BusyCal Mac
Syncing Extended Task Properties
BusyCal 2024.4.3 (in beta) introduces the ability to sync extended properties such as due time, priority, and more with services that do not natively support these features.
This feature is designed to enhance your experience (and productivity) by ensuring that all relevant task details are preserved across different devices and platforms, using BusyCal.
How It Works
There are multiple task management services available, such as Google Tasks, Outlook, and Todoist, each with unique features and limitations. Notably, Google Tasks has not evolved over the last decade despite user feedback. BusyCal addresses this issue by ensuring consistent feature synchronization across all devices and accounts, reducing user dependency on understanding each service’s specific constraints and limitations.
The ultimate goal is to allow users to set properties such as priorities, due times, statuses, etc., without stopping to think if this feature is supported and have these reliably sync across devices.
BusyCal achieves seamless synchronization by appending special tags to the notes section of tasks. Some of these supported tags are:
- @duration:900 Specifies the task duration in seconds. Example: 900 seconds for 15 minutes.
- @starred Indicates whether a task is starred.
- @priority:low/medium/high Marks the task priority as low, medium, or high.
- @duetime:HH:mm Sets the exact time a task is due. Format: HH:MM in military time.
- @status:inprogress/cancelled/needsaction Sets the task status, such as needs action, in progress, or cancelled.
Modifying or removing these tags directly within the notes will result in changes to the associated task properties in BusyCal on the next sync, allowing for dynamic updates across your devices.
Note: This is both a powerful feature and a potential source of errors if not handled carefully. Users are advised to modify these tags with caution to avoid unintended changes.
Feature Matrix
This table marks with a ✓ where a feature is natively supported and with a ✗ where it’s not.
| Feature | Google Task | Todoist | Outlook / Exchange / Microsoft Todo | Reminders | CalDAV |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Priority | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Due Time | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Durations | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Starred | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Status | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
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