Mailmanagr is continuing to grow and evolve, and one of the things we’re struggling with is some of the crufty old syntax we’re using. We had to come up with a special “language” so that we can do things like assign items to people in Basecamp. The only problem is, we didn’t get it right the first time, and now it’s causing some problems. Let me explain:
If you want to assign an item to a person, you set up an alias for that person in the “People” tab. You then put that alias in parentheses in the subject line of the message:
Subject: (jon) Create a blog post about Mailmanagr syntax
We wanted to keep it simple so that people using mobile devices wouldn’t have to hunt around for bizarre characters or do something ominous. We made it too simple though. People use parentheses all the time:
Subject: Revise that blog entry (it’s just too wordy)
Mailmanagr thinks I’m trying to assign this task to “it’s just too wordy”, and throws an error. That’s not acceptable. Additionally, we’re still supporting really old syntax where assignments in the body of the message can be made as well.
We need to simplify things, so we’re going to make a few tweaks:
- Assigning messages, todos & milestones — double up on the parentheses. So instead of (jon), put in ((jon)). That’s far less common, and should cause far less problems. You can still use a list to notify multiple people ((jon, dave, phil)).
- Assigning messages, todos & milestones — we’re dropping support for notifications in the body of the message. Only subject line notifications will be supported.
- Use /private/ in the subject of the message to mark something private. This works for Messages, Milestones & Todos. (ppp support is going away).
- Use @Oct 12 2011@ to indicate a due date in the subject line for Milestones and Todos (yes, we’re adding due date support for todos with this update)
If you’ve got any auto-notifiers set up, please take a minute to update your code/notifications. We’ll be rolling out these changes Monday, December 6th, 2010. If you have any concerns, need more time, or have any comments, please drop us a line at info@industryinteractive.net. With these updates, we’ll be done most of our housekeeping, and rolling out a fun new feature for folks. Watch for more about that!