phlyMail Support Board

[HumbleScholar]

I've been looking for this feature in Communications Management programs for a long time but none offers it, not even Outlook.
What I need is the ability to look at a contact and see the annotated history of communications at a glance.
At the moment I'm forced to use a full blown CRM program, which is cumbersome, time consuming and and still doesn't do what I want.
The ability I'm looking for is two-fold:

Firstly it is the ability to add notes to contacts. Partly this can be achieved by utilizing the Comments field of each contact, if only it was a bit larger and had a HTML editor.
Ideally, we would be able to right-click a contact and select 'Add Note' from the context menu, which would pop up a window with a HTML editor and allow to compose a note. On saving, the note would be added to the Comments field along with the timestamp.

Secondly, it is the ability to right-click an email (or click a button within the email) to add the text part of it to the notes, along with the timesamp.
This same can be applied to SMS messages too.

So at the end of the day you would have a the Comments field show the following:
.........................................................................
12 Mar 2012 11:45 Contact created

22 Apr 2012 17:11 Inbound Email
Dear Alik, blah, blah, blah, would like to meet on Tuesday at 12:00, Mattheas.

22 Apr 2012 17:25 Outbound Email
Dear Matthias, see you on Tuesday at 12:00. Regards, Alik

23 Apr 2012 11:45 Inbound SMS
Alik, I'm running about 15 minutes late, will see you shortly, Matthias

23 Apr 2012 11:47 Outbound SMS
np

23 Apr 2012 14:30 Note
Had a meeting with Mattheas, discussed the implementation of the notes feature. Mattheas promised to deliver by next release.
...........................................................

I'm hoping you get the picture - all of it in one text field, not a collection of messages that would need to be opened one by one or even all together..
A lot of this can utilize the existing code. For example, for the Add Notes window you'd only need to slightly modify the Add Task or the Add Event window..
As I mentioned, the Comments field within Contacts can be used so there's no need to change the database - all new notes will be added to the end of existing comments so there's no problem with upgrading to the new version either.
It really comes down to adding a couple buttons and context menu items and some little code behind them.
Aren't I'm good at making it sound so simple?

Anyway, thanks for listening,
Alik

[mso]

Thank you for that interesting suggestion.

So far I think, the solution will be divided into two packages:

1) Notes for contacts (and maybe other items, too)

These notes should not be part of the comments field, which is more or less an accumulative field for the various fields missing (like ICQ, Skype, ...). There's plans to add an "attachments" tab to contacts, tasks and events. This would allow to add arbitrary files related to that item. I think, notes, as a special form of an attachment, would be best placed there, don't you think?

2) Link conversations with a contact

This feature is some form of aggregated search, where every SMS, Fax, Email sent to or received from a certain contact should be searched and displayed in a nice and clearly arranged manner. One could think of a design similar to the bubbles of modern smart phones' conversation threads.

Both things of course would greatly improve functionality and usability of phlyMail. But unfortunately there's already an perceivably endless list of things to do. So I can - again - not guarantee any definitive timeline.

Any help is greatly appreciated

[HumbleScholar]

Hi Mattheas, thanks for the response.
I guess the best thing to do for the implementation of the notes feature would be to poll people on how they would benefit from it and how they would use it.
I don't know what else would people use notes for, apart from contacts... nothing comes to mind.
I saw a request for a notepad in the forum here but as far as I understood the fellow was asking for a scratch pad (which i think would be great to have!).
Speaking for myself I can tell you that I never found the aggregated search useful in other Comms Management programs.
It usually takes too long to load (this will be even more of a problem online) and in addition I'd have to sift through lots of messages before I can have an overview of the communication history with the contact.
All I found useful in my years of managing my contacts was a single text field that contained an abbreviated history of communication with each contact.
Often you don't even want to see the whole email or a message from the person - just the gist of it.
In the past, when I used Outlook I would copy the important parts of incoming or outgoing emails along with my comments into the Notes field for the contact. If I needed to see the actual emails later on I'd use the aggregate search function within Outlook to find it - very cumbersome and time consuming process.
Anyway, this is how I would want the notes feature implemented - other people will probably have different habits and different uses for notes - I'll leave it up to you to decide.
As for helping out with the feature implementation, I wish I was a php programmer but I'm not.
I will still keep an eye out for opportunities to support you in developing this wonderful product.
If you wish, email me your contact details for communicating outside this forum.
Cheers,
Alik

[mso]

I'd like to come back to that topic again, although there's the MySQL timezone issue right now.

So I understand you correctly: You would just like to have the opportunity to add mental notes to contacts manually? No automatic knitting together?

I planned to add some sort of attachments feature to contacts and calendar items anyway. Notes could be a special type of attachments or so. What do you think?

I will still keep an eye out for opportunities to support you in developing this wonderful product.
If you wish, email me your contact details for communicating outside this forum.

Thank you very much. You can best reach me via email - the email address shown in my profile is the right one.

[HumbleScholar]

Hi Matthias,
I suppose the attachments feature may be useful to some people.
Depending on how you implement it - whether by creating a copy of the message or simply a reference to it, there are downsides to the attachment approach.
Copying blows up the storage size and references are an integrity risk when the source message is deleted or moved.
Most messages would have extra stuff in them like images, signatures, earlier messages included in replies, etc. that is not worth keeping.
Creating notes manually allow you some control over what you keep.
These are my two cents..
Thanks for listening,
Alik

[mso]

Sorry for the silence lately. Your topic is not lost, I've just been a little busy with the beta phase and release of phlyMail 4.1.