Hi muser,

Yes, the helpfile is a little out-of-date.  We've been updating it recently and our goal is to provide a lot more conceptual information, rather than just the plain facts.  Here's a link to the updated Email Templtaes page on the on-line helpfile.  It's not complete yet, and it's been authored for the upcoming v9.1 release.

http://www.helpmasterpro....plate%20overview.htm

Your planned workflow sounds great.  In fact, we use almost an identical one here.  Anyone who has logged a support job here at PRD Software has probably received a "Did that fix your issue" email from us.  We use the same technique.

Basically,

1. Log jobs with well-defined system codes
2. When we send what we think to be the resolution to an issue to a client, we change the job status of the job to "Client : Resolution provided".  The resolution is usually sent via an action template, so this status change is automatic.
3. We've created a Priority Manager profile to look for all jobs in this job status that have not been actioned for 2 days.  This profile will do the following things...
   1. Sent an email (coming from an Email template) to the primary client for that job  that will ask them to provide confirmation, or the job will be automatically closed.
   2. The status of the job will be changed to "Client : awaiting final confirmation"
4. Another Priority Manager profile will then target jobs in that status that have not been actioned for 2 days. (ie. no response from client).  This profile will do the following...
   1. Send another email (via email template) to the primary client saying that we didn't receive a response, so we've closed the job.
   2. Close the job

It's a great system and it works really well.  Not only does it keep everyone informed, it also provides a firm, but fair system for monitoring and managing job queues.

This system can be set up to be global (ie, only targetting job status), or refined further to target certain job queues, clients, or other factors.

Regarding the Email templates (new name for correspondence templates), the "Type" drop-down is simply a classification.  By itself, it doesn't have any special use or properties.  As mentioned in the helpfile link, it can provide a means to filter searching, but that's about it.

Here at PRD, we make use the "Complete", "Introduction" and "Conclusion" classifications whenever we have email template "stubs", or partial templates.  We use them to identify common intros, common conclusions etc.  Once you get into serious email response management via the Email Manager, having this ability to classify and quickly find email templates is very handy.

Hope this helps

Rod

p.s.  I'll start a new thread on how points are awarded.