Re: [O] Collaborative Team Project Management with Orgmode?

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Peter Salazar <address@hidden> writes:

> So what would it take to make Gnorb work with org-contacts and mu4e? I
> know Gnorb works with Gnus, but in my opinion, Gnorb's ability to
> automatically "catch" and identify incoming emails isn't as useful as
> its other features. 
>
> In other words, if using Gnorb with mu4e required the user to manually
> flag an incoming email through a function like "add-message-to-gnorb,"
> Gnorb would still retain 99% of its usefulness. The most useful
> functionality, as John Kitchin noted, would be to capture information
> from a mu4e email reply, and process it and incorporate it back into
> an org-mode file.

Let's see... the org-contacts vs BBDB issue isn't a big deal, since
Gnorb doesn't actually do all that much with contacts right now. I'd be
happy to add tweaks to it to make it more org-contacts friendly.

Email tracking is a bigger issue. Gnorb uses the Gnus registry to track
correspondences between messages and headlines, and obviously none of
that would work with mu4e.

Earlier versions did tracking by storing message ids as a property on a
headline. I suppose I could go back to doing that in a mu4e-specific
library.

To me, the most useful thing about message tracking isn't the
identification and hinting of incoming emails. The two most useful
things (I think) are:

1. Taking a message and saying "this message should trigger a state
   change on that Org heading there"
2. Seeing all messages associated with a heading in their own virtual
   "mailbox"

Number one shouldn't be too difficult to implement for mu4e, as it would
mostly rely on Org's own mu4e support. Number two would be nearly
impossible, or at least impractical given my lack of familiarity with
mu4e.

Another thing I find hugely useful is automatically transferring files
attached to incoming messages to Org headings (via org-attach).
Presumably mu4e has a way of getting at the attachments on a message, so
in theory this wouldn't be that hard, either.

Anyway, those are some thoughts on the issue. If you all had some
particular feature where you'd like mu4e support, let me know and I can
take a stab at it.

Eric

> On Sun, Aug 23, 2015 at 12:39 PM, Eric Abrahamsen
> <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>
>     John Kitchin <address@hidden> writes:
>
>     > unless those services have some kind of API, and you have the
>     desire to
>     > implement it in emacs, you might be out of luck.
>     >
>     > I am trying to figure out a way to do collaborative work via
>     email,
>     > where I am the project coordinator. The idea is to use my
>     email.el code
>     > to send headlines to people I need information or action from,
>     and then
>     > to have them reply to the email. Then, I would have some easy
>     way to get
>     > information out of the reply back to the heading (e.g. TODO
>     state
>     > change, info etc...). Probably I would embed some org-id link in
>     the email,
>     > and "train" the users not to delete it. This is only a
>     half-baked idea
>     > so far.
>     >
>     > It would integrate org-contacts, mu4e, and org-mode in my setup.
>
>     Sounds exactly like Gnorb! Except org-contacts instead of BBDB,
>     and mu4e
>     instead of Gnus :(
>
>     > depending in your role in the project, you might get something
>     like that
>     > to work too.
>     >
>     > Tory S. Anderson writes:
>     >
>     >> I've relied on Orgmode heavily for over half a decade, and I'm
>     >> loathe to leave it. But what solutions have been found out
>     there
>     >> for using it collaboratively (where others are not using
>     emacs),
>     >> rather than just for personal task management (where it
>     excels)?
>     >> It has some integration with Trello, I know; some of my
>     co-workers
>     >> are advocating BaseCamp (...) and PivotalTracker.
>     PivotalTracker
>     >> looks pretty good, but I would rather find a way to leverage
>     >> orgmode in a way that facilitates collaboration. What has
>     worked
>     >> for you?
>     >
>     > --
>     > Professor John Kitchin
>     > Doherty Hall A207F
>     > Department of Chemical Engineering
>     > Carnegie Mellon University
>     > Pittsburgh, PA 15213
>     > 412-268-7803
>     > @johnkitchin
>     > http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu