Follow up on emails with mu4e and org capture

When I send an email, I often want my agenda to remind me to follow up a few days later. Thanks to Dirk-Jan C. Binnema's help, I was able to set this up with mu4e and org-capture.

mu4e + org-capture

Here's the code: 

  (add-to-list
   'org-capture-templates
   ("efu" "Follow Up" entry (file+olp "todo/todo.org" "Email" "Follow Up")
    "* TODO Follow up with %(eval sent-message-to) on [[mu4e:msgid:%(eval sent-message-id)][%(eval sent-subject)]]
SCHEDULED: %(org-insert-time-stamp (org-read-date nil t \"+3d\"))
%i"))

  (add-hook 'message-sent-hook #'my/org-capture-sent-mail)

  (defun my/org-capture-sent-mail ()
    "Prepare to capture sent mail after window configuration is reset."
    (let* ((sent-message-id
          (replace-regexp-in-string
           "[<>]" "" (message-fetch-field "Message-Id")))
           (sent-message-to
            (replace-regexp-in-string " <.*>" "" (message-fetch-field "To")))
         (sent-subject (or (message-fetch-field "Subject") "No subject")))
      (org-capture nil "efu")
      (add-hook 'mu4e-compose-post-hook #'my/pop-to-buffer-org-capture-mail 99)))

  (defun my/pop-to-buffer-org-capture-mail ()
    (pop-to-buffer
     (car (match-buffers
           (lambda (buffer)
             (equal "efu"
                    (plist-get
                     (buffer-local-value
                      'org-capture-current-plist buffer)
                     :key))))))
    (remove-hook 'mu4e-compose-post-hook #'my/pop-to-buffer-org-capture-mail))

After I send an email, I see the org-capture pop-up window pre-filled from the template: 

*** TODO Follow up with John Doe on [[mu4e:msgid:1234576890][Beautiful Snowy Morning]]
SCHEDULED: <2025-02-06 Wed>

If I run org-capture-finalize (C-c C-c), then I'll be reminded in three days to follow up on the email. Before capturing the reminder, I can add more information or edit the date if I want to have more or less time before it shows up on my agenda. Alternatively, I can run org-capture-kill (C-c C-k) if I don't want to be reminded at all.

Technical Details

After closing a composition buffer, mu4e restores your window configuration in mu4e-compose-post-hook, a feature which I want to keep. However, this means that the org-capture buffer gets hidden when the windows are restored.1 The solution above is to add a self-removing hook function my/pop-to-buffer-org-capture-mail to mu4e-compose-post-hook which pops back to the org-capture buffer after the window configuration is restored.

Links

Footnotes:

1

I want to interact with the org capture buffer each time I send an email, so I can edit or cancel the reminder while capturing it. If I didn't want to interact with the org capture buffer, I could put :immediate-finish in the org-capture template and get rid of my/pop-to-buffer-org-capture-mail.

Last updated 2025-02-03 Mon 10:18 PST. History | Sitemap