Email attached to contact

alda06

Hello, I have a problem/suggestion with the email attachement.
I am using an IMAP email with a "sent" folder for the sent emails.
The problem is that if I archive a message by pressing the archive button, it is moved from my sent folder to the epesi sent archive. So I do not have it any more in the sent folder which is a problem if I check the mail from outlook.
Would it be possible that the message would be copied to the epesi archive instead of being removed from the sent folder. Or maybe to scan the "sent" folder to find the emails that can be attached to the contacts without moving them to the archive ?

Thanks and congratulations for the program !

ethnar

Hello,

Messages are being moved to respective folder to avoid archiving the same message twice and as such simple copy wouldn't be really needed.

But to answer your question: all your e-mails should still be available using Outlook, even after they are archived. In Outlook, you should also see the Archives that epesi creates (it's all done on the mail account) and all the e-mails you archived should be accessible from there.
Please double-check and tell us if you can't see the messages in Outlook at all.

Simply refresh your IMAP folders in Outlook and make sure that both epesi Archive folders are marked for synchronization.

Kind regards,
Arek

alda06

Thank you for your message Ethnar,

You are right, the message are moved to the archive and visible in outlook.
The only thing is that I have some messages in the "sent" folder and some in the epesi archive so it is a little bit of a mess since I will have to check in each folder each time I am looking for a message.
I would prefer to have 2 copies of the message sent or archived through EPESI and not have to look in each folder to find my messages.
Is it possible ?
Thanks again for your help !

Alex

krzyko

Maybe avoiding archived message duplication could be possible on the message headers level. From the user perspective I don't find moving emails between folders as the most convenient thing. I suspect that some users may even avoid email registration in epesi just "because it messes with my emails". But then, CRM without email tracking is much less useful.

So maybe it would be possible to compare message headers (for example date field and all the headers when date matches) to determine if message to be archived wasn't archived earlier?

jasiek

Hello,

The method of archiving e-mails in epesi will change in the upcoming release (1.3). However the basic principle remains the same.

When e-mail comes to an individual mailbox of the user (Roundcube client) it is not connected in any way to any records in epesi. You can delete it, forward, reply to it - the way you normally do in any mail client. If the e-mail message is to be kept in the history of the particular contact in epesi (Contact or Company) then you need to archive it:

What happens in the background:
- e-mail message is extracted from the mailbox and stored in epesi as on object (text message is stored in the database with links to atachments stored as files)
- e-mail message is moved to Epesi Archive folder (in case you want to do something with it in any IMAP e-mail client)
- e-mail addresses: From, To, CC - are scanned against CRM Contacts in CRM Companies in epesi and links to all matching e-mails/contacts are created for this archives e-mail

Please note that this is a true single instance of the e-mail object - the e-mail message is stored as an independent object with reference links created under all Contacts/Companies for which e-mail match is found.

When sending e-mail from within epesi - Roundcube IMAP client - you can toggle (by clicking on the Archive icon) if the sent message is to be archived the same way or not (simple send). We decided to separate Epesi Archive and Epesi Archive Sent to make it easy for the user to see what was received and what was sent. Your idea of combining these two folders will make this distinction impossible. Maybe in the future version we will let the user control (via User's Settings), where incoming and outgoing messages will be archived. Unfortunately this is a low priority item on our list.

As far as scanning the message header or message ID goes - yes, this is an interesting idea and we thought about it as well. First - it would prevent archiving messages that were already archived. This would go even further: imagine that 2 epesi users received the same e-mail message from someone. If user A already archived an e-mail then when user B is trying to archive the same e-mail (which will create a duplicate entry in e-mail history), he/she will receive a warning, that this e-mail was already archived. Secondly - if we can track e-mails by message ID we could introduce threaded view.

RE: your comments about IMAP folders: Sent vs. Epesi Sent Archive: both folders, being IMAP folders, are visible in any IMAP compatible e-mail clients (including MS Outlook). Here again the distinction is: Sent - is the folder that was sent without archiving in epesi, Epesi Sent Archive - is the folder that holds e-mails that were sent and archived in epesi:

In epesi version 1.3 the process of archiving e-mail works the same way in every folder.

Thank you for your valuable input. We will try to incorporate this idea in the future version of epesi.

axilon

I just finished setting up Epesi and I must say, a very nice piece of software. Keep up the good work.

I was wondering how I could link incomming and outgoing e-mails to certain contacts, when I found this thread.

Do I understand correctly that, when the archive button is pressed, an e-mail message is automatically linked to a certain contact when the to/from address matches this contact ?
But what happens if there is no match ? Is it not possible to manually link a message to a contact ?

If so, may I suggest to implement such feature ?
That would help my situation so much. For my customers, I communicate alot with 3rd parties and I would love to add those messages to their records.

Is there an alternative way for now ?

ethnar

Hello and welcome to the forums,

When you click the archive button two things happen:
1. The e-mail is attached to your own contact and it will be displayed in the addon.
2. A search is performed to find matching contacts/companies to the sender/receiver (depends if it's incoming/outgoing mail) e-mail address and if a match is found, e-mail is also attached under that record

What you can do from here on is to check out that e-mail under your contact and you can find that in the row for that record there is a "Copy" button in the actions section. After clicking that button, you can go to any other record with e-mails addon (also including other types, like Tasks, etc.) and after switching to that addon, you can click the "Paste e-mail" button on the ActionBar. This will create a reference to the e-mail and it will be visible in the addon for the currently displayed record.

So it all should be possible already. 🙂

Hope this helps,
Arek

axilon

Thanks Arek,

I hadnt noticed that the mails were also archived in my companies email-tab.

The copy/paste worked, my messages are now linked to other contacts too.

Awesome

jasiek

Axilon,

The proper way to do it:
- keep one Tab open in your browser with EPESI Contacts
- keep the second Tab with EPESI/Roundcube e-mail client

When reading e-mail and trying to archive the message switch to contact to which you want to attach e-mail. See if the e-mail address exists for this contact. Update it if necessary. Then switch to Roundcube and perform Archive action.

Of course there may be more than one TO or CC contacts and if you want to store a link to all these contacts you need to inspect all of them.

Another problem you may encounter is that the same person (or business) uses more than one e-mail address - in that case in Contacts use e-mail addresses tab and enter as many additional addresses as you want. Please note that EPESI checks if this address belongs to another contact already - it simply must be unique and linked to only one contact.

The scenario described by Arek of course is valid as well - if you fail to check your contacts for valid e-mail addresses and archive e-mail anyway, which will store the e-mail message at least under your contact - then you can create a contact or update the e-mail address later and manually link e-mail this way.

Few more notes:
- we don't auto-create contact from e-mail address only (even though this would be possible programatically, but the result will be a Contacts database with a lot of junk as you can imagine)
- you can link e-mail messages to any recordset - like meetings, tasks, tickets. Use "Attach e-mails under custom record sets" feature under Admin tools to do it.

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