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Agenda

From inbox to planner: your emails become your agenda

Most of a day's "things to do" arrive by email. Extracting them one by one into a separate task tool is wasted work. A planner fed by your emails is one less job.

Danny·July 6, 2026·5 min read
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Every email that needs action becomes a task, every email with a real date becomes an event, everything with a deadline lands on a separate board, and nothing is ever invented. In a team, all of it becomes shared and assignable.

Key takeaways

  • A summary without an agenda forces you to re-note actions elsewhere; a real planner spares that work
  • InboxBriefs distinguishes tasks, events and deadlines, without ever inventing a date
  • Read-only external calendars give you a single view of your day
  • In a team, tasks and deadlines become collective and assignable

An email isn't just a message: it's very often an action in disguise. A quote to approve, an invoice to pay, a meeting to set, a document to review. When you read, you jot it down; when you move on, you forget. The cost is that low-grade stress of "I'm bound to forget something".

What InboxBriefs extracts automatically

Every daily summary produces three agenda-side outputs: tasks (requests that need action from you), events (meetings and appointments extracted from emails, with time and duration when explicit), and a deadlines board that lines up everything with a date. Nothing is invented: if the message doesn't mention a date, no task silently becomes an event.

  • Tasks: "Confirm the Air Canada quote", "Review the Duval proposal"
  • Events: "Finance meeting Tuesday 10am", with time and duration if explicit
  • Deadlines: "Hydro invoice due Friday", with a reminder
  • Persistence: an unchecked task stays in your planner, digest after digest

Overlaying your existing calendars

A useful agenda doesn't only speak of email. It also shows what you already planned elsewhere. InboxBriefs lets you subscribe to one or more external calendars (Google Calendar, Apple, Outlook, generic iCal) read-only. Those events overlay the ones extracted from emails, without double entry. You get one view of your day.

In a team: everyone sees the same thing

In a team space, the agenda becomes collective. Every task extracted from a shared-mailbox email can be assigned to one or several people, with a deadline and a notification. The deadlines board becomes the team's. The activity journal shows in real time who checked what off. That's what turns a plain planner into a collaboration tool.

No date is ever invented. If an email says "let's touch base this week", nothing is added to the calendar. It takes an explicit date for an event to appear.

Frequently asked questions

No. A task only becomes an event if the email mentions an explicit date. "See you soon" creates nothing; "Meeting Tuesday 10am" does.

You can uncheck it any time. Tasks and events persist across digests, with their history.

Yes, up to the plan limit. Each calendar has a color and can be disabled without being deleted.