How to automatically track links in org-mode to gnus messages?

Question

I use org-mode + gnus + Gmail for my daily GTD routine. The concept is that treating all incoming messages as tasks, and converting all messages in INBOX into org-mode's tasks using org-capture. Once all new messages are converted into tasks, archive them, and hopefully INBOX is kept zero.

My workflow is as follows:

1. Open the summary view of gnus INBOX, and select a new message
2. Capture the message with org-store-link (C-c l)
3. Open my todo file (todo.org), and create a new task for it, and paste the captured link to the task's body with org-insert-link (C-c C-l)
4. Go back to gnus summary view and archive the message (B del)

The problem is that when moving a message into the archive folder, the captured link becomes broken, and I cannot follow the link anymore. This is because the captured link includes the IMAP folders' name and archiving message changes the message's IMAP folder name. E.g.,

• Captured link: [[gnus:nnimap%2Blocalhost:%5BGmail%5D.Important#1364607772002.9702fb8c@Nodemailer][Email from Geeklist Team: Geekli.st Suggestions & Activi]] (IMAP folder name is "[Gmail]Important")
• Link to archived message: [[gnus:nnimap%2Blocalhost:%5BGmail%5D.All Mail#1364607772002.9702fb8c@Nodemailer][Email from Geeklist Team: Geekli.st Suggestions & Activi]] (IMAP folder name is "[Gmail]All Mail")

So my question is: how can I update the captured link automatically when the message is moved to other folders? I guess there are some hooks to do this, but I could not find a good sample for this purpose. Or any simpler solutions for this kind of routine are welcome. TIA.

Answer 1

I do not use 'org-store-link' and 'org-insert-link' but a capture template, that automatically generates a link to the message (%a below). So you do not have to switch buffers to store a TODO entry:

(setq org-capture-templates
  '(
    ("m" "TODO from Mail" entry (file+headline "~/gitfiles/org/gtd.org" "Inbox") 
     "* TODO %?, Link: %a")))

Since all my emails arrive in the INBOX and are archived in the folder "Archive" I can just use the following function which replaces the string 'INBOX' by 'Archive' in the Org mode link in the capture buffer:

 (defun hs/replace ()
   (interactive)
   (goto-char 1)
   (replace-string "INBOX" "Archive"))

This hook calls the function when I hit C-c C-c to file the capture entry:

(add-hook 'org-capture-prepare-finalize-hook 'hs/replace)

So, my workflow is as follows:

• Select a message in Summary buffer
• Hit C-c c m to capture a TODO item with Link to message and write a description (since the message is still in the inbox, the generated link contains the group "INBOX")
• Hit C-c C-c to file the TODO entry (this calls the function 'hs/replace' which replaces the string INBOX by Archive)
• Archive the email in the archive folder.

HTH