Careful when forwarding messages with attachments - June 17, 2008 -
Some mail clients don’t seem to forward the attachments along with the message. I had that happen to me with Apple Mail today, your mileage may vary.
Use your own address - June 13, 2008 -
As we near our one millionth user (heh, just kidding, wanted to make sure that you’re paying attention!) it may become increasingly difficult to find e-mail addresses that you like. I addressed this question before, by asking for feedback on whether I should assign addresses, or let people pick whatever they like. I opted to stick with letting you all decide.
Early on, I had a couple of users ask me if they could setup e-mail addresses on their own domains, and set them to forward to Mailmanagr addresses. I thought that sounded like a great idea, and told them to go ahead… only, it didn’t work.
Explanation
Mailmanagr’s got a two-part security system. For starters, it checks the to: and cc: fields of an e-mail against the addresses in the system. If that address doesn’t exist, it bounces the message (we can’t deliver messages to unknown addresses afterall!). The second part is that it checks the from: field against the list of allowed senders for a particular address. Assuming everything is happy, we’re off to the races.
I expected that the problem with forwarding addresses was actually a function of security step number 2 — the from address was getting altered when the message is forwarded. Turns out I was wrong, it’s actually security step number 1. When a message is forwarded (at least on the mail servers I tested), the to: or cc: addresses are left untouched. So if I had sent a message to myproject@industryinteractive.net and that address actually forwards to myproject@mailmanagr.com, the to: field will still have the @industryinteractive.net address in it.
Success!
Just to give the post a point, I’m happy to report that as of today, setting up server-side forwarding of addresses *should* work. Now, I’m throwing in a “should” there because goodness knows I haven’t tested against every mail server in the world, just those available to me. If this is a feature that’s of interest to you though, give it a try. If it works, great! If it doesn’t, fire me off a message at info@industryinteractive.net and let me know what mail server you’re using (if you know). If you don’t know, just send me a message anyhow, so that I’m aware that it’s not working universally.
Huh?
If you’ve read this far, and you’re wondering why the heck anyone would care to do this, a couple of things come to mind:
- Customer support: You could set the “support@yourdomain.com” address to forward to a Mailmanagr address that’s pointing to either a Customer Support project, or a customer support category within a project.
- You’ve given up on trying to get certain clients to actually use Basecamp. Try as you might, they just keep e-mailing you. Why not just have them e-mail it right into your Basecamp project?
- Prestige, fame, glory: you can just start setting up various employee names @yourdomain.com and then when you communicate with clients, let them know that you’re “CCing” Ted or Sue or Derek in on the conversation (you know, to keep them in the loop).
Have your own reason, or a tip about how you’re using Mailmanagr? We’d love to hear about it.
Messages being sent but not showing up? - June 9, 2008 -
Occasionally, folks will get their “http” mixed up with their “https”. If you’ve set up an address (or two, or more) in Mailmanagr, and sent sent off some messages, but they’re not showing up in Basecamp, chances are that you’ve told Mailmanagr to use “HTTP” where you should be using “HTTPS” (or vice versa).
Basecamp is pretty smart. If Mailmanagr tries to read a list of projects from an “HTTPS” account when “HTTP” is specified, Basecamp just forwards us on and returns the right information. A problem pops up when we try to post information and we get forwarded — the information that we’re sending isn’t getting forwarded on.
I’ve got an FAQ about this, but I thought I’d mention it here, as it appears that a couple of people are running into this problem (it shows up in my error log as a 422 error). If it seems like Mailmanagr isn’t working for you, check on your http setting in the “My Account” section. Try changing it over to the other option — I bet that will fix it for you.
I’m going to make this thing foolproof — I think that when you sign up your account, I’ll have Mailmanagr post a message and then immediately delete it in order to make sure your settings are okay. Currently, Mailmanagr just retrieves a list of projects to make sure everything is right; but that seems to be missing certain cases.
New tips and tricks category - Bulk upload to Basecamp - June 7, 2008 -
It’s obvious that Mailmanagr lets you send e-mail to Basecamp, but have you considered all of the things that it can do?
I’m starting up a new “tips & tricks” category here on the blog to post some ideas for unconventional (or maybe “less conventional”) uses. If you’ve got a tip, a trick, or just an idea, please send it in to info@industryinteractive.net and we’ll share it with everyone.
So, without further ado, here’s tip #1:
Have you ever wished that you could bulk-upload files to Basecamp? Maybe you’ve got a dozen photos of various things for your client to take a look at, maybe it’s a report with an accompanying spreadsheet.
Why not attach all of those files to an e-mail message and fire it off to Mailmanagr? Mailmanagr can take your e-mail, convert it to a message, and attach the files to it. Those files will also show up in your “Files” area, where they can be reviewed.
Obviously this isn’t a solution for dumping gigabytes of data into your Basecamp account, but it sure beats uploading a bunch of small files one at a time.
Small enhancement - project list - June 7, 2008 -
I’ve got the 3 project Basecamp plan (which I’m hoping to upgrade soon). As such, I’ve only got 3 projects at any given time, so my project list is really simple.
That’s not the case for everyone though, and some folks have dozens of clients, each with projects called “web site” (or something similar) going on. So obviously, showing a list of project names, without showing the client name doesn’t work so well for these folks.
The project drop-down boxes are now being grouped by client, which, I think, just makes everything a little more orderly anyhow. The other added enhancement is that only active projects are showing in the list now. It was pointed out to me that content can only be posted to an active project, so why have “On hold” and “Completed” projects showing up at all?
It’s because of feedback from you all that I was able to realize these problems existed. Thank you all very much for all of the kind suggestions, bug reports, and comments of encouragement. Look for lots more from Mailmanagr in the future!
Bug in Milestones - June 5, 2008 -
A little egg on my face. As I was rolling out todo lists, I inadvertently introduced a bug into Milestone posting. If you tried to post a Milestone in the past couple of days, it probably didn’t work (sorry).
And while we’re on the topic of Milestones, you may be asking yourself how you should format the date in the subject line. The answer: pretty much any way you like. These will work:
- Jul 4 (July 4th of this year)
- 10/15/2008 (October 15, 2008)
- September 5, 2009
I’m also planning on building in some relative dates, so something like “+4 days” or “+6 weeks” will work too (but not yet).
Todos and a word about the future of Mailmanagr - June 3, 2008 -
It’s now live. Enjoy!
Over the next little while, I’m going to do a re-design to the public-facing site, and I’d also like to do some tweaks to the application interface. I think that I need to explain how certain things work in more detail and push out a few screencasts — so watch for those soon!
And in terms of business: my plan is to keep offering Mailmanagr free, except for a couple of features:
- File uploads on messages with be a “premium” feature.
- Task timing (when that’s done) will be a premium feature.
- Notifications (the people tab) will be a premium feature.
In this context, “premium feature” means that I’m looking at charging $5 per month for them. My rationale is that the first two features require paid Basecamp accounts anyhow — $5 a month isn’t overkill.
Mailmanagr is a “user focused” app — you manage yourself, not your company (as you would as an admin in Basecamp). Price-wise though, I don’t think a per-user price is fair, so that would be $5 per Basecamp site. If you start using Mailmanagr, splurge for a premium plan, and then your partner signs up, they won’t be charged (assuming you’re using the same Basecamp site).
Does that sound fair? I’d love to keep it completely free, but reality is that I have to pay for hosting, bandwidth, and development/support time. I thought that my logic of keeping it in step with Basecamp’s paid plans was okay though.
To do lists, coming soon - June 2, 2008 -
They’re most of the way there, I thought I’d give you all a preview:
What you’re seeing here:
- The subject is the name of the to-do list. If it already exists, great, items are added. If not, the list is created.
- You can assign responsibility using the people you’ve set up.
- Add one item, or add a list of items. Separate out each item in a comma-separated list.
I actually struggled a bit with the list format here. I originally had a list with stars for the bullets (just as you’d use in markdown), but on my iPhone, I had to click twice in order to get a star (once for the number keyboard, a second time for math symbols). That’s too much of a pain. It’s way faster to just type in a list. The only drawback is that I can’t (yet) have a comma in any of my todo items.
Just need to implement the interface to add in addresses for y’all (probably tomorrow), and then it’s all yours. To do lists are my last big thing to get done. I know that time tracking is still out there — but my current Basecamp account doesn’t support it. I’ve had one generous individual offer to set me up as a user on his account, which I’ll probably take him up on soon.
