Re: how to put into a journal info about the email sent

[Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>]

David Belohrad <david@belohrad.ch> writes:

> Dear All,
>
> i'm using org. And I'm using notmuch (that's why I address both mailing
> lists). Now, writing an email in everyday bussiness requires a
> non-significant time of your workhours. So I'd like to have this event
> in my org agenda. So any time I send some email with a given subject,
> I'd like to 'automatically' entry the information about it into
> e.g. sentmails.org in form of a diary entry, with appropriate tag.

I do something like this in Gnorb, which I'd recommend you use except
it's mostly Gnus specific.

I do it in two parts, but you could do it in one. Basically I add a
function to the `message-header-hook' (which ensures that all the
message headers have been generated properly).

The important bits look like:

(save-restriction
  (message-narrow-to-headers)
  (let ((link (and (mail-fetch-field "Gcc")
		   (org-store-link nil)))
	(org-capture-link-is-already-stored t)
	;; Collect date, subject, to, and msg-id with
	;; `mail-fetch-field'. Construct date-ts and date-ts-ia with
	;; (format-time-string
	;; (org-time-stamp-format t [t])
	;; (date-to-time date))
	)
    (if link
	(org-add-link-props
	 :date date
	 :date-timestamp date-ts
	 :date-timestamp-inactive date-ts-ia
	 :annotation link)
      (org-store-link-props
       :subject subject
       :to to
       :date date
       :date-timestamp date-ts
       :date-timestamp-inactive date-ts-ia
       :message-id msg-id
       :annotation link))
    (org-capture nil gnorb-gnus-new-todo-capture-key)))

So, if a "Gcc:" header is present, make the link using `org-store-link',
then add more fields using `org-add-link-props'. If it's not, then fake
it by storing all necessary fields using `org-store-link-props'.

Because we let `org-capture-link-is-already-stored' to t, the capture
process doesn't try to create a new link, but just uses the values we've
stored.

Obviously the downside is that, without a "Gcc:" header, org can't
actually make a real link to the message. It doesn't know where it's
going to be. However if you know that all your sent messages can be
reached with a link that looks like "notmuch:id#Message-id", then you
can make that yourself in your org capture template with something like

"[[notmuch:id#%:message-id][%:subject]]"

I hope that's not too confusing!


See:

https://github.com/girzel/gnorb/blob/master/gnorb-gnus.el#L259
https://github.com/girzel/gnorb/blob/master/gnorb-gnus.el#L437

Yours,
Eric

> In example:
>
> I'm sending a mail to Tom, with subject 'dealing vme register
> mapping'. 
>
> At the moment I send this email (using smtpmail), I'd like an entry in
> the sentmails.org as follows:
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ** 2014-10 October
> *** 2014-10-02 Thursday
> **** dealing vme register mapping                                                 :mail:
> [[notmuch:id:7a97bb93e66a41878edd4c04fa764963@cernfe03.cern.ch][dealing
> vme register mapping]]
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I thought that I can use following
>
> (add-hook 'message-send-hook '<mysuperfunction>)
>
> to hook on sending and generate a capture entry. In fact this works
> pretty well _EXCEPT_ the link to the mail sent. The org-store-link
> cannot apparently store a link to an email, which so far was not sent
> (and not received?) because it claims that
>
> 'org-gnus-store-link: Can not create link: No Gcc header found'
>
> Hence this is pretty fatal for my diary entry. My question is: is there
> any way how to link not-yet-sent/received email as an org-link? Or is
> there any way to generate Gcc header before the email is sent and use
> this header during sending? Or is
> there any other way how to put into my agenda sent emails?
>
> many thanks
>
> david