Todoist Integration
Pull in Todoist tasks as you plan your day and keep Todoist in sync with Sunsama.
Bring your Todoist tasks into your daily plan. Browse your projects, labels and filters in a panel beside your task list, drag in what you’ll work on today, and edit the Todoist task without leaving Sunsama.
Installation
Go to Settings > Integrations > Todoist, or open Todoist in the right hand panel, and click Add Todoist account. You can connect one Todoist account.
The same settings page has an Include your activity from this tool in your Daily Highlights? toggle, and lets you Reconnect or Remove the account.
Browsing and importing tasks
Open Todoist in the right hand panel (keyboard shortcut Shift D).
Browsing Todoist projects, tags, and filters
The panel’s main dropdown lists your Todoist projects, labels and filters, like Todoist’s own left hand navigation. Choose Inbox or Today to see the same tasks as those views in Todoist; for most people that’s the quickest way to find what matters. Task cards show the due date and, if the task has one, its deadline.
Searching for a task by title
Type in the search box and press Enter to search the selected project or view.
Importing tasks
When you’re ready to work on a Todoist task, pull it into your plan:
- Drag the card from the Todoist panel onto your task list.
- To timebox it right away, switch to calendar view (
J) and drag the card onto your calendar at the time you’ll work on it. Sunsama adds the task to that day and creates a working session on your calendar. - Click the card and choose Add to today (or hover and press
S), or pick another date.
Hiding or showing previously imported tasks
By default, a Todoist task you’ve imported disappears from the panel, so the panel shows only what you haven’t planned yet. To change this, click Filter and choose Show it here or Hide it here under “When a task has been imported into Sunsama”.
Working with imported tasks
An imported Todoist task becomes a Sunsama task linked to the original. Click the Todoist icon on the task (or hover and press G) to open it in Todoist.
Editing the Todoist task from Sunsama
Open the Sunsama task to see the Todoist task inside it. Changes you make there are saved straight to Todoist. You can:
- Complete or reopen the task, and its sub-tasks
- Add a sub-task or rename one
- Change the priority, the date (with or without a time), and the deadline
- Move the task to another project and add or remove labels
- Edit the description and post comments
If your role on a shared Todoist project is read-only, the preview says so and you can’t edit it.
The Sunsama task works like a worksheet for the Todoist task. Add notes, subtasks, time tracking and comments there without touching what your collaborators see in Todoist.
Understanding synced fields
Two fields stay in sync between Sunsama and Todoist by default:
- Date: the Todoist due date is linked to the Sunsama start date, the day the task shows on in Sunsama. Changing the due date in Todoist moves the task to that day, and moving the task in Sunsama updates the Todoist due date (only if it already had one). This doesn’t apply to recurring Todoist tasks (see below).
- Completion: completing the task in either app completes it in the other.
You can turn each of these off. See Automations.
The Todoist deadline is not synced. It isn’t linked to the Sunsama due date, so change it from the Todoist preview inside the task.
Understanding recurring Todoist tasks
Importing a recurring Todoist task imports that one occurrence. Its Todoist due date and Sunsama date are not synced, so moving one doesn’t move the other.
When you complete it in Sunsama, that occurrence is completed in Todoist and Todoist creates the next one. The panel then shows the next occurrence, which you can import when it’s time.
Automations
Open the Todoist panel in the right hand sidebar and click the Automations tab to control what Sunsama does when you import or complete a Todoist task.
Import Automations
What actions should Sunsama take when you import a Todoist task?
- Update due date in Todoist — when you import a Todoist task, Sunsama sets its Todoist due date to match the date you’re planning to work on it.
Completion Automations
What actions should Sunsama take when you complete an imported task?
- Complete in Todoist — completing the task in Sunsama also completes it in Todoist.
Sync Automations
Which actions should be fully synced with Todoist?
- Change due date — keeps the due date in sync in both directions: changing it in either app updates the other. See uncheck this to fix a task fighting itself over its date below.
- Mark as complete — keeps completion status in sync in both directions: completing the task in either app completes it in the other.
All four toggles are on by default when you connect a Todoist account.
Task export to Todoist
Export a task to Todoist
Drag and drop a task into your Todoist panel to export it. This removes the task from Sunsama and creates a Todoist task with the title, notes, and subtasks carried over.
Where the task lands depends on where you drop it:
- A project or section: that project and section.
- A label: your Inbox, with that label added.
- Today or Next 7 Days: due on the day you dropped it under.
- A custom filter: your Inbox.
Copy a task to Todoist
Hold ⌘ (Mac) or Ctrl (Windows) while you drag to copy the task instead. The task stays in Sunsama, linked to the new Todoist task, and the Todoist task gets a link back to it.
To undo an export, press ⌘ Z (Mac) or Ctrl Z (Windows) within a minute. The first time you export, Sunsama also shows an Undo button.
Sunny and Autoplan
Sunny can read your Todoist tasks when you ask about them, for example “what’s due in Todoist this week?”. Autoplan also looks at Todoist when it drafts your day. To stop Autoplan from using Todoist, open Integrations on the daily planning screen and turn Todoist off.
Troubleshooting
A duplicated task keeps changing its own date
If a Todoist task ends up linked to more than one Sunsama task (for example, duplicating an already-imported task, or importing the same Todoist task a second time), the two Sunsama tasks can fight over the date, moving either one pushes the shared Todoist due date, which then syncs back and moves both.
Go to the Todoist panel’s Automations tab and turn off Change due date under Sync Automations. This stops due-date syncing for your whole Todoist connection, so you’ll lose automatic due-date sync for all your Todoist tasks, not just the duplicated pair, but it’s the fastest fix available today.
My Todoist panel is empty; no tasks or projects are showing
This is probably due to Todoist’s low rate limit. If you have Todoist open in multiple places simultaneously (Sunsama panel, Todoist app or web page, etc), this almost always will overload the rate limit, and no more requests can be made and new tasks/updates won’t show.
The solution is to close wherever your Todoist is open and wait a minute or two. Then, try opening the Todoist panel in Sunsama and refreshing. Usually the rate limit will reset and you’ll be able to see your tasks again.
To prevent this occurring, limit the places where Todoist is open while using Sunsama.
Todoist tasks are getting auto-completed
When tasks originate from the calendar and are added to the task list, they will auto-complete when the end time passes. This happens for any task that comes from the calendar.
If you are using Todoist’s popular Google calendar integration, you’ll run into this issue when you do the following:
- Use Todoist to create an event on your Google calendar
- Import the calendar event as a task in Sunsama
That task will autocomplete in Sunsama. This workflow above is considered an anti-pattern in Sunsama, since Sunsama treats any event that originates from your calendar as a “meeting” rather than a “task”. An alternative would be to not use Todoist (or its Google calendar integration) to schedule your tasks to your calendar, and instead use Sunsama to schedule your tasks to your calendar directly:
So your workflow would look like:
- Import the Todoist task you want to work on as a task into Sunsama
- Drag that imported Todoist task to your calendar
You would no longer have to worry about autocomplete if you take that approach.
Some unsupported filters have been omitted
There are a couple of classes of filters that only work inside of Todoist’s UI and not in third-party apps like Sunsama:
- Filters that include the character
/. If you can remove the/character from your filter it should work. - Filters that include the
,which is often used to create visual sub-groups. We recommend using simpler filters inside Sunsama without the,for grouping.