Todoist Integration

Installation

Go to Settings > Todoist integration, or open Todoist in the right hand panel of your workspace to connect your Todoist account to Sunsama. Once in your settings page, click "Add Todoist account".

Currently, Sunsama only allows you to integrate one Todoist account at a time.

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Integrating the right Todoist account
If you are already logged into Todoist in your browser, the consent screen you see will grant Sunsama access to the Todoist account is logged in. Make sure you are logged in with the Todoist account you want to integrate.

Browsing and importing tasks

Open Todoist in the right hand panel to use the integration (keyboard shortcut Shift D)

Browsing Todoist projects, tags, and filters

Sunsama gives you access to all of the Todoist projects, tags, and filters. This mirrors what you'd see in Todoist's left hand navigation panel.

Using the "Inbox" and "Today" views

From the main dropdown, you can select the "Inbox" and "Today" views. These views mirrors your "Inbox" and "Today" view in Todoist. For most people, this is the easiest way to find your most relevant tasks.

Importing tasks

When you are ready to commit to working on a certain Todoist task, you can pull into your plan in Sunsama. There are three ways to pull a Todoist task into Sunsama:

Drag and drop the card from the Todoist panel onto your Sunsama task list.
To timebox the task directly, switch to calendar view (keyboard shortcut tab) and drag and drop the Todoist task directly onto your Sunsama calendar at the time you plan to work on it. This will add the task to that day in Sunsama and create a working session on your calendar.)
Click on the task in the Todoist panel and click “Add to today” (or hover and hit S) or select a specific date for the task.

Hiding or showing previously imported tasks

By default, when you drag a task from Todoist into Sunsama, that task is hidden in the right hand panel. This allows you to easily keep track of what cards still need to be pulled in.

If you want to see Todoist tasks that have been previously pulled into Sunsama, click the menu button that says "Filter" and toggle on "Already imported".

If you want to hide Todoist tasks that have been previously pulled into Sunsama, click the menu button that says "Filter" and toggle off "Already imported".

Searching for a task by title

Type in the search box and hit enter to search for tasks that match your query in the currently selected project/view.

Interacting with imported tasks

Once a Todoist task is imported into Sunsama, it becomes a Sunsama task, with an embedded Todoist task. Clicking on the Todoist icon on the imported task (or hovering over the task and hitting G) will bring you to the task in Todoist in a web browser.

Click on a Sunsama task that's linked to Todoist to see a preview of your Todoist task embedded inside the Sunsama task.

Your associated Sunsama task acts like a worksheet for your Todoist task. Inside your Sunsama task, you can add notes, time tracking information, subtasks, and comments without messing with your Todoist task. Use your Sunsama task to track the minutia of the task that your collaborators might not care about inside of Todoist.

Understanding synced fields

Currently there are two "synced" fields between Sunsama and Todoist. The Todoist icon at the top of the task page tells you which fields are synchronized. By default:

If you change the due date in Todoist the Sunsama task's start date will change. The "start date" is the day column the task shows on in Sunsama. If you change the "start date" in Sunsama, the Todoist task's due date will update (only if it already had some due date). NOTE: This is not true for recurring Todoist tasks (see below).
If you complete the task in Sunsama or in Todoist both the Sunsama task and Todoist task will show as completed.

Understanding recurring Todoist tasks

If you import a recurring task from Todoist into Sunsama, you'll be importing that one instance of the recurring task.

The Todoist due date and the Sunsama start date are not synced for recurring Todoist tasks. For example, if you change the start date of the task in Sunsama, that will not affect the due date in Todoist, and vice versa.

When you check it off in Sunsama, that particular instance of the recurring task in Todoist is completed and the next instance will be created in Todoist. You'll see the task in the integration panel (and Todoist) update to show you the next instance, which you can then import in the next day, or the next week.

Troubleshooting

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 it's 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's 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.

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Import by URL instead
If you are reliant on complex custom views inside of Todoist that Sunsama can not recreate in the same way, we highly recommend that you import tasks "via URL" instead. This lets you look at your tasks inside Todoist and just drop them into Sunsama without leaving Todoist.
Learn how to import tasks by URL here!