How to manage Gmail with multiple virtual folders receiving mail

[Golife]

Gmail allows to place email messages into multiple folders while the original message is not touched (present in "All Messages").

 

As there is no way to detect from the message itself in which folder/s it is placed, I have to download all messages from all folders - and then they are duplicated when the same message is present in more than one folder.

 

I could though download all messages in the "all messages" folder and then download just the "messageID" from the virtual folders to generate a many-to-many relationship using the messageID as the key value and creating a link table between folders and messages.

 

I have about 100,000 messages in the "all mail" folder and about 10,000 placed in about 100 such virtual folders which follow a hierarchical concept.

 

Maybe there are better ways?

 

The concept of multiple virtual "folders" where the message itself remains untouched is very very good. But except in Gmail I have not found it anywhere else. Of course in Filemaker managing messages (plus all kinds of other mail, notes, etc. in relation to given tasks and projects, people and ressources) would allow for much more processing power and analysis compared to any other solution on the market which I would be aware of.

 

Nevertheless, I would not replace Gmail for Filemaker, but keep both running, using Filemaker more as the analysis tool.

 

Is there a better way using other identifiers such as the datetime stamp or is there any information somewhere to know about such links to virtual folders? Or is there any related experience from anybody?

 

And one more question: Is there a way to also download the web URL with which each email in Gmail is also identified?

 

My name is Roland and I am from Switzerland still using FM12 (waiting for FM14). My knowledge of Filemaker is intermediate.

 

[Kevin Mullins]

Roland I guess I am not sure exactly what you are doing with your email messages, are you pulling them into Filemaker using a plugin?  Gmail doesn't use folders, instead it is very much like data you would store in a database like filemaker, it uses a filed called label to mark different messages with different labels for filtering into the virtual folders.    In the gmail interface if you look at the top of a message you will see all the labels that are attached to any given message.  Then when you are looking at one of the "folders" on the left what gmail is actually going is presenting you email that matches a filter. When I am in gmail and go to one of my virtual folders this is the search that gmail is actually executing: label:fm-experts.  

 

The issue you will have is if the method you are using to pull in email from gmail to Filemaker exposes the labels to you.  If it does you could then configure to only download messages in All Mail, but then import the label data into a field and have different views based on the values in that field just like gmail does. 

 

Sorry it's not a perfect answer, it all really depends on what info you are getting when you download the messages.  I know the imap protocol sends the label information down, but when I search I see mixed messages as to weather pop3 includes that information.  

 

Kevin

[Josh Ormond]

Kevin,

He is using the 360Works Email plugin. This section of the forum is their official support forum.

[Kevin Mullins]

Thanks Josh I didn't notice that, sorry Roland.

[David_LasVegas]

Roland,

 

I am not sure if this will answer your question, but here you have my 2 cents.

 

I have been using Gmail with FM for several years and here's how my system works.

1) I have set up Gmail to apply several filtering rules classifying incoming emails into different IMAP folders (Labels)

2) I have a table in FM called EmailInboxes, one record per IMAP inbox. Periodically I loop through this table and connect to GMail requesting emails from the corresponding Inbox with an imap ID greater than the last id stored in the table. I download using 360Works IMAP functions and after the succesfull download I mark as read in GMail the downloaded emails and I also store the IMAP id of the last email downloaded.

 

What I love  about using Gmail the most is their powerful and very accurate spam filtering, very rare to find false positives and I don't have to worry about getting garbage into my FM email records. It is a robust and reliable platform and it's free if you use a gmail account. I actually use it with our corporate domain name so we pay a small monthly fee for the service , and I have been very pleased with them for years.

 

I have found IMAP more reliable than POP for downloads. You just need to go to your Gmail settings and enable the IMAP related features.

 

I hope this helps

 

David