Author Topic: Handling incoming emails better in CiviCRM (Read 1789 times)

xavier · February 15, 2013, 02:34:56 am

Hi,

One on our client uses otrs to process incoming emails. the existing feature in civicrm has two roadblocks to be used in that context.
1) if you get spam, you get crap contacts polluting the database
2) it's hard to see if the email has been replied to
3) it's hard to reply to the email directly, eg using a mail template

The envisaged workflow would be
1) see the list of emails BEFORE they are processed and added to civicrm
2) be able to delete some directly (eg. spam)
3) be able to see the email, read it and reply. When the reply is sent, it automatically store the incoming email, contact (if doesn't exist) and reply

For what we have seen, the incoming emails generate duplicates (based on your rules), so it might be better to provide a list of contacts to choose from before creating the email. It might as well be interesting before the reply to be able to access the record of this contact (eg to check if he's a member/donor/one that complains often...)

We have some budget to develop this feature, but I'm wondering how you do it, if you see missing features...

FrTommy · February 15, 2013, 04:01:28 pm

Would it not be better to take an open source email client and develop it to work with Civi completely integrated so that emails get incorporated into Civi silently as the person receives/sends emails. The email client would use CiviContacts as the address book and if a contact didn't exist then you create one and it automatically creates the contact within Civi.

Civi shouldn't add the emails until after the client has processed them so the user could delete, mark as spam, etc any emails (do any processing that needs to happen and replying to). Once that is done then the client could trigger the cron job to import the emails as activities and would also pull the replies as well.

that seems like a much better option to me.

Donald Lobo · February 15, 2013, 05:18:30 pm

+1

last time we checked, roundmail was a good option

on the flip side, getting folks to switch their email client is a task of herculean proportion, IMO

lobo

FrTommy · February 15, 2013, 07:51:17 pm

i think you meant http://roundcube.net/

looks like a great option since it's webbased it'd be easy to package with civi. I don't think getting people to switch to the email client would be that difficult if it integrated seamlessly with their CRM solution.

what would be totally awesome is if the email client actually became the Dashboard for a user. It'd show emails that needed replied to, upcoming activities assigned to that user and would allow the user to work their "email and activity queue". Could customize the contact windows to include the information from the CiviContact and allow updating and creating new contacts.

Bascially it would show any item for that user that needed attention (unread/unreplied email, activities assigned, case activities that needed worked, etc.) all from one screen.

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Author Topic: Handling incoming emails better in CiviCRM (Read 1789 times)

xavier

Handling incoming emails better in CiviCRM

FrTommy

Re: Handling incoming emails better in CiviCRM

Donald Lobo

Re: Handling incoming emails better in CiviCRM

FrTommy

Re: Handling incoming emails better in CiviCRM