outgoing Emails not Recorded?

[Rachel_Young]

Question:  guido » Sat Mar 20, 2010 2:11 am

I don't know if this qualifies as a bug, because you may have intended it. However, if a user wants all emails to a contact to be recorded, you must only email using the "Email Menu" in the top nav bar. If you don’t, then the email is not recorded in the Contact Notes.

If you click on the button next to the contact’s email address (as would seem logical), you will indeed send that contact an email – but it will NOT be recorded as a message in the Notes Log. 

To avoid this problem of emails to business contacts not being recorded as part of the "Notes" log, I copied the script from the “Email Menu” button, and replaced the script on the “Email + icon” next to the contact’s email address on the layout. (This script goes to Starting Point’s email sending program, as opposed to the original button on the icon, which opens your email program and allows you to send unrecorded emails--although I don't know why you would want to do that.)

---------------------------

 

Hi there guido,

Always nice to have your helpful feedback on the forum. You are correct in assuming that we did indeed intend to make this "email hyperlink" work without logging the email. The intention here was to be able to quickly hit a button to email one particular contact without going through a prebuilt form of some sort in the Email Menu.

I believe there might be some confusion to how the Email Menu is functioning. So, please allow me to lay out the groundwork for what is going on here... The Email Menu is meant for the easy email blasting to a found set of contact records from prebuilt form emails (using those replaceable merge brackets as well if you choose). After sending, an Note Log record is created that stores the actual text that was sent to the Contact. Not only can you send to the current found set of records, but you can also send to just the current Contact you are viewing as well (same functionality works for the current record).

So, the problem with trying to log an email for tracking after hitting the "email hyperlink" text is that FileMaker does not know if you ever send the email or what the email says. We could possibly rig this with a script trigger that would create an empty Note Log with "Outbound Email" as the Type with no text, but that is not worth very much for tracking purposes and not reliable because there is no way of knowing if the email sent out or if the user canceled.

So, to sum the issue up, I can see how this would be a nice to have. At the same time, I am pointing out the fact that you would end up with a potentially flawed function. 

Thanks again for the feedback. We do appreciate it. This will go on the queue of potential improvements, but no telling if it will make the final cut. 

Take care,

Jonathan Ray
--------------------------------

 

Jay & Guido,

You could always use a plugin...like the Productive Computing plugin that allows you to sync your database to your Entourage or Outlook. This would allow outbound and inbound emails to be processed into FMP automatically. However that capability it not planned for FM Starting Point. 

The Core 2 CRM...similar in some ways to FMSP, is about $500 (depending upon the license) and I think it has this ability built in. We haven't personally used Core 2...too much, so we can't say much about this...other than it exists, and it is supposed to work.

Fundamentally, FM Starting Point...is a starting point for people to build a customized solution for their business. It's not intended to be "FM Totally Complete"  LOL.

- Thanks again for all the comments Guido!!! We appreciate the ideas and feedback!! - Richard