message was sent to. I'll publish the new macro i wrote that adds the link and pretty paste.

 

[Diane Poremsky]

Here is my version that adds a link to the task. There are two versions - one creates tasks, the others lets you choose task or appointment.
Replicate GTD: Create a task after sending a message

 

[john.ismyname]

Thanks, Diane!

 

[john.ismyname]

hello Diane; Your VBA script only invokes for my "main" email account. That is, when I send an email in one of my other email accounts, nothing happens. In a better world, when I select a task for an email I send from my work email (Office 365 through my own PC) it would create task there. If I create an appointment from my personal email it would go there (IMAP, but I run my personal calendar on my local machine). Outlook automatically consolidates these separate tasks lists into one consolidate view and calendars into another consolidated view.

That said, it is a great tool! 80% of the time I just need it for one email account and it speeds up my inbox processing!

 

[Diane Poremsky]

As long as you don't have a billizion accounts to watch, you can reference each folder. It gets messy if you have a lot of folders to watch, but 2 or 3 is fine.


you duplicate these lines, using a new object name and properly referencing the other folder.
Private WithEvents olSentItems As Items
Set olSentItems = objNS.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderSentMail).Items


Then duplicate the Private Sub olSentItems_ItemAdd(ByVal item As Object) macro, using the correct name for it.

 

[Diane Poremsky]

At the top:
Private WithEvents olSentAcct As items


in the app staryup macro:
Set olSentAcct = GetFolderPath("diane@contrarytoo.com\Sent Items").items

You'll need the getfolder path function from Working with VBA and non-default Outlook Folders


Because there is nothing unique in the in the prompt code, I'm sharing it with each itemsend macro - i could actually put that together with the CreateTaskForMessage macro. My sample profile only has one Task folder, but if you used Exchange accounts and wanted tasks in the correct folder, we'd set a variable for the folder in the itemadd macros.

if you need more than 2 folders, repeat the 2 lines above and duplicate the olSentAcct_itemadd macro, changing olSentAcct to something else.

Private Sub olSentItems_ItemAdd(ByVal item As Object)
' if you need to set a different task folder for each acct
' set a variable to the folder here
    SaveasTask item
End Sub

Private Sub olSentAcct_ItemAdd(ByVal item As Object)
' if you need to set a different task folder for each acct
' set a variable to the folder here
    SaveasTask item
End Sub

Sub SaveasTask(ByVal item As Object)
  On Error Resume Next
  Dim prompt As String
 Dim oForward As MailItem
    prompt$ = "Do you want to create a Task for this message?"
       If MsgBox(prompt$, vbYesNo + vbQuestion + vbMsgBoxSetForeground, "Create Task?") = vbYes Then
            
        strID = item.EntryID
        strLink = "outlook:" & strID
        strLinkText = item.Subject
        
    CreateTaskForMessage item
       End If
End Sub

I added the full macro to the page - i also changed how the macro checks for the signature so it doesn't error if the account doesn't have a signature. If i have time tomorrow, i will add instructions to use different task folders.