Here is a description of my basic workflow in Taglocity. I originally posted this as a reply to a question on the Taglocity forum. Here it is again with some actual screen shots thrown in.

First off, I have a rule in Outlook that sets the @Incoming tag to each incoming email. When I scrub my inbox, I will tag the mail with any additional project/descriptive tags. I will also decide to set the @Now tag, or the @FollowUp tag.

Setting either of these tags removes the @Incoming tag. It will also move the email either to a working folder (@Now), or to a follow up folder (@FollowUp). This is kind of a simplified version of the GTD folder set. I really don’t need that many folders, so I’ve combined the Deferred, Waiting For, Snooze, and Someday folders into one folder named @FollowUp. One additional thing you may notice in the screen shot above… The @Now folder has the “Show total number of items” option set in the folder properties dialog. The @FollowUp folder has the “Show number of unread items” option set in the folder properties dialog. This way, the @Now folder nags me to work on it, where as the @FollowUp folder does not draw my attention.


Once a week, I check my follow up folder. Items will either be left there for next week, or assigned the @Now flag. This automatically removes the @FollowUp flag and moves the message to my working folder. When I am done working on any message, I set the @Done flag, which removes all of the other “workflow” tags and moves the message to my archive folder.

To make all of this easier, I have the following buttons on my toolbar: @Now, @FollowUp, @Done, and Task. Since the toolbar appears both on the main Outlook window and on each message, moving messages through my workflow is very easy.

Sometimes I want to track a task using Outlook’s tasks instead of with an email. In this case, I click the “Task” button on the toolbar which sets the Task flag. This creates a task from the email, sets the @Done flag on the email, and moves it to the archive folder. The Task tag also unsets itself, since I prefer not to leave the “Task” tag on the messages.

One additional note… I set my “workflow” tags as private so that they are removed from outgoing messages. All other tags are traveling tags. That way once I have replied to an email chain, the rest of the messages in the chain come back with the project/descriptive tags but no workflow tags. The incoming messages always start off with “@Incoming” set via the Outlook rule.

Happy tagging!