8. Integrations
1. The Postbox Interface
2. Working with Messages
3. Topics & the Focus Pane
4. Composing & Sending
5. Responses & Placeholders
6. Signatures
7. Searching
8. Integrations
Integrations
One of the problems many people have with email is that they receive messages which require them to do something but they don’t want to do it right now. In this instance, the default action is usually to leave the message in their inbox to deal with it later. But the problem with this approach is that next time you open your email client you have to look at and analyze that message again to decide if you really need to do something with it right now. A much better approach is to put that message into another application which is designed for handling it correctly, like a task manager. And thanks to the integrations with popular productivity apps like Evernote, Things, and OmniFocus, Postbox makes this easy. Let’s take a look at Evernote first.
Let’s say you receive a message that you want to hang on to because it has some specific information you’ll need later, but you can’t do anything with it right now. This is the perfect type of message to send to Evernote. When you send a message to Evernote, Postbox includes:
The Subject,
The Body (entire message or just the selected text),
The Topics (translated to Tags),
Any Attachments,
Plus, a link back to the original message in Postbox if you want to go straight to it from Evernote.
This is a huge win for your productivity.
There are two ways to create a note in Evernote from a message in Postbox: clicking the toolbar button, or using the right-click context menu.
To use the Evernote toolbar button, it first needs to be added to the toolbar. Once you’ve added the Evernote button to the toolbar, simply select the message you wish to send to Evernote, and click the toolbar button. If you don’t see the Evernote button, make sure Evernote is installed in your Applications folder.
To use the right-click context menu, click within the message itself or select some text, right-click, and select Add to Evernote from the contextual menu.
If text within a message is selected or highlighted, only that text will be included in the body of the note when it's sent to Evernote. This is a quick way to choose the important content of the message and avoiding the need to edit later.
Now let’s take a look at how to use Postbox with Things.
To set up Postbox to use Things, follow these steps in order:
Quit Things if it is running
Set Postbox as your default email client (if it is not already) <-- this is important!
Install the Things Helper application
Start or restart Things
A new Things to-do can be created within Postbox by using this shortcut: Ctrl + ⌥ Alt + Space.
What goes into Things depends on what you select:
If just the message, then only the subject will be added as a title
If you select some message text, then that text will be added to the to-do note
Links back to the message will always be added.
Another popular task management application that Postbox integrates with is OmniFocus. A new OmniFocus Pro to-do can be created within Postbox by selecting some text and then selecting OmniFocus: Send to Inbox from the contextual menu.
When you create a new OmniFocus Pro to-do within Postbox:
the message subject will become the to-do title
the message sender will be linked along with a link back to the original message
the selected text will be placed into the to-do body
Note: This integration only works with OmniFocus Pro.
If the productivity app you use doesn’t integrate directly with Postbox, don’t worry! Many web services allow you to email content to the service using a custom email address. For example, you can also send to Evernote to add email content to a notebook or send content to routing services such as Zapier or IFTTT, and from there, your content can be saved to hundreds of different services and applications!
But working with all of these email addresses and tags can be cumbersome, complex, and time-consuming. That’s where the Quick Post feature can really come in handy.
Here’s how you set up Quick Post.
First, add the Quick Post button the toolbar. Right-click the toolbar, select Customize... then drag and drop the Quick Post icon to the desired location in the toolbar.
Next, enter the Quick Post editor either via the Quick Post toolbar button or via Preferences > Advanced > Quick Post.
Quick Post enables you to quickly setup and use send-to-service email addresses, and automatically add the appropriate tags to the beginning or end of the subject line. Best of all, you can send content to the service in the background, without having to open up a compose window.
Click the New button, and enter a descriptive Name, email address, and tags you wish to add to the beginning or end of the subject line.
By adding :: to the descriptive Name, you can organize your Quick Post actions into sub-menus, for example, Evernote::Work will create a sub-entry of “Work” under Evernote.
Next, you need to specify how the message should be sent.
Send As Attachment is usually the best way to go since you're forwarding the original email. Services can then do the right thing with regards to images as attachments, for instance.
Send should be used when the service doesn't know how to process .eml files as attachments, like Trello or Slack. However, using this format does have some limitations. For example, images embedded into the message body as an IMAP URL won't show in the destination application.
Send via Compose Window will bring up the Compose Window, which you can then edit before sending. This option is also the best one to use for images embedded into the message body as an IMAP URL.
To send content to a web service using Quick Post, either select the message or highlight text from the message and then select an action from the Quick Post menu.
The content will be sent to the service in the background.
If you really want to automate your email workflow, you can even set up Quick Post actions as filter actions. But note that messages are always sent As Attachment when using a filter action because, by their nature, filter actions run in the background.
Postbox also integrates directly with Cloud File Sharing apps like Dropbox, OneDrive, and Box, making it easy to email links to files stored in the cloud instead of sending the files themselves. It’s a great time-saver (and email account space-saver).
When you send an email in Postbox after integrating cloud services, your email arrives without making the recipient download the file just to read the email. The cloud file can then be downloaded at his or her convenience. Without the attachments in the emails themselves, emails can be sent more quickly. Also, a file won’t take up space in your email account or the recipient’s since it’s stored with a cloud-service provider. And since you’re only sending a link to a file, you can modify the file right up until the moment your recipient clicks the link to download it.
Once you open Postbox, go to Postbox (macOS)/Tools on the Mac or (Windows) > Preferences/Options > Attachments > Outgoing on Windows and make sure "Send links when attaching files in your cloud folders" is checked.
Next, click Add, select the desired cloud service from the popup menu, and click Set up Account.
Sign in to your cloud service provider and allow the provider the access it requests. You are now ready to use cloud file sharing in Postbox.
To "send" a file link using Cloud File Sharing:
Create the email you in which you want to “send” the cloud file.
Then drag the file from your Dropbox, Box, or Microsoft OneDrive folder into the body of the email. That’s it — Postbox creates a link to the cloud file.
Finish and send the email.
Note: If you drag the file onto the email’s attachment area, the file will be added to the email and sent as a standard attachment.