⚡️ Ideas
Wolfgang Maehr Wolfgang Maehr Mar 4, 2023

Sync with external tools (IFTTT for Apple Calendar, Reminders), Zapier for Notion, Fibery

Explain the problem as you see it

I want to use Tana as my PKM, but for that it needs to play well with the other tools I use:

  1. Apple Calendar and Reminders for their notifications
  2. Otehr tools like Notion and Fibery for work data

I'm OK to set up IFTTT and Zapier to sync data, but I want to avoid manual copying and synching.

Why is this a problem for you?

Manual sync is painful and will mean that I won't use Tana as the other tools are in place.

Suggest a solution

Allow connecting to IFTTT and Zapier or—even better—integrate with the tools directly.

⁨7⁩ ⁨Comments⁩

I would suggest to broaden the idea here.

What I would look for is an abstraction that would allow us to bring in objects from outside Tana in a “managed” supertag. One example is a Readwise integration, which could fully sync (two-way) with the Readwise API. I just don't see why it should be limited to Readwise. The same abstraction is useful for todo lists like Todoist, for calendar entries say on Google Calendar, for encrypted notes stored elsewhere. The possibilities are truly endless.

For me, what resonated with Tana is the treatment of queries as “first class citizens”. I'm hopeful data integrations to Readwise, Todoist, Google Calendar, etc., could be too!

I really enjoy using Tana, and I see it as my ultimate source of truth. But as powerful as it is, there are other apps out there that specialize in very specific functions that I find Tana is not always best suited for, or is lagging a bit behind in terms of usability.

Some examples:

  • Fireflies.ai is one of the best meeting notes taker and I would find it extremely valuable to be able to update a meeting supertag with the output of a meeting.
  • I use Akiflow to prioritize all my inbound tasks from various sources such as email, or Project management tools that I personally use within our company.

These are just some examples of apps that I use BUT seeing how evolved the productivity app space has gotten, I'm sure that others will have a go to app that they prefer. It's not to say that this can't all be accomplished within Tana, but sometimes, it's best to source other tools that are specific in their own domain.

For me this is very important. I use TickTick with my wife for task management and I see that Capacities syncs with TickTick. I much prefer the outline nature of Tana though and want to stick with Tana, but long term, if I can't sync stuff, I don't know if I can stick with Tana then...