An interesting thing happened this morning with our own implementation of the Email Manager. As you know, when you send an email to the HelpMaster Pro helpdesk, our implementation of the Email Manager scans the email, logs a job and sends an email back to you.
However, for those people also the HelpMaster Pro Email Manager, our email may also be processed by your helpdesk, logged and an email gets sent back to us.
Then our Email Manger scans the email.....
...get the picture?
The key to making all of this work well and not to create an automated chaotic mess where endless loops of email are bouncing back and forth between helpdesks and clients, you may find the following ideas helpful.
1. When sending outgoing email, use a specific phrase that identifies your helpdesk in your email subject.
eg. PRD Software helpdesk. Job #230983
2. Use the Email Manager filters to explicitly look for those specific words in the subject. ie. In the example above, look for the words "PRD Software"
3. Use "staging" folders in your email inbox. The Email Manager can scan any folder, not just the inbox. You might like to implement an email manager profile to move email into different folders before another profile logs the jobs. Implementing different folders for different types of jobs allows you to combine a manual, human vetting process, with the power of job-logging automation.
For example. Your inbox may get lots of different requests for help. Rather than creating all sorts of complex Email Manager filter rules to scan and process these, you could manually sift through the email and drag 'n drop the email into different sub-folders of the inbox that are the target of a specific Email Manager profile.
I'm always surprised to see the different ways different sites configure and use HelpMaster Pro, especially some of the automated tools such as the Email Manager and Priority Manager. There's a lot of power in these products and with a bit of careful planning, they can really add a boost to your helpdesk efficiency.