Revolutionary feature to M2:"Expected reply after X days" + "Remind about email"

Revolutionary feature to M2:"Expected reply after X days" + "Remind about email"

I send many emails a day to various people. I often expect reply from them - to keep some things going. But if I don't get a reply, things may be not done for weeks or so, until I remind myself to mail them again.
This is really a hassle to not be able to manage with sent mail, keep track easily for which emails I expected reply. It's surely not possible to dig manually mail-after-mail through Sent view to check for which emails I received answer and for which I did not.

I suggest innovative, revolutionary solution to this problem!
On Compose mail screen there is a field "Expected reply after None/3 days/a week/2 weeks/a month".
After set time with no reply, user would be informed in some way - e.g. such sent emails could show up in special "Sent mails with no reply" view!

Tiny addition: In this view there could be also a helpful button "Remind recipient about this email", which would cause to open Compose dialog with forward of the selected email and automatically added text "I sent you this email on XXX and received no reply until today. Please reply ASAP."

I hope it will not be only my dream but that the feature will be soon implemented in M2...
Please add it. It would help TREMENDOUSLY to keep track of sent emails.

Sounds like something Outlook probably does already. All you need is a calendar with reminders.

Now these are some really nice features and I would really love to see them in Opera Mail.
I especially like this "expected reply in" feature. That would be really time-saving.

+1 good idea

Originally posted by Sigup
Sounds like something Outlook probably does already. All you need is a calendar with reminders.

No, I don't think Outlook has it and I do not need any bloaty, useless calendar with reminders.

I need a way to automatically show me mails without reply in convinient way. My proposed solution does it very well and seems to be really simple to implement for M2 developers.

+1

+1

+1

+1

No, I don't think Outlook has it and I do not need any bloaty, useless calendar with reminders.

You don't even have to launch Outlook to set a reminder - it's a wonderfully :-P modular set of programs, so you can use Opera's context menus to set reminders and then just see them pop-up on due time.

+1

+1

+1

Originally posted by van_grieg
You don't even have to launch Outlook to set a reminder - it's a wonderfully :-P modular set of programs, so you can use Opera's context menus to set reminders and then just see them pop-up on due time.

I can use Opera's context menus to set Outlook reminders? I don't know what you are talking about but it's totally offtopic here, so please don't hijack this thread... Thank you.

+1

Maybe TODO label could enable such behavior? Anyway, idea is great.

What about creating a filter for these unanswered messages yourself? You won't get the reminders, but if you remember to check the filter's messages now and then, you'll have almost what you're asking for.

Btw, I agree that it's getting close to Outlook's Tasks - which I wouldn't mind having in Opera, since it's the only application that is running all the time on my computer.

+1

Originally posted by scipio
What about creating a filter for these unanswered messages yourself? You won't get the reminders, but if you remember to check the filter's messages now and then, you'll have almost what you're asking for.

First: Some people got confused. I'm not suggesting any reminders thing! The "Remind about email" in subject line of this thread (sorry, I didn't make it to enter more descriptive topic in this short field) relates to a button (similar to Reply or Forward) that causes showing up Compose window with forwarded content of mail and added auto-text "You haven't reply to me to the email below, please do it ASAP".
I'm talking about browsing in one special view through automatically filtered mails for which I expected reply but have not received it.

Now, how do you suggest to create such filter? I don't think you can do something like this currently:
Display mails from Sent folder for which doesn't exist any message where text after "References:" in header is same as text after Message-ID: in header of the mail in Sent view
Such filter would be a better-than-nothing (still displays *all* mails without reply instead of only those for which I expect reply) workaround, but I don't think it's possible anyway.

Originally posted by scipio
Btw, I agree that it's getting close to Outlook's Tasks - which I wouldn't mind having in Opera, since it's the only application that is running all the time on my computer.

It doesn't get close to Outlook's Tasks in any way.
I also do not have anything against some simple and tidy Reminder functionality - it would be handy - but this thread has nothing to do with it. You misunderstood.

A very nice idea! +1

This functionality is basically a database query on existing fields, so no extra fields need to be added. I think it would fit better in the M2 view based philosophy to add some new filter rules to opera:

- sent date differs from <date> by at least/most <number> of day(s)/week(s)/month(s)
- received date differs from <date> by at least/most <number> of day(s)/weeks(s)/month(s)

where <date> could be a fixed date or "current date"

Next create a filter 'expected replies' without any rules.
Define several sub-filters with 'limit filters to messages in parent' tagged for the following rules:
- sent date differs from "current date" by at least 3 day(s)
- sent date differs from "current date" by at least 1 week(s)
- sent date differs from "current date" by at least 1 month(s)
etc... you get the idea.

Drop each mail you want a reply to in the 'expected replies' filter.

----

In this setup you need to manually remove these mails from the filter once you get a reply. To fix this maybe an additional rule is required:

- This mail has no reply

AND this rule with the above.

<edit>
a mail A has no reply if there exists no message B with ("subject A" = "subject B" or "RE: subject A" = "subject B") and "received date A" < "received date B"
</edit>


Just an idea.

Originally posted by Darquan
This functionality is basically a database query on existing fields, so no extra fields need to be added. I think it would fit better in the M2 view based philosophy to add some new filter rules to opera:
(...)
In this setup you need to manually remove these mails from the filter once you get a reply. To fix this maybe an additional rule is required:
- This mail has no reply
AND this rule with the above.

Your proposal isn't so good, it rather looks like incomplete and inconvinient workaround. The whole point is in allowing a way to fully automatically show mails without reply (with additional criteria of only those with "expected reply") - with no hassle. The manual moving mails to views is a serious unnecessary hassle, which doesn't exist in proposal in my OP.

Moreover, even manual managing with such mails is not possible as currently there is no way to create rule: "Show email(1) if EXISTS another email(2) where 2.In-Reply-To == 1.Message-ID".

+1:drunk:

Originally posted by Nasty
I need a way to automatically show me mails without reply in convinient way. My proposed solution does it very well and seems to be really simple to implement for M2 developers.

But why limit this to just mails? Maybe that's useful for you, but there are millions of people out there. I bet a lot of them would like more functionality than that.

Originally posted by Sigup
But why limit this to just mails? Maybe that's useful for you, but there are millions of people out there. I bet a lot of them would like more functionality than that.

I didn't say to limit this functionality to mails. It can also be available with newsgroup posts - one sends many posts to newsgroups and would like a list for which (of the posts marked as "reply expected") s/he has not received any reply from anyone - fine, very nice!

What you mean by "more functionality than that".. This thread is about asking for implementation of the most convinient* way to keep track of sent emails that stayed with no reply. I'm definitely sure lots of people would welcome ability to easily keep track of for which mails they have not received reply.

I hope it will be implemented, and that it will happen in some viable future.. Total lack of ability to keep track of sent mails in M2 is a serious problem to me, daily. When I realized it *can* be solved and came up with the (how simple but powerful) solution, I saw how life would be significantly easier with it..


*I'm not against adding more filtering criterias - of course not, but the suggested another solution than mine - moving each sent message into some special view - is far less convinient (and unintuitive) than just selecting "Reply expected in a week" option in a dropdown field on Compose message window.

+1

Nasty, a fantastic idea!

Still, I think your suggested implementation leads to problems:
I send email to someone and want a reply in 2 days, and get none, so I send a reminder (upon which I do or do not require a reply in 2 days). They reply to this reminder, rather than the original message.

In this case, the original sent message remains in the No Reply Received filter, as long as In-reply-to or References is used as a measure of whether a reply has been received.

In addition, people have been known to reply to multiple emails in one.

Maybe it has to be simpler: if one has received any further correspondence from the recipient, it is no longer marked as un-replied. But again this is inaccurate.

You could then also easily retrieve a list of correspondents from whom you still await a reply. Obviously you would also require the ability to clear their name, such as if they phoned you in response.

Another issue is that you may send to them at one email address, and they reply from another. This would be solved by a long-standing wish of mine to have email aliases for contacts.

I only wish that Opera and its users can iron over these challenges to a great concept.

- Joel

Originally posted by Nasty
First: Some people got confused. I'm not suggesting any reminders thing! The "Remind about email" in subject line of this thread (sorry, I didn't make it to enter more descriptive topic in this short field) relates to a button (similar to Reply or Forward) that causes showing up Compose window with forwarded content of mail and added auto-text "You haven't reply to me to the email below, please do it ASAP".

Ok, got it now.

I'm talking about browsing in one special view through automatically filtered mails for which I expected reply but have not received it.

Now, how do you suggest to create such filter? I don't think you can do something like this currently:
Display mails from Sent folder for which doesn't exist any message where text after "References:" in header is same as text after Message-ID: in header of the mail in Sent view

I was talking about a filter (without any rules) in which you can manually drop Sent messages that have not been answered yet. If you want a filter that does this automatically, you want to see ALL unanswered messages... Is that really better than a manual filter that only displays the important ones?

Originally posted by moo
Nasty, a fantastic idea!

Thank you.

Originally posted by moo
Still, I think your suggested implementation leads to problems:
I send email to someone and want a reply in 2 days, and get none, so I send a reminder (upon which I do or do not require a reply in 2 days). They reply to this reminder, rather than the original message.

In this case, the original sent message remains in the No Reply Received filter, as long as In-reply-to or References is used as a measure of whether a reply has been received.

Good point! BUT, here is the solution - it turns out that implementation of suggested in OP "Remind about message" button is crucial to make it work right. How? When user presses "Remind about message" button, the reminding message should be remembered by M2 as related with the original one - so that no matter whether someone replies for the original one or for the reminder, the original message will disappear from No Reply Received filter! And everything works fine!

Originally posted by moo
In addition, people have been known to reply to multiple emails in one.

That is a very rare situation to me. I met with it twice (from same person in same discussion thread) for thousands of emails I received during past many moths.

But hey, of course that also manual way to mark mails as Replied by button "Replied" (like Read to mark Unread message as Read currently) would be needed. There are other situations you may want to use this button - say when you resigned from awaiting a reply for some mail. So it's pretty obvious to add it.

It also solves the situation mentioned by you further - when you was talking by phone - you also mark message as Replied manually, of course, obviously there's no way to automate it and we should not try.

Originally posted by moo
You could then also easily retrieve a list of correspondents from whom you still await a reply. Obviously you would also require the ability to clear their name, such as if they phoned you in response.

This optional functionality - list of correspondents with no reply - can be easily added based on list of messages with no reply. And you clear their name by marking all their messages as "Replied". Intuitive and simple.

Originally posted by moo
Another issue is that you may send to them at one email address, and they reply from another. This would be solved by a long-standing wish of mine to have email aliases for contacts.

No no, wait, there's no problem at all. We are looking at "In-Reply-To:" header. No matter from which email account one replied, it always shows for which message this was a reply!!

Originally posted by moo
I only wish that Opera and its users can iron over these challenges to a great concept.

Seems like the idea is defending itself very well - it's consistent, functional and complete.

Originally posted by scipio
Ok, got it now. :)I was talking about a filter (without any rules) in which you can manually drop Sent messages that have not been answered yet. If you want a filter that does this automatically, you want to see ALL unanswered messages... Is that really better than a manual filter that only displays the important ones?

Do I express myself really that non-understandable or you read my posts way too fast and briefly? Anyway, you gave me a chance to put it even clearer, so thank you scipio.

I said that on Compose mail window there should be a dropdown field - like field to select mail Priority currently - which would consist options "Expected reply: NONE / 3 days / week (...)". If one picks NONE (default), this mail is not tracked whether s/he has received a reply for it. Simple as that.

There might be also a way - maybe by dropping already sent mail to "Reply Expected" filter - to mark message as Expected Reply after sending mail - when you changed your mind and decided to track it. Or maybe by dropdown with above options on message list like dropdown for labels currently.

+1

+1

I noticed that Lotus Notes seems to have partially (half of) such functionality - you can just mark email as Tracked and then view tracked mails in some window.

What would be needed more is ability to set after how many days mails should be shown in NotReplied filter/view and checking if reply came to automatically mark mails as replied.

Doesn't look like a very time-consuming to implement feature and it would be helpful a lot to reduce even more time wasted for mail managament - what Opera Mail aims at!
Sent-mail management is not empowered by any special features so far. So please add it.

I hope there will be added function to mark messages for which I wait for reply.
And as a natural supplement - ability to view such messages without reply in a special view.

Please add this fresh feature which will ENABLE dealing with sent mail...
It would save A LOT OF time wasted on managing mail - and this is what M2 idea is focused on, right?

+1

+1

+1

+1 (I'm new, can I put +100? :-)

One addition I think you maybe mentioned but not sure:

If configured, mails marked for Expected Reply in N days should have an automatic "P.S." appended that explains the situation to the recipient, like:

[Auto P.S. I'm expecting a reply within 3 days. If it may take you longer then please let me know; otherwise I'll remind you again if I don't here from you. Thanks.]

The text should be editable as part of the config, with a token like <numdays> filled in with the proper value.

Incidentally, I've been looking for a feature like this that I could use with Outlook. So far I've lost a couple hours or so on the net, found a few "almosts" but nothing exactly like what you described, which to my mind is EXACTLY what is needed. One click (pulldown, select) and the rest is automatic! If I get lucky and find something I'll post again.

Thanks for writing the Spec :-) Good luck getting the feature added.

Yes, that would be handy little optional addition. I like it, but please.. let at least be the core idea implemented.. It's really little effort and huge, innovative advantage - enabling ANY (and very good) way of keeping track of sent mail.

+1

Nice +1 but you can label your stuff that works right now. Additionally I want the possibility to write emails which will be sent later. something like do not send before DATE / TIME.

+1

+1 but only if it could somehow cooperate (be synced) via random computers.

Hi Nasty,
Thx for a great proposal.
+1 for multiple, custom, free LABELS.
+1 for "PLEASE REPLY UNTIL" option.

IMHO, the UNANSWERED EMAIL PROBLEM could maybe be solved by the labels - if you expect an answer before some date or in some time interval from the moment od mail sending - the more intelligent tagging/labelling system could give you the possibility to add such labels: "awaiting reply", "14.05.2007" -OR- "awaiting reply" (and chooseable time interval with amount: [0..9] [hours/days/weeks/months].

(I'll assume, we want to inform the addressee of our email what is the deadline we give for an answer ("please reply before/until" tag somewhere in the mail content(?) )

Whether to change this RELATIVE time definition to ABSOLUTE time definition, is another question.
This causes another problem for those, who travel between timezones, and who set their appointments in conection with events taking place in specific time zone (like a weekly teleconference in London headquarters on Monday at 10:00 AM) - then they must call in regardless what time it is where they are - at 10:00 AM Greenwich London time. But other cases must be kept relative to the timezone they are in - if they want an answer before lunch - the "deadline" for the addressee must be another time in the author's timezone and another time in the addressee's timezone.


I hope, it is possible to decrypt what I meant...

-> "FREE LABELS for Opera" initiative!

+1
Makes sense!

+1

+1 Including a new PIM built-in in Opera

@njupas: Yes, it would be enough as a solution. Of course the "not replied mails" view is needed as a complement.

Please everyone who like this idea spotlight this topic to hopefully increase attention about it (press "Spotlight topic" at the top of this page, probably second link from the left, next to Logout).

If anyone cares, I would like to remind about this idea.

Outlook has feature which you can use to achieve similar goal - one can:
- flag with some colour any incoming or outgoing e-mail (I use orange color to mark e-mails as "Waiting for reply")
- optionally add any short comment
- assign a date to e-mail after which it will be showed up in red color and displayed in Reminders window to remind that something should be done with this e-mail.

Something similar in M2 wouldn't be bad but you may decide to implement more dedicated functionality which I propose above.

This is a good idea.