Hi,
Yes, we are aware of some tricks that people use to make things more complicated than needed. I don't know why in the world would you like to make a copy of every e-mail sent to some mailbox? What are you going to do with it? How are you going to organize it?
You can use any e-mail client that you want - Outlook (one of the worst as it can barely handle IMAP protocol and often times out), Thunderbird, whatever - including web based e-mail clients like Roundcube. As long as it is IMAP compatible e-mail client you can receive, reply, forward etc. your e-mails. As long as you are using e-mail outside of EPESI you need to somehow organize your e-mails and what people generally do:
- keep everything in your inbox and accumulate thousands of messages in both inbox and sent items folder, or
- create a complex folder hierarchy and move messages there.
None of these solutions is efficient and does not let you share important messages with your coworkers without sending them a copy of it, which just makes unnecessary copies of the same object and someone else must archive it using one of the methods listed above.
Our approach is different - the e-mail you want to keep is archived in EPESI by clicking on "Archive" button. This feature is available only when you use Roundcube within EPESI. But you can still create e-mails or reply to them in whatever e-mail client you want. Once done just open EPESI and archive what is needed. This way the e-mail message is automatically linked to people involved - the archiver, sender, receipients (from TO and CC fields) assuming these contacts already exist in Contacts database. One e-mail message linked to all of these contacts with no overhead. Truly single instance solution. There is no need to invent complicated methods of storing them - like folders structure that only you know and some filters/rules to automatically move e-mails to appropriate folders. In EPESI just open a contact of a person and all e-mail from and to that person will be there. I don't think it can get any simpler that this.
I personally use a combination of Postbox (http://www.postbox-inc.com/) and of course EPESI - Roundcube. After all work is done in Postbox I just go to EPESI and archive what I think is worth saving. I hope this solution will work for you as well.
We have no plans to build a solution to automatically scan some mailbox to autoarchive e-mails - which would be necessary if your approach would be implemented. Please think about consequences: all unfiltered SPAM will end up in the history. We want to keep only important business information - not junk - and every e-mail message must be read, inspected and archived if needed individually. No algorithm can do that.
E-mail is dead. Read this: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2397829,00.asp
Funny stats: http://www.visiblegains.com/is-email-dead/
Internally you don't need to use e-mail at all. All info that you need to pass on to your coworkers can be saved in a form of a task, meeting, ticket, note etc. in EPESI. External communication with your customers need to happen via e-mail - I am fully aware of it - this is why we have EPESI e-mail archive plugin in Roundcube. Nothing more is needed.
