Email handinling on Projects, To-dos and Support

I agree it's a total let down. I feel like its the basic of having a good CRM now a days.

agreed, its a standard feature on other CRM's. However other CRM's missing features are what Worketc has.

I know, thats the frustrating part. All these programs and they have have advanced features but no one can put them together to make one amazing solid CRM.

Having been myself frustrated at various stages with different parts of worketc it is important to recognise that (IMHO) they have the most bang for buck. Now that their android and iphone app is out in the wild I expect some resources will be applied back to working on the items that got pushed down the list.....such as CRM and dealing with Leads and contacts. This whole area is way behind the competition. But Dan has stated the blog that we can expect to see some improvements on those sections soon.

I agree, Worketc seems to have some very nice features. The problem is I am in need of them now, and in order to properly implement worketc into my company of 9 employees we need those features otherwise everyones going to be running with their heads cut off.

I am just at a point where I need the solution now not later, unfortunately.

I hear you, I own and run a small company and we are also in need of some key items to be implemented in worketc in order to start taking advantage of the app's true potential. But if you come across something better in the mean time then please let me know.

What other programs have you looked at?

Solve360 does what you requested and to be honest is light years ahead in the CRM section. It does amazing work with CRM with full Google apps email / docs / calendar integration / 2way contact syncing and project management. They even can do report generation within google docs spreadsheets. However that is it...where as worketc offers a more holistic approach. I do believe the solve360 is the stick that Worketc needs to measure itself by in terms of CRM. Their flexibility and ability to have contextual items appear on a contact etc. is second to none. (At the moment) I want to make clear that i am not trying to promote another product here and am just stating an opinion based on my experience. I would happily answer the same in the Solve forums if someone asked me.

Ya, I also have test Solve 360 and agree with you on the CRM. The problem is they too have a horrible mobile application and there updates are few and far between. It does not have the "Estimate" feature that worketc has. Almost would be nice to combine the two programs and make one amazing product.

Solve are actually building a tablet interface at the moment for devices with touch interface and bigger resolutions. I do not know if it is going to be any good though. I think that worketc will get their weak bits sorted though. I just wish the community was a bit more active in pushing for some of the items I like. But I guess an app like worketc has many types of business models that it needs to support and they all come with different requirements. Unfortunately most people only visit a forum when they have a problem and because worketc is a young company I guess they are loosing a lot of time dealing with support issues coming from new users. The coming weeks will tell a lot on how things will go from here.

What do you mean by your last sentence? You think that might not be able to make this product work?

Take a look at the company blog. If they can deliver some of the items mentioned in the coming weeks then I will be a very happy customer. Some of the items mentioned like contact sync and power contact/company search options are very important to me. If worketc has the ability to keep on track with their development plan then I will be supporting them for a long time to come. Does it fully meet my needs today? No. Do I believe in their ability to meet my needs? Yes. But in reality only time will tell. :)

Dan,

Our needs have been established and in use on BaseCamp and ActiveCollab (as well as others) for years. If you send an email out from a particular ticket, to-do, project, etc. the client response should connect back to it. Right now the responses do get picked up but just dropped in on the contact which is not intuitive or helpful. I would like my staff to be able to use WorkETC for email both incoming and outgoing. Ideally the client doesn't even need a unique email for my production members (ActiveCollab does this quite well). That way it helps ensure that both production and the client(s) are using the system exclusively rather than email via Outlook or webmail, WorkETC., and phone. There are most definitely ways to add features beyond that but I think just adding this ability would vastly improve WorkETC.

I hope that helps clarify my initial thoughts.

~Mike

Dan-

I am new to your system, so please correct me if this is wrong. My sense is that you are using one or all of sender / recipient / subject and trying to devine where / what to attach the email to. This is losing context.

If the gadget and WORKetc itself both inserted and also scanned the email body for your own globally unique ID(s), you could tie it all together pretty neatly.

Use case:

I receive an email from a prospect and 'attach' it to a contact, lead, project, etc., the gadget innocuously adds your IDs to the email body somewhere as I respond to it. Then, anytime this thread is returned or responded to, you have the context necessary to know which items to associate the email with.

Your embedded IDs should be a GUID with a built-in checksum so they cannot be tampered with. Of course, some recipient can still hack out the body of the message, but most will not.

Just a thought.

PS - having to bcc every response to the drop-box is a pain! I am hoping you can find a way around that.

I really like the suggestion of embedding the entry ID into the email automatically. I came here looking for an easier way to handle just that. Here is what I have to go through now.

Customer sends an email to me with an issue.
I use the contextual gadget to quickly create a support case and connect their email directly to it.
I also can create a time sheet and connect it quickly.

All that can be done with a few clicks without leaving my email. BUT, when I want to reply to them and attach it.....

I have to open the support case I created to get the number from the address and copy it to the clipboard which forces me out of my email.
Go back to my email and edit the subject to add the [#0-000] structure to it.
Then, add dropbox to my BCC
Finally, type my reply to the client.

Way too many steps to document my reply when the initial set up was so easy. If the entry ID was at least on the gadget description when it shows it connected it would save that step so I don't have to leave the email.

I am new to WORK etc too, and Donna describes my issue perfectly.
Thanks Donna.
In an ideal world, I would like to be able to manage all my email correspondence with my contacts entirely in WORKetc, so not have to switch between WE en Gmail for Business.

Serge, since writing that post I have found an easier way to manage my responses within GMail. I found that I could compose the reply and send but not send and archive. That leaves the message open. The WETC gadget then appears on the sent message. I use the gadget to attach to the case.

That approach takes way fewer steps. I still have to click the drop down, remove the filter and then type the case name but that takes no time compared to the other way.

As another new WORKetc user, we are also finding this area a significant let down. When composing an email in WORKetc, why can't it search contacts and employees for the people (and their addresses) that the email is to go to?

Contextual links in and around emails are also high on our priority list.

I'm trying to figure out how to manage external contractors from Odesk etc: if I could automatically attach my emails to them and their replies to a particular project this will let me manage their emails and attachments effectively.

I guess I should send the email from WORKetc which would bring it into the project stream.

Another request for this, it's a huge failing. When my team respond to a support ticket they have to REMEMBER to add their responses to the ticket. If a client responds to their reply, it goes to them direct - no sign of it in WorkETC.

If that member of staff is out of the office, we wouldn't be any the wiser.

This is a huge issue which is becoming ever more of an embarrassing problem for us!

Ruth

I hope I'm on the right track here, but I think I've been able to deal with this issue by going to the incoming email in WORKetc, then clicking reply, this then gets recorded in WORKetc and the client gets their email, and their replies also get picked up.
I was expecting to be able to do this in gmail but I'm realising I've really got to spend more time in WORKetc and less time in gmail to get the most out of WORKetc.

Hope this helps someone, because it took me a while to figure out this (probably obvious) workaround.

Hi Steve,

That would be sensible, although the system is set up to send out on do-not-reply@yourdomain.com which I assumed meant that we shouldn't have the reply to address as the normal support inbox. Assuming that is what you are suggesting, would responses be picked up under the same ticket, or have a new ticket created (which would be daft)?

Ruth

What the status on emails linking back to their related project/to-do...?

Thu, 15 Sep '11 @ 7:38 AM
Dan,

Our needs have been established and in use on BaseCamp and ActiveCollab (as well as others) for years. If you send an email out from a particular ticket, to-do, project, etc. the client response should connect back to it. Right now the responses do get picked up but just dropped in on the contact which is not intuitive or helpful. I would like my staff to be able to use WorkETC for email both incoming and outgoing. Ideally the client doesn't even need a unique email for my production members (ActiveCollab does this quite well). That way it helps ensure that both production and the client(s) are using the system exclusively rather than email via Outlook or webmail, WorkETC., and phone. There are most definitely ways to add features beyond that but I think just adding this ability would vastly improve WorkETC.

I hope that helps clarify my initial thoughts.

~Mike