CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I wondered about integration between email and CiviCRM. I read the book/manual and found it a good guide. One thing stood out for me:

"Simple or insignificant emails that don't need to be viewed by others in your organisation shouldn't be sent through CiviCRM. Emails that you want to share with other members of your team should be sent through CiviCRM.  If you are also interested in capturing statistics about the success of your email, including bounce statistics and click-throughs, use CiviMail.

"CiviMail requires more work initially to configure and there are more steps involved in sending each email. "
http://en.flossmanuals.net/CiviCRM/PlanningEmailCommunication

In fact this is a big weakness in my opinion. We currently use Goldmine and the big plus of Goldmine is that it seemlessly integrates all email into the CRM. That means all email is stored in the history records of the CRM - including Incoming and Outgoing messages. This is why we use it - it means less back and forth pupdating or syncing between an contact address book in an email client and the database in the CRM. I find Goldmine problematic in other ways and would love an open-source, NGO oriented solution that delivers the same kind of functionality.

Is there any chance that fuller email functionality (rather than just outgoing and bounce processing) would ever be worked into CiviCRM. I know it is something they have done recently at ZohoCRM. Any thoughts or guidance on this would be appreciated!

Best wishes,
Peter Chowla

Might want to check and investigate http://roundcube.net/

seems like there have been some integration points between that and drupal/civicrm in the past. might be worth pursuing this further

lobo