The recipient of Project Tasks does not have to be an OfficeTalk user. OfficeTalk lets you assign a project task to an e-mail address. The recipient will receive an e-mail message containing the project task details. The recipient may reply to the message one or more times and, in the reply, may specify what percentage of the task has been complete. OfficeTalk can recognise the replies and will automatically update the project with the completion information. The E-mail recipient will get the following message:
Project Task Assignment
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The project task 'Compile Sales Report' has been assigned to you.
Details
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Please calculate the sales for this quarter in a form which we can present to the director. It would be good if we could include a comparison of last years figures.
It is intended that the task should be 3d in duration.
Please keep me informed with regards to your progress with this task by replying to this message on a regular basis and typing a number between 0 and 100, representing the task completion, at the end of the line which starts 'Percent Done:'
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Percent Done:
The code at the bottom of the message identifies the project task to which the reply refers. OfficeTalk uses this to update the project with information that the assignee sends. Typically the assignee will reply with Percent Done set to 100% when the task has been completed. For longer tasks which may stretch over weeks, the assignee may repeatedly reply to the message indicating how complete the task is on, say, a weekly basis.