Author Topic: Will CiviCRM track reply emails? (Read 2629 times)

ancientwizard · March 31, 2009, 09:00:41 am

I'm using CiviCRM 2.0.7

I don't need the full featured email blast, campaign, etc of CiviMail module yet.

I'm sending emails to contacts through CiviCRM directly and they show as activities on the contact's record. This is good.
When they reply, I'm not finding any way to capture/show the return email. As a result, the communication history that my CiviCRM configuration is showing is one-sided. Only the outgoing mail is captured.

Is this a limitation of CiviCRM or am I missing some obvious important way of using it. Or a workaround?

Also, related ... is there any way to track or provide an openable link to pdf or other documents sent to a CiviCRM contact?

Thanks

Michał Mach · March 31, 2009, 10:09:39 am

Jack,

CiviCRM doesn't allow tracking replies/clickthroughs if CiviMail isn't used. You might want to experiment with Email2Activity script (http://svn.civicrm.org/civicrm/trunk/bin/Email2Activity.php) which puts in incoming messages into CiviCRM database as activities and tweak it to your needs - my guess is that some patching on CiviCRM side as well might be needed to achieve functionality you want.

As for openable link in pdf or other documents - again, not without CiviMail, and even using this module you would probably have to do some customisations to have the link trackable in pdf.

If you have skills/resources to work on above functionality, your contribution would be most welcome.

Thx,
m

ancientwizard · March 31, 2009, 11:17:03 am

Thanks for the quick response!!

Ok, so maybe CiviCRM will be necessary.

People seem to have different language around what "track" emails and replies means.

1) I am hoping to actually capture the entire email exchange as a thread in an individual contact's record somewhere.
Email2Activity (if I understand captures the responses as activities. Is this script necessary if I use CiviMail or just as an add-on to CiviCRM?

2) Does CiviMail actually capture responses and store them somewhere that is linked to the individual contact communicating or just accumulate some kind of "tracking' count of read and clickthru for statistical purposes?

3) Does CiviMail allow normal email communication with just one individual or is it only for blast style mailings to large categories of constituents?

4) Finally, the link above to the email2activity script lists it for CiviCRM 2.2. Will this work as-is with CiviCRM 2.0.7?

Michał Mach · March 31, 2009, 11:45:46 am

Hey,

Quote from: Jack Spivak on March 31, 2009, 11:17:03 am

1) I am hoping to actually capture the entire email exchange as a thread in an individual contact's record somewhere.
Email2Activity (if I understand captures the responses as activities. Is this script necessary if I use CiviMail or just as an add-on to CiviCRM?

Unfortunately CiviMail will not capture email exchange as a thread. Your best approach is probably extend a) CiviCRM to "mark" emails so that they are identifiable b) Email2Activity to recognise the marking.

Quote from: Jack Spivak on March 31, 2009, 11:17:03 am

2) Does CiviMail actually capture responses and store them somewhere that is linked to the individual contact communicating or just accumulate some kind of "tracking' count of read and clickthru for statistical purposes?

Out of the box CiviMail allows you to either auto-reply to responses or forward them to FROM address for the mailing. Potentially, you could process them the way you want, but if the conversation continues, there is a problem. It also tracks the counts of read and clickthrough. :-)

Quote from: Jack Spivak on March 31, 2009, 11:17:03 am

3) Does CiviMail allow normal email communication with just one individual or is it only for blast style mailings to large categories of constituents?

The latter.

Quote from: Jack Spivak on March 31, 2009, 11:17:03 am

4) Finally, the link above to the email2activity script lists it for CiviCRM 2.2. Will this work as-is with CiviCRM 2.0.7?

Email2Activity has been built for CiviCRM 2.1 and extended in 2.2, so will probably not work without at least some customisations with 2.0.7. In general, we advice to stay with the latest version, so I encourage you to upgrade to 2.2. It has a lot of neat new features. :-)

Thx,
m

ancientwizard · April 01, 2009, 01:59:42 pm

Thanks so much for your complete answers.

This gives me a really good picture of at least what I'm up against.

I would love to upgrade to 2.2, but for now I am married to Drupal 5.x.

I am considering using CiviCRM as a standalone solution, but if it doesnt integrate directly with Drupal, then there are quite a few competing solutions out there that may be more fully featured. I am also considering salesforce since they have an inexpensive or free version for nonprofits.

My preference would be to stick with and contribute to developing CiviCRM (because I think it is such a great idea ... and opensource), right now, I don't have the resources or expertise to make that happen.

I may also stick with it and scale down my expectations ...

Michał Mach · April 02, 2009, 05:31:34 am

Good luck and let us know about further developments. :-)

Thx,
m

jason mark · October 14, 2010, 06:31:08 am

Has there been any updates to this in the past year? I have a client who's going with a commercial .NET software specifically because it tracks every email communication to or from his client, and I'd love to bring him over from the dark side, but it has to WORK and be stable. He's not the sort of guy that would put up with it being down for a couple of weeks if something got patched around it if you know what I mean.

Michał Mach · October 18, 2010, 02:55:06 am

Jason,

If it comes to the core, we still don't have possibility to track email exchange threads with contacts, however, Email2Activity scripts got improved a lot and used in many deployments. I think I heard about people who implemented quite robust email handling in CiviCRM, but that's a customisation and didn't get to the core yet. You might want to ask around on forums, maybe someone will share their experience.

Thx,
m

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Author Topic: Will CiviCRM track reply emails? (Read 2629 times)

ancientwizard

Will CiviCRM track reply emails?

Michał Mach

Re: Will CiviCRM track reply emails?

ancientwizard

Re: Will CiviCRM track reply emails?

Michał Mach

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ancientwizard

Re: Will CiviCRM track reply emails?

Michał Mach

Re: Will CiviCRM track reply emails?

jason mark

Re: Will CiviCRM track reply emails?

Michał Mach

Re: Will CiviCRM track reply emails?