Incoming Mail Module

Create new tickets and discussions by sending emails to activeCollab, or post comments by replying to notifications sent by your favorite project management and collaboration tool. Coming soon!

This is the second module that was given to beta testers a couple of days ago (first one is Invoicing) and I dare to say that this is the one of the most important features added to activeCollab since it was created.

The reason why this module is so significant is that email is the most important communication tool that people use online. No matter how smart project management and collaboration applications are trying to be, people will always tend to use the tools that they are most comfortable with - and that usually means “email”.

How many times did your client replied to an email notification sent by activeCollab or sent an email directly to you, even though you agreed that you’ll use activeCollab for all project related communication? How many times your clients or even your employees simply did not use the tool because the email was more convenient to them?

Incoming Mail module is designed to address these issues and to significantly increase activeCollab adoption rate in your company and among your clients. By using this module, activeCollab can check any number of POP3 and IMAP mail servers to read the email messages.

When an email is received, the system checks whether the message is a reply to a notification sent by activeCollab or it’s a new message:

  1. If it is reply, the system will use the message and post its content as a comment to the object that the notification is referring to (a ticket, discussion, file etc);
  2. If message is not a reply, then the system will use it to create a new discussion or ticket in a project that you set to receive objects created from e-mail messages.

Message attachments are automatically imported and attached to comments, discussions and tickets:

 

On top of that, the system offers two additional tools. The first is the mailbox management tool with detailed activity log:


The second is a conflict resolution tool. Instead of simply ignoring the message that system can’t handle automatically, it will import it and let the administrators to decide what to do with the message.

Incoming Mail module is scheduled for release as part of activeCollab 1.2 (no ETA, sorry), including both Small Biz and Corporate edition.

Posted on: 2008-12-22 2:21

Comments

avatar ebatte 2008-12-22 12:38 #1
nice!
avatar izooxman 2008-12-22 12:44 #2
I have been on the beta list for a while and was not notified, I wish I could help out testing these modules. I heavily use activecollab and feel that I could contribute some valuable information.
avatar mel 2008-12-22 12:45 #3
this will be one of the best things to come out of activecollab.

and yes, customers ALWAYS hit the reply button no matter how many times you tell them to use activecollab.

this is one feature that rival basecamp has which is so useful. can’t wait for it to be released!

avatar Ilija Studen 2008-12-22 12:59 #4
@izooxman:

We are keeping initial group of testers as small as possible so we can support them properly. No matter how much time we put in testing, all new modules have some awkward bugs. As modules stabilize we’ll bring more people aboard and give them access to test versions of these modules. I really cannot promise that everyone who applied for beta test will get access, but we’ll see to get as much people involved as possible.
avatar Milos 2008-12-22 8:06 #5
I look forward to this module! We currently have a bit of a problem as users get emails about things happening in aC and they think that they can just email back.

You say:

By using this module, activeCollab can check any number of POP3 and IMAP mail servers to read the email messages.

Does this mean that we will be able to send out emails using different mail servers for each action? This would come in handy in a number of situations. For example; setup ticket comments to be sent using one email account, therefore you can setup the incoming mail module just to listen to that one account. Where as all other emails are sent from other emails therefore if replied to the emails won’t end up getting into aC.

Just a thought. Could be explained better, but I’m sure you can understand where I’m coming from.
avatar Ilija Studen 2008-12-23 3:08 #6
@Milos:

System supports multiple incoming mail servers (POP3 or IMAP), but still uses only one outgoing server. With multiple incoming mail servers, you can have system check support@company.com, sales@company.com, projects@company.com etc addresses and submit messages to different projects.

Incoming mail “knows” which object sent notification, so there is no need to set up a separate outgoing servers.
avatar Apps Magnet - Nirav Mehta 2008-12-23 6:29 #7
I like the second part of conflict handling! FogBugz has a great email handling system that does something similar. It even learns as you keep handling conflicted / unidentified emails. Would be great to have aC system auto learn!

Looking forward to this feature!
avatar Ilija Studen 2008-12-23 10:42 #8
From what I’ve read, FogBugz automatically sorts messages into categories (projects?) and learns from your previous choices. Incoming Module currently does not have that.

Conflict resolution tool is for situations when, for instance, person sends email from email address that is not used by any user in the system to mailbox that does not allow anonymous posts. In situations like that message is held for moderation and administrator needs to decide what to do.
avatar Apps Magnet - Nirav Mehta 2008-12-23 10:35 #9
Oh, I see. I misunderstood conflict resolution then. If it’s not too much of work – you can add a checkbox to handle a conflict automatically next time – using your current conflict resolution action. :-)

On the FogBugz topic, they have a lot of neat features for estimation and schedule predictability. Even DevShop has a nice take on estimation errors and schedule confidence.
avatar Jim Morrison 2008-12-29 11:38 #10
Hi Ilija,

We currently run a catch-all esque system where by each client has {PROJECTNAME}@our-support-domain.com

All the email goes to the same place but it then gets distributed to the right label/person (Thanks Gmail!)

Will AC be able to identify the correct project by looking at the “To:”, “CC:” headers for ‘new’ tickets? I may have misread but I can’t quite see from your post above how posting the email to the correct project is achieved.

Obviously I understand that replying to a mail generated by active collab is a different thing and much simpler to re-thread…

Thanks, sounds very exciting!!
avatar Navneet 2009-01-04 9:18 #11
Also will there be a 1.1.6 version or 1.2 is what will be released next?
avatar Ilija Studen 2009-01-04 9:34 #12
@Jim Morrison: Currently module puts all new tickets into single project you select when you define POP3/IMAP mailbox. We’ll see how this system will evolve from there based on the feedback.

@navneetk: Whichever comes first. Both 1.2 and 1.1 branch will be maintained – 1.2 as primary branch, and 1.1 as legacy branch (no new features, just bug fix releases) for people who did not upgrade to 1.2. Both versions are being developed in parallel.
avatar CWW 2009-01-08 8:01 #13
This is one feature my projects indefinitely need! Thank you for including it in your plans.
avatar Jon 2009-01-09 1:59 #14
This will be a very welcome addition to activeCollab! Will 1.2 be a free upgrade?
avatar Ilija Studen 2009-01-09 3:20 #15
@Jon:

activeCollab 1.2 is a new branch and will be free to everyone who have active Upgrade and Support plan. If your plan expired and you haven’t renewed it, you’ll need to renew it for another year to get access to this upgrade. Renewal is $99 for Small Biz and $199 for Corporate version for another year.

Read more about Upgrade and Support subscription here: Upgrade and Support Subscription.
avatar Jon 2009-01-09 3:53 #16
@Ilija Studen: I should have paid more attention to the pricing structure! Sorry about that but thanks for the quick response!
avatar James 2009-01-17 6:45 #17
It would be really sweet if we could also customize the look / feel of outgoing emails generated from the system.

So we could essentially send out “branded” emails from the system.
avatar Ilija Studen 2009-01-18 2:38 #18
@James:

You already can do that. In Administration > Email Templates you have a tool that lets you change how all emails sent by the system are constructed. Code is HTML so you can make it any way you want – use a layout with sidebar, header and footer, change the fonts and colors etc.

If you are interested, you can find a lot of useful information about creating and styling HTML emails in Tips & Resources section of Campaign Monitor website. CM is also a great service so you can check it out if you need to send out newsletters etc.
avatar msxxx78 2009-01-23 2:32 #19
A great feature would be if you could also define emails to projects/milestones … meaning if a customer sends an email to e.g. projects@ac.com you could set up to which project goes to based on the From email. This means that all customers could send all mails to a same email address and aC would be able to sort them correctly.
avatar tekt 2009-01-25 1:15 #20
One of my clients constantly replies to emails from AC as if I emailed him directly—- which is no problem because I have that email address directed to me but at the same time it would be great for those comments to be parsed and entered into the ticket he’s replying to… because I’m losing the documentation of his comments unless a repost them, and others aren’t seeing his responses.

Everytime I get an email from him, I think of this incoming mail module and hope Ilija needs more testers :)

avatar jasonpelker 2009-01-27 10:18 #21
This is a game changer…
avatar Ben Still 2009-01-30 9:11 #22
We use the mail function of JIRA quite a bit – it is very useful to be able to catch emails going back and forth. I’m not sure if you’ve used it, but any email to a specific address creates a ticket. If you include the ticket # in the subject, it is added as a comment.

Based on our JIRA experience, my suggestions would be:
1) a nice feature of JIRA is that any email attachments are attached to the ticket – this has been very useful for us
2) don’t restrict this just to tickets – eg: if the subject line includes some kind of unique reference to a discussion, milestone or page, the email becomes a comment
avatar Ben Still 2009-01-30 9:20 #23
Hi again,
just reread your post and saw the bit on attachments- nice! My only other thought would be to have a regex ignore/block list – some email systems such as notes etc have a habit of attaching unrelated junk- like a vcard or “Part 1.3” (never worked out what that is). It has been useful with JIRA to be able to remove these.

I also neglected to mention how much we’re looking forward to this release- thanks Ilija!
avatar Tim Bertens 2009-02-04 10:02 #24
Hello,

perfect, this is just what we need to get rid of our ‘old’ support system. Once this is in place everything can be run from AC. Looking forward to the release

Tim
avatar Felix Widjaja 2009-02-09 12:18 #25
Hi, I tested the 2.0 beta edition.
And why the mail status is always: “Not Checked” ?

Thanks
avatar Ilija Studen 2009-02-09 12:22 #26
Do you have Scheduled Tasks properly set up and working?

PS: Please post support questions either to the forum or send us a direct message through support section of the website.

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