Creating a profile to add an action to an existing job
A powerful feature of the Email Manager is its ability to update an
existing HelpMaster job with the contents of an incoming email.
By default, the Email Manager will only update jobs if the incoming email
belongs to one of the clients linked in the job.
All updates to existing jobs are performed by applying the contents of an
Action
Template. This ability allows you to implement a high level of
email management automation at your workplace. In effect, you can send
email to your clients - they can respond to it - and the Email Manager
will automatically scan the email and update the appropriate HelpMaster job.
Furthermore, because an Action Template has the ability to send email, your
client can also receive further email relevant to their issue.
In order to do be able to apply an action template to an existing job, the
following conditions must be met.
- The incoming email must contain the job number somewhere in the subject
field. This is so the Email Manager know which job to update.
- The incoming email must contain a phrase, or word that immediately
precedes the job number. This is how the Email Manager can recognize
where the job number appears within the subject of the email
- The job number that is contained in the incoming email must be a valid
HelpMaster job
- The sender of the email must be a person that is either the Primary
Client of the job, or linked to the job as an additional client. This
rule can be over-ridden to allow all updates - contact PRD Software for
details.
Use
- In the Email Manager Profiles Administration screen, click
New.
- Click Add to select a Mailbox folder to scan.
- Choose the Mailbox folder this profile will scan, and click
Select.
- Click Next to go to the next step,
Specify Filter Criteria.
- Follow the procedure below.
Explanation of each step
Step 1 : Specify how to recognize the HelpMaster Job number that the
action will be added to
Before the Email Manager can update an existing job by applying an Action
Template to it, it needs to determine which job the incoming email is
associated with. The way the Email Manager does this is by scanning the
subject field of the incoming email for a valid HelpMaster job number.
It recognizes the job number by looking for specific text that will appear
directly before the HelpMaster job number.
Once it finds this text within the subject of an email, it will assume that
any numeric text following it will be the job number. As
a general best-practice, it is common to include the job number in every
out-going email that your workplace sends. Not only will this allow
you to use the Email Manager to update a job, but it also gives your clients
their personal job number for future reference. HelpMaster makes this
easy via the use of Email templates Tags.
The screens shots below depict how this is achieved. For further
information on this, refer to
Email Manager Tips and
Tricks
Step 2 : Specify the HelpMaster "Action Template" that will be used
to update the job
Choose from the list the
Action Template that you wish to use to update the job. Note :
this list will only be populated with "Email Manager Publicly Available"
action templates. Remember that an Action Template also has the
ability to send email once it has been applied. This is useful if you
wish to send an email back to your client informing them that their job has
just been updated.
Step 3 : Specify which part of the email to add to the action details
(This step is optional)
When the Email Manger updates an existing HelpMaster job with an Action
Template, by default it will include the entire email message as part of the
Action details. In many cases, this may be undesirable due to the fact
that email messages can quickly become quite long after several exchanges
between sender and receiver. When you update a job, you may only want
to include the most recent comment from your client.
Refer to
Text Extraction options for
details about how the Email Manager can extract replies from incoming email.
In order to achieve this type of functionality, you will need to ensure that
your out-going email to clients contain both the top and bottom words within
the outgoing email. The easiest way to do this is to base all
out-going email on a
Email Template
that contains these lines.
- Specify the Attachment options
- Specify the
Post Processing options
- Specify the Email
Account
for any outgoing email
See also
Primary Client of job
Text Extraction options
Creating a profile to log a new job
Profile Global Options
Managing Profiles