Escaping characters in org-mode capture template

Question

I'm using emacs with org-mode for my notes and have the following capture template for my meeting notes. I would like to use columnview to create a quick overview over tasks after the meeting. I cant escape the special charaters in the columnview commands (under Actions: below), and get syntax error when running the elisp code in emacs.

(defvar my/org-meeting-template "** %u %^{meeting_title} %^G :PROPERTIES:
:exportHeadlineOnly: t
:EXPORT_AUTHOR: author
:EXPORT_OPTIONS: H:0 num:nil toc:nil author:t timestamp:nil creator:nil date:nil :EXPORT_FILE_NAME: %<%Y%m%d_%H%M_%^{filename}>
:ID: ID_%<%Y%m%d-%H%M%S>
:END:

CREATED %U

*** Attendees:

• [X] author
• [ ] %? *** Agenda:

*** Notes:

---

*** Actions:
#+BEGIN: columnview :id ID_%<%Y%m%d-%H%M%S> :match "%%TODO|DONE" :format "%%ITEM(What) %%TAGS(Who) %%DEADLINE(When) %%TODO(State)")
#+END

" "Meeting Template")

(setq org-capture-templates
`(("m" "Meeting" entry (file+headline "~/notes.org" "Meeting Notes")
,my/org-meeting-template)
))

If I paste in the following lines:
#+BEGIN: columnview :id ID_20200209_120000 :match "/TODO|DONE" :format "%ITEM(What) %TAGS(Who) %DEADLINE(When) %TODO(State)"
#+END:

after I have captured the meeting everything works and when I press C-c C-c in the columnview I get a nice table of tasks, deadlines etc. But, I would really like to add the lines with my capture template.

Any ideas?

kind regards, Agnar

Answer 1

So, my problem was escaping '%' in the org-mode template above. This should be done using '\\' after '%'. Like this: %\\. The correct syntax for the lines under *Actions: above is now:

#+BEGIN: columnview :id ID%<%Y%m%d-%H%M%S> :match \"/TODO|DONE\" :format \"%\\ITEM(What) %\\TAGS(Who) %\\DEADLINE(When) %\\TODO(State)\"
#+END: