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OpenNTF Mail Template - Feature Request: Feature merge: Smart Folders, Follow-up, Custom Colors -- Feedback DEMANDED!


So I've been looking at several feature requests/enhancements and tinkering with wrapping them up into a single feature set. My working title is "Filing Rules."

Today, we're all fairly familiar with the idea of Mail Rules -- conditional instructions for the router to take for automatic processing of inbound mail. Obviously, this makes for an easy and convenient way of processing high priority messages, certain subjects, messages from certain people and even spam.

But what about common tasks performed by *users* on their own mail? QuickStuff has turned out to be a great feature set precisely because so many users conduct 80% of their communication with a small set of people. Following that logic, I'm thinking that we probably *handle* 80% of our email in only 5 or 6 different ways.

"Mark for Follow-up" is a good precursor to this idea. You get an email from someone, you know you need to take action on it. You schedule a follow-up reminder, the system lets you know. This gets it in and out of your inbox in no time.

However, it doesn't take into account what kind of follow-up you need. Nor is it smart enough to recognize that you tend to schedule your follow-up for the day after tomorrow 90% of the time. That's where Filing Rules come in.

Picture a dialog that prompts the user for a simultaneous list of actions from the user. Would you like to convert the message into a To-Do item? Set a follow-up reminder date? File into a folder? Flag with a different color? Forward to another user? Run an agent?

Let's say you decide you want to set this to a To-Do, due 3 days from now, color coded bright blue on grey background, and automatically filed in the "Sales Calls" folder. You set all those actions to take place in this one dialog, and you see a button at the bottom that says "Save Rule..."

You click Save Rule, and are prompted for a name. You type "Sales Inquiry Calls." You hit OK. The document is handled according to your request, automatically filed in the folder, turned into a To-Do (without bring up the UI -- it's ALL backend), scheduled for follow-up, etc.

The next day, you see another message in your inbox. You select it and click on "SmartFile." At the top of the dialog, you see a combo box that says "Handle according to rule: " and includes yesterday's new "Sales Inquiry Calls" rule. You select it, click OK, and you're done!

Also on the combobox is "Custom..." which exposes all the settings you had at your disposal with the first filing. So if you want to handle this one inquiry a little differently, you can specific conditions specifically for it.

In some sense, it's like a macro, since it's just batch-handling a set of processes you'd otherwise handle yourself. But by doing it this way, we can build hooks for corporate users to build their own "Filing Plug-ins" that just run arbitrary agent code on the pertinent document. We can simplify all the stuff we want to do with custom colors and more intelligent folders. (Did I mention once you specify a rule, you can link it to a folder, so messages added to that folder will automatically have that rule applied? *grin*)

I can't think of anything that has so much user process handling. It's no secret that many of us work with our mail this way. Why not make it easier and smarter?

Again, feedback is *SORELY* needed. And I'll put up a screenie of the dialog I'm talking about in the next few days.

Reference feature requests...

http://www.oppenntf.org/projects/pmt.nsf/960ca34874372ffc85256bad0001f0d8/49f7b105424d413888256c7c006415ad!OpenDocument
http://www.oppenntf.org/projects/pmt.nsf/960ca34874372ffc85256bad0001f0d8/47e825b745c1ed8088256c790059a645!OpenDocument
http://www.oppenntf.org/projects/pmt.nsf/960ca34874372ffc85256bad0001f0d8/82bf628f850394e088256c790056bff3!OpenDocument
http://www.openntf.org/projects/pmt.nsf/960ca34874372ffc85256bad0001f0d8/e0f73c53475aa6a788256c72001d6825!OpenDocument



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