We built Teamwork Projects to help you and your team be more productive, and we love hearing about how you use our software to Get Things Done. (We really do!) That’s why we’re bringing you this blog series: to highlight some of our hardest-working features that you might not have heard about yet, and let you know how they can work for you and your team. Today’s topic: How to interact with Teamwork Projects right from your email inbox.

Switching between tabs and apps can really slow things down. The good news for Teamwork Projects users is that we’ve built in a couple of tricks and shortcuts to help you solve this problem and save time. We’ve already covered how to use your email to post items to a project, but the email party doesn’t have to stop once your project is up and running. For example, you can easily reply to any comment notification directly from your email inbox and it will be added as a new comment in Teamwork Projects. But before you jump ahead of yourself and start replying to every notification that hits your inbox, just be aware that you need to turn on email replies in your project settings before you get started. Here’s how: First, make sure you’re in your project and choose the “Settings” option. From here, select the “General Settings” tab and turn on the “Reply by Email” option.

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That’s it! Pretty easy, huh? Now that you’ve got the basics set up, you’re ready to explore the big wide world of email commands. Not only can you reply to comments via email, you can also reply to an email notification with commands for specific actions:

  • #like – this adds a Like on the comment you’re replying to and posts 

    any additional text as a new comment.

  • #unfollow – you’ll be removed as a follower from that item.

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If you’re replying to a comment or message in Teamwork Projects, here are some more commands you can add to your reply:

  • Adding @name or multiple @names will include any mentioned people in the reply notification emails.

  • If you @mention a person or people in the body of your response, then we’ll notify them once you’ve sent your email and the comment or message they’ve been @ed in has been posted

  • To complete a task or milestone, reply to the notification with one of the following:

    • #Complete

    • #Completed

    • #Done

  • To reopen a completed task or milestone, use one of the following:

    • #Uncomplete

    • #Reopen

    • #Open

    • #Notdone

    • #Reopened

  • Assign or reassign using #reassign @user or #assign @user (this works with multiple users).

  • Send [time] as part of the reply, for example:

    • [1h]

    • [1m]

    • [1h 25m]

    • [1.5]

    • [1:30]

  • Add any text in {} for a time log description e.g: {This is the description for the timelog}. This is an optional extra.

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  • If the notification email relates to a task or a comment on a task, then the time is logged against that task.

  • If the notification email does not relate in any way to a task the time is logged against the project.

Check out our help doc for even more email commands. As always, if you have any questions, just send us a mail at support@teamwork.com and we’ll be happy to help. How do you use email commands to save time in Teamwork Projects? What would you like to see us cover in our next post? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below!