Turn an email into an assignment

Teachers send the details by email, and then you copy them into a planner by hand. Study Hall gives every account its own private address, so you forward the email instead — or write a new one — and the assignment is already there next time you open the app.

1. 1. Sign in, then open Mailroom from the top of any page.
2. 2. Press Show addresses and copy yours. It looks like k7m2pq4x9f@in.thestudyhall.net.
3. 3. Forward a teacher's email to it. That's the whole setup.

Add a word after a + in the address, and the item lands in the right place rather than always becoming homework.

(nothing)

An assignment — the default

+todo

A to-do: an errand, a form to hand in

+test

A test or assessment, so it gets a grade

+sport

A practice or game. Add “vs Lincoln” and it knows which

+event

A one-off with a time, like an appointment

+activity

A standing weekly commitment, like a club

Starting the subject with the same word works too. The kind is never guessed from the wording — a haircut and a lab report look identical to a keyword list, and being confidently wrong is worse than being predictable.

“Due Friday”, “10/1”, “Oct 20” and “7:30 am” are all understood, and an explicit due beats a date that happens to be sitting elsewhere in the thread. If no date can be found, the item lands on tomorrow and says so on the card, rather than quietly guessing today and arriving already overdue.

• — Only you can use your address. Mail is accepted only from the address your account is registered to, so knowing someone's address isn't enough to put things in their planner.
• — It doesn't read your inbox. Nothing is connected to Gmail. Study Hall only ever sees the messages you deliberately send it.
• — Some emails arrive dateless. A message whose body is encoded rather than plain text can't be read, so it becomes an item with a guessed date and a note saying so.
• — Forwarding twice makes two items. A forward is a new message as far as mail is concerned, so there is nothing to recognise. Study Hall will warn you if the new one looks like something you already have.

It's part of Study Hall, a free planner for homework, classes and sport. You need an account for this particular feature, because the address belongs to the account rather than to one device — but the planner itself works signed out. What it stores