Is there a way to send a task email from sharepoint that gets recognized by outlook?

Question

I see that there is a header MSWorkflowTask, is there any way to set that in an email that is sent via sharepoint designer? I would like to send a customized email that outlook recognizes as a task.

Solution

If it is a regular notification email, probably not, at least not from within SharePoint Designer. You would also have to create and populate several other headers such as X-Sharing-ItemID. It's best to let SharePoint format those for you.

But if you are just interested in emailing tasks to users and if your workflow is creating a task, you can customize the email with a link and ultimately manage it in Outloook. This page describes customizing those notification emails with Designer: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-designer-help/send-e-mail-in-a-workflow-HA010239042.aspx

The sections you'll want to pay attention to are Include a hyperlink to the current item and Send your own custom task notifications.

A user can respond to those task emails like so: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/respond-to-a-task-from-a-sharepoint-site-HA010105444.aspx

Comments

[Judson]

No, I'm asking about how to send an email from sharepoint that will show up as a task from the workflow designer in sharepoint designer. I can send a normal email fine, but there is a special header that the tasks emails have that I would like to add. I would like to send custom emails that show up as tasks. Maybe that's not possible.

[Nate]

Sorry about that. I updated my answer accordingly. If that doesn't help I suggest adding more detail to your question.

[Judson]

Thank you, that is more what I'm looking for, but in their example they don't use the built-in outlook functionality of letting the user complete the task in outlook. They have a link to Sharepoint. The ones that are automated have a nice feature of letting the user complete the task entirely in Outlook, I was trying to replicate that functionality.