AutoFollowup suggestions

[AlexKM]

When you work with email, you send it and receive replies. However, sometime replies are not received in due time. When you issue lot of email daily, it became a pain to track unresponded email.
What I do :
1) I have a some views for my emails with following DASL filter :
("urn:schemas:httpmail:fromemail" LIKE '%my_email%' AND "http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/proptag/0x0e05001f" <> 'Junk Email' AND "http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/proptag/0x0e05001f" <> 'Deleted Items' AND
"urn:schemas:httpmail:messageflag" = 'Follow up' AND "http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/id/{00062003-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}/811C000B" <> 1

When I send email, I set up follow up flag for email. When flag due date is passed it appears in my "overdue" folder.

What I suggest to implement in clear context :
1) Auto-set such flags. On the project basis, or on the per-recipient basis (autolearned). E.g. my CEO is usually answers in 24 hours. If time passed and there is no answer - I have to ping him up. My employees should answer in 12 hours. and so on.
2) When reply is received, automark follow-up flag for messages in this conversation as "Done"

this will bring outlook email to next productivity level.

Of course next big thing is to access google's inbox "snoozed" emails data somehow and put this info to follow-up. However I checked MAPI, but didn't find any tracks of this info there.

The next big thing is to send all emails to the some time.
For example - schedule all emails to be sent on 5PM each day (there is a outlook feature for that : schedule delivery). however, there is no automation. I can't schedule all emails automatically to be delivered on some time. if you guys implement this, it might be a thing,

[ClearContext Support]

Thanks for the feature suggestion. There is currently a task based followup feature in ClearContext already that automatically marks as complete when replies are received. How would you envision your flag based followup feature suggestion fitting in with the currently existing one?

[AlexKM]

Hello, thanks for the suggestion on task. The whole idea is to do this thing automatically.
Outlook way - setup rule to auto task and then manually search for task and mark complete upon reply.
Clearcontext way - send mail, manually search for sent message, automatically mark complete upon reply.

Neither are faster, both involves some manual action.

[d_boo]

Thanks for the feature suggestion. There is currently a task based followup feature in ClearContext already that automatically marks as complete when replies are received. How would you envision your flag based followup feature suggestion fitting in with the currently existing one?

I'm a relatively new CC w/ MYN add-in user. I love the IDEA of the Followup feature, but it works VERY inconsistently. I've tried searching for a troubleshooting thread but haven't found a current one. Some of the problems:

- When the response email comes back, the task is not automatically deleted (this totally defeats the purpose of the feature...so that you alleviate mental stress of having to remember to follow up...in this case, I have to manually delete the tasks...and to do that I sometimes have to dig back and see if someone really did respond or not...total waste of time)

- Sometimes a copy of the email that is sent is attached to the task entry when you make the Followup task AS YOU SEND the email out...but often times it is not. It seems that if you make a Followup task from a closed email (i.e. from a highlighted email in your Inbox) it does always attach...so the error is when you use the "shortcut" of making an email a Followup task at the same time you send out the email...obviously intended to be a shortcut...which when it doesn't work, isn't a short cut at all. Note that I have UNCHECKED the box in "Options" --> "Task/Appts" that says "Do not copy original Message as attachment" since I WANT THE ORIGINAL ATTACHED.

- I often change the title of the Followup task immediately after I send the email (with the Followup made automatically) so that when I review my task list, it's easier to see what the item is about (especially necessary when the email has an irrelevant subject line that you couldn't change for the purposes of your task label because the recipients outside your system are expecting that subject line because it related to a threaded email chain or something like that - where if you change the subject line, it will break the email thread). The most efficient way (I've found) of doing this is to click on "QuickTask" immediately after I send the email with the auto-created Followup task...am I missing a better way? Also, I was wondering if by changing the subject of the Followup task, does that somehow mess up the auto-cancel feature? I don't think it does from my cursory testing...and I would assume the meta-data used for the auto-cancel feature is embedded deeper than just the subject line...but please let me know if I should be doing something different.

- Finally, sometimes I find that (partially due to the issues discussed above) duplicate a task for Followup. For instance, I might auto-create the FU task when I send the email...but then I might also make the email a FU task later when processing the inbox (I don't have the email automatically filed out of my inbox when I send a message because I do MYN and use only categories to file, not projects...because of the limitation of only being able to assign one project...when often my emails may need to show up across multiple "projects")...and then I might have two Followup tasks for the same email. It would be great if CC could at least alert you to the duplicate creation and give you the choice to open up the existing task. Another way I've tried to deal with this is figure out which was the newest MADE task (not the task with the latest Start Date)...but I don't see anywhere where the "date created" is shown.

[ClearContext Support]

We're not hearing of other users having trouble with the auto-cancel or message attachment, so we would recommend trying some general troubleshooting to make sure some other Outlook issue isn't causing the issue. Try the 2 steps in the "first steps" here: troubleshooting-clearcontext-issues-start-here-t1777.html

Auto cancel of the followup may not happen in the following circumstances:
1) The sender changes the subject in a way that causes Outlook to not treat it as the same conversation. This could be changing the actual subject, or using non standard prefixes such as multiple "re:" prefixes
2) The followup option allows for cancellation on any response, or from a specific recipient. If set for specific recipient, and the email address changes from the sender, that would prevent auto cancellation

To address your other questions:
- There will be no issues changing the name of your followup task
- The Followup feature was designed as a click and forget type of function, so little provision was made for editing it afterwards. It sounds like using the recent tasks from QuickTasks is a good way to get back to a created Followup
- That is a good point on multiple followups for the same conversation. We'll take a look at this in the future.