Solution to track acknowledgement of emails
June 11, 2015 3:06 PM   Subscribe

I am looking for something to track that an email has been acknowledged within 24 hours and send to a backup/manager if not. We use Outlook and Microsoft Exchange. I am not even sure what to search for on this, but any direction is helpful. (rules or addins would be fine.)
posted by slavlin to Computers & Internet (5 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
It sounds like maybe you want a ticket system, and their typical rules and reporting features, instead of email? Something like Freshdesk or Zendesk or desk.com or atlassian service desk in terms of subscribed to web apps (software as a service), but I'm sure there are other kinds of options.
posted by mjb at 3:34 PM on June 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


Much CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software is designed to do just this. It's perfect for tracking sales leads and donor relationships, both cases where dropping the ball can lead directly to lost income. Many of them simply connect to your mail server to see what's sent and received there, and use the same sort of logic as that which tracks conversations in your inbox, but they also allow you to send and receive directly within the CRM. Also, CRMs have the benefit of being about relationships, whereas ticketing systems are more about incidents.

The world of CRMs is vast but perhaps this search will get you started.
posted by Mo Nickels at 4:01 PM on June 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


Seconding Mo Nickels response too.

In my mind, CRMs and "ticket systems" (service desks) can be one and the same or thought of as different sides of the same coin - depending on if what you're doing is something akin to lead generation, outbound sales and marketing or reactive service/support (or both).

...And how how complex your processes are... start small and cheap if you're in doubt (and be prepared to outgrow it, go to the next level of complexity of the tool/service). Just don't try to build this just in email. If you or your colleagues prefer to interact with this information in email or get notified by email, most of these products support that as well.
posted by mjb at 4:20 PM on June 11, 2015


Response by poster: A ticket system is the one thing that we don't want to try and add. We are trying to avoid adding another layer of tracking if possible and there is no way to get our external partners to create a ticket. However, the CRM options look very promising. I knew there HAD to be a name for it but I didn't know what to call it.
posted by slavlin at 5:56 PM on June 11, 2015


What about Yesware?
posted by ellerhodes at 7:57 PM on June 11, 2015


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