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Email Integration

Introduction

For almost everyone, email is the default communication tool. OnePlace understands this and embraces it rather than attempts to replace it. OnePlace can be configured to send you various kinds of information, as well as to allow you to send information into OnePlace.

Receiving system notifications via email

OnePlace is rich with system notifications. These are the messages sent by OnePlace to notify you when something happens, such as when someone assigns you a task, your boss creates a new project, a teammate uploads a new file, etc. This rich notification infrastructure is just one of the ways that OnePlace keeps you informed of what your teammates are doing.

By default, these notifications are sent to your inbasket as notes. However if you prefer, you can receive these notifications via email as well, by changing the Receive system notifications via my setting in your personal preferences. The screen shot below shows your personal preferences. You get to this screen by clicking Settings | Personal Account Settings | Personal Preferences.

Notification_preference

There are three choices for how notifications are sent:

  • Inbasket — Sent only to your inbasket.
  • Email — Sent only to your email address.
  • Both — Sent to both your email address and your inbasket.

Receiving a daily update email

You can configure OnePlace to send you an email once a day that contains your scheduled tasks for the day and projects/tasks that have a deadline within the next seven days, or are overdue. To enable this feature, just check the 'Send Daily Update' checkbox in your personal preferences. You can configure what hour the email is sent. The email will be sent at the top of the hour that you configure. The screen shot below shows this preference.

Daily_update_config
You can also choose to have the details for each project/task included in the email. To include the details, just check the 'Include Task and Project Details in Daily Update' check box.

Interacting with discussions using email

OnePlace allows you to interact with your discussions using email. To enable this, you need to check the Send new discussion messages to my email preference (shown below).

Discussions_via_email_preference

This feature is documented in more detail in the Discussions section of this help.

Interacting with comments using email

OnePlace allows you to interact with comments using email. To enable this, you need to set your preferences to receive notifications in email (click here for details on setting this preference). When a new comment is posted to something (project, task or file) that you are subscribed to, you will receive an email containing the comment. To reply to the comment, simply reply to the email, and add your new comment above the line that says:

^^^ Reply above this line. Leave this line in the response. Do not include email signature. ^^^

Note that everything above this line will be included in your comment. If your email program automatically adds your signature when you reply to an email, make sure to remove it if you don't want it included in your comment.

Email messages to a workplace

Each workplace has a special email address that you can use to email messages to the workplace. One handy use for this is when you want to forward something in your email to your teammates via Team Pulse. You can specify your message in either the subject or body portion of the email. If you supply both a subject and a body, then both will appear in the message separated by a line break.

To find out what a workplace's email address is, go to the Messages tab in the workplace, and the email address will be displayed in the "Post Using Email" panel on the right side of the page.

Email_workplace_message

Note that when emailing a message to a workplace, you must send the email from the same email account as the email address you use to sign into OnePlace.

Adding things to OnePlace using email

OnePlace allows you to send email to it in order to create data. You can add the following types of data using email:

  • File Comment — The body of the email becomes a comment on the file you specify in the email address (see below for email address format).
  • Inbasket Note — The subject of the email becomes the subject of the inbasket note and the body of the email becomes the body of the inbasket note. The inbasket note is added to your inbasket. Using the inbasket as your ubiquitous capture device is one key to being more organized.
  • Note — The subject of the email becomes the subject of the note and the body of the email becomes the body of the note. The note be added to the workplace of your choosing (see Adding things to a specific workplace). You can also specify attributes of the note in the email body (see Formatting your email when adding things).
  • Project Comment — The body of the email becomes a comment on the project you specify in the email address (see below for email address format).
  • Team Pulse — The subject and the body of the email are combined to become the pulse entry. The pulse is directed to all members of your team account (or to your personal account if you are on a personal plan).
  • Task — The subject of the email becomes the title of the task and the body of the email becomes the description of the task. The task can be added to the workplace of your choosing (see Adding things to a specific workplace). You can also specify attributes of the task in the email body (see Formatting your email when adding things).
  • Task Comment — The body of the email becomes a comment on the task you specify in the email address (see below for email address format).

In order to send email to OnePlace, you first need to tell it that you would like to allow this for your personal account. Configuring this is very easy to do, and is done by modifying your Allow incoming email personal preference. The screen shot below shows how to enable incoming email.

Incoming_email_preference

Once you have incoming email enabled, there are two ways to send email to OnePlace.

The first way is to use the following set of email addresses:

  • filecomment_file identifier@app.oneplacehome.com
  • inbasket@app.oneplacehome.com
  • note@app.oneplacehome.com
  • projectcomment_project identifier@app.oneplacehome.com
  • pulse@app.oneplacehome.com
  • task@app.oneplacehome.com
  • taskcomment_task identifier@app.oneplacehome.com
When you use one of these email addresses, you must send the email from the same email account as the email address you use to sign into OnePlace. The reason for this is that this is the only way OnePlace can identify you.

The second way is to use a set of email addresses that are specific to you. Once you enable incoming email (note you have to modify and save your personal preferences first), OnePlace will display a unique code that can be used to create custom email addresses from the general ones listed above. The custom email addresses are unique, non-guessable and private to you.

To determine your set of custom email addresses, simply add your email code to the front of each general email address, followed by an underscore (_). Using the example email code shown in the screen shot above, the set of custom email addresses for this user would be:

  • EfCXTYfU_filecomment_file identifier@app.oneplacehome.com
  • EfCXTYfU_inbasket@app.oneplacehome.com
  • EfCXTYfU_note@app.oneplacehome.com
  • EfCXTYfU_projectcomment_project identifier@app.oneplacehome.com
  • EfCXTYfU_pulse@app.oneplacehome.com
  • EfCXTYfU_task@app.oneplacehome.com
  • EfCXTYfU_taskcomment_task identifier@app.oneplacehome.com

The advantage of using custom addresses instead of the general ones, is that you can send email to OnePlace from any email account, not just the one you use to sign into OnePlace. This allows you to hand out these email addresses to people you trust, who can then send email to OnePlace on your behalf.

Warning: Only share your custom email addresses with people that you trust. Otherwise, you could end up getting spam in your OnePlace. Not a good thing.

Adding things to a specific workplace

When you create a task or a note using email, OnePlace will add this data to your private workplace by default. However, you can instruct OnePlace to add this data to a specific workplace. To target a workplace that you would like to add data to, you need to know either the workplace short name or the workplace identifier.

The workplace short name is something you can set for a workplace. You can assign a short name to a workplace when you create the workplace (via the Add Workplace dialog), or after the fact by editing the workplace. Another way to set the workplace short name is to enable email integration for a workplace. You can do this by clicking the "Disabled" link for Email Integration in the About panel on the workplace Overview tab. An example of a workplace with a short name of "glucose_monitor" is shown below.

Workplace_shortname

The workplace identifier can be found by going to the Overview tab for a workplace, and clicking the Show more details of this workplace link in the About panel. This identifier is automatically generated by OnePlace, and each workplace has one. An example is shown below.

Workplace_id

You can specify the workplace for your email in one of three ways:

1. As part of the email address

This technique is shown above in the screen shot that shows email integration enabled for a workplace. You can add the workplace short name or identifier to the email address like so:

  • task_workplace short name@app.oneplacehome.com
  • task_workplace identifier@app.oneplacehome.com

This approach is handy if you add these email addresses to your email address book. This way, you can easily send email to this workplace without needing to remember how to format the email address.

2. In the email subject

You can specify the workplace short name or identifier by putting it in brackets and including it anywhere within the email subject. For example:

[glucose_monitor] Add warranty information to the production documentation

3. In the email body

You can specify the workplace short name or identifier by putting it in brackets and prefacing it with "workplace:" anywhere within the email body. For example:

[workplace:glucose_monitor]

Formatting your email when adding things

When creating a task or a note using email, you can format the body of the email in a special way to specify attributes of the task or note. Attributes are specified within square brackets using the following format:

[attribute name: value]

Attribute names are not case sensitive, which means that Workplace, WORKPLACE and workplace are considered the same.

Dates can be either an actual date in the format m-d-y, m/d/y or m/d (current year is assumed for last format), or a relative date of today, tomorrow, yesterday or +N, where N is a whole number. Here are some examples:

  • [deadline:12/12/2009]
  • [deadline:12-12-2009]
  • [deadline:12/12]
  • [deadline:today]
  • [deadline:tomorrow]
  • [deadline:+3]

Task Formatting

Here are the attributes you can specify when creating a task using email:


Note Formatting

Here are the attributes you can specify when creating a note using email:

Attaching Files

OnePlace supports files that are attached to incoming email when creating a task or replying to a discussion. If you attach one or more files to your email, OnePlace will upload these files and attach them to the appropriate thing (new task or new discussion entry).

Please note that the size of the files you attach to your email must adhere to the limits for individual files (100MB each), and total account file storage (depends on your OnePlace subscription).

Troubleshooting

If OnePlace cannot process an incoming email for any reason, it will send an email back to the original sender explaining what happened. For example, suppose you wanted to specify a deadline for the task you are creating by email, and you incorrectly specify the deadline date. OnePlace will send you a reply explaining that the task couldn't be created because of an incorrect deadline date.

You can also contact us at any time using support@oneplacehome.com if you need assistance emailing OnePlace.


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