Cool GTD tip for tracking Waiting For items in Outlook
January 5th, 2012 Kelly Forrister - Staff ContributorCategories | Getting Things Done | Implementation
Many people have found this tip we share in our GTD & Outlook 2010 Guide to be super helpful for corralling the myriad of emails that need to be tracked as a “Waiting For.” You simply need to create a rule in Outlook to copy delegated items to an @Waiting For Support folder (create that folder if you don’t already have one.) Here’s what to do:
1. Select Rules button from the ribbon
2. Click Manage Rules & Alerts
3. Click on New Rule
4. Select Apply rule on messages I receive
5. Click Next
6. Check off from people or specific group. Then click on where people or public group is underlined and select yourself as the From contact (if you are not listed as a contact in your address book, you will need to create that first with the exact email address used by Outlook when you send email for this to work). Click OK. Click Next.
7. Check off move it to the specified folder. Then click on where specified folder is underlined and choose the “Waiting For Support” folder. Click OK. Click Next.
8. Check off except if my name is in the To or CC box
9. Name your rule.
Your final settings should look like this:
10. Click Finish.
Try it out by sending a test message to yourself and put yourself in the bcc: field. It should send a copy of the email to your Waiting For Support folder.
What this rule does is eliminate the step of having to dig through your Sent folder to find emails that you are waiting on a response. Be sure to also track the Waiting For item on your Waiting For list in Tasks, unless you the discipline to review this Waiting For Support email folder with the same rigor you would your Action lists.
Excellent! this gave me food for thought in that I went to my Quick Steps in Outlook 2010 and edited my old rule there and made one analogous to yours to send to Omnifocus (for anyone interested you have to click the Options and add the characters, — in my case, to make the rule on the receiving end work) and voila I now have a more efficient setup. Will do the same with my @Action Quick Step presently, thanks a lot!
I also use the follow-up option, where I will set the follow-up for muself (and sometimes the recipients)
I’ve been using a “Waiting For” list for several years now. Although it’s a bit of a headache it really lives up to it’s promise.
Lately I’ve been using Boomerang for Gmail a lot; http://www.boomeranggmail.com/ If you are lucky enough to use Gmail for your e-mail, then do give that a try to for all those e-mails you sent that require a response
I read somewhere on GTD to set up a rule with “/wf” in the rule text and a “Move To… Folder” instruction on outgoing emails, which moves the email to the Waiting For folder. You simply add “/wf” to an outgoing email you want to track and it copies to the Waiting For folder. You could add “/wf” to your email signature so by default your outgoing emails go to the WF folder, and just remove it when you want to track it.
Yes Jaeblo1–
We still recommend that method in our Outlook 2007 Guide. We moved to the Bcc: method described above as a different way because it eliminates that concern people had with the other method about the recipient asking what *WF meant.
But either one works.
Kelly
another strategy, especially for those not using outlook is to use followupthen.com. I bcc it on emails, noting the day and time I want the followup and it works really well.
Awesome tip!
I used this rule in outlook for years and worked great. I switched to Mac and can’t make it work in Mail. Any suggestions?
I can’t seem to get this to work in Outlook 2007, unless I physically go into the rules dialog and RUN the rule. It does not process automatically. I have other rules for other purposes that work just fine.
Any ideas on getting this to work on the 2007 version? Might be a different rule configuration needed. I have tried several combinations of settings with no luck yet.
@Scott,
I had to send my test email to another account because the rule says except if my name is in the TO or CC and so it wasn’t working.