Options to answer by email

You’ve always answered requests by email and you want to continue doing it! 
Or, you’ve just found some useful information in an online database that allows you to send it directly to the requester.

Although RefTracker provides inbuilt ways to correspond with the client, including sending them emails, this does not mean that you can’t send emails directly to the requester, regarding a question being managed through RefTracker.

There are several RefTracker email importing addresses that can be used in the following ways. To find the email importing addresses for your RefTracker system, go to the Home page and click on “Email importing accounts” near the bottom left of the screen.

When it is more convenient to send an update email directly to the requester, just include the RefTracker question number in the subject line, and bcc: the RefTracker SERVICE email address.   Your email will be automatically applied as an update to that question in RefTracker.

If you want to send the final answer by direct email to the end user, just include the RefTracker question number in the subject line (if a question for it already exists), and bcc: the RefTracker ANSWER email importing address.   Your email will be automatically applied as the answer to that RefTracker question and you will be noted as the staff member who closed the question.  Note that the email must come from an email address associated with a RefTracker staff member to be automatically imported as an answer.

If you have worked on a request entirely outside of RefTracker and you want it recorded in RefTracker, just bcc: the answer email that you send to the requester, to the RefTracker Answer email importing address.  When the Answer email importing address receives an email from a staff member, with no valid RefTracker number in the Subject line, it will create a new question with the To line information as the requester, the staff member who sent the email as the staff member who created and closed the question, and the email trail as the answer – all your statistics done by just bcc’ing RefTracker!!!  (Note that it is important to use bcc, not cc, as you don’t want the client seeing the Answers email importing address and trying to use it for other things!)

Your system administrator may have set that questions closed via answer email importing need to be reviewed in RefTracker (to add time used or other closing attributes).

If an email arrives in your inbox that is a new request that needs to be monitored by RefTracker, just “forward it as an attachment” to the RefTracker NEW QUESTION email address, ensuring that you add $import to the Subject line of the email you use to forward it.   Your email will automatically create a new question in RefTracker.

Similarly, if an email arrives in your inbox that is an update to a question that is already being monitored by RefTracker, just “forward it as an attachment” to the RefTracker SERVICE email address, ensuring that you add $import, and the existing question number if it is not already there, to the Subject line of the email you use to forward it.   Your email will automatically create an update to that already existing question in RefTracker.

Further to all these ways to make working from your email client easy, if you want to record the amount of time that you spend working on the email, just add the time in any of the following formats, to the Subject line when sending an email that will be imported into RefTracker:

+nnn   e.g.   +5     is 5 minutes spent                or
+n:nn  e.g.   +1:25   is 1 hour and 25 minutes   or
+n.nn  e.g.   +1.5     is one and a half hours
The + is mandatory for identifying that the following numbers are the time used.
A space can appear between the + and the time numerals.
The time value will be removed from the Subject line before the Subject line is recorded in RefTracker.
The email must be from a staff member as the time will be attributed to that staff member.
For more details about this see “Recording the time you spend on sending emails outside of RefTracker” in the page Emails imported to create new questions, or updates, or answers to existing questions  under How questions for follow up arrive in your system.

For more information about any of these easy to use email options see Emails imported to create new questions, or updates, or answers to existing questions  under How questions for follow up arrive in your system.

Ask your System administrator for the appropriate email importing addresses to use with your RefTracker system.  Once you’ve used them once, your email client will suggest them, making it much easier to use them again in the future (System administrators can find these email addresses at System>Batch process menu>Data import/Export>Email importing).