TextToTasks: Is It a Task To Remember a Task?

“Email is the greatest thing” reads the first quote about ‘email’ on BrainyQuote. This makes it an instant cliché but also puts an indelible mark of approval on it. Being the most preferred means of communication by most, Email still lacks th effect that would force action. A person is more likely to follow up an important task with a call after the mail and moreover, on a personal level, many would still have post-its to keep a track of important e-mails to be responded/ acted upon.Ramgopal Tanikella believed the same and he came up with an add-on called TextToTasks for Microsoft Outlook 2010 which allows you to extract the tasks from an Email. Having worked with startups previously, Ramgopal dived into the task to develop TextToTasks with two other team members in December 2010 without too much apprehension. They improved the product with a beta run that ran up till September 2011 and the product was on sale in October 2011.

Priced at US $29.95 per person per year, the online license can be bought via PayPal (which has a currency converter incorporated). Discounted rates are available for 10 or more licenses purchased together.

Developed in C# using VS 2010, TextToTasks extracts task information from message content, displays it to the user for modification and confirmation, and then automatically commits the task information into Outlook Tasks. “Users experience no performance or functionality gaps and the software automatically captures, organizes and prioritizes tasks in outgoing, incoming, and previously saved email.” says Ramgopal.

Being a self-funded program, TextToTasks has currently limited itself as far as providing the features are concerned or marketing as well. More features would be on the lines of TextToCalendar wherein calendar and appointments would be extracted. Also, not having caught on full steam yet, the question to be asked is, is there a big enough market that’d purchase ‘Email productivity’ enhancing tools?

Apart from suggesting and saving tasks, TextToTasks also include detailed context, scan mail folders for task and a few other features. More about this tool can be read at TextToTasks and you can sign up for a free trial here.