email integration roadmap

i first asked about email integration in 2009 and it was supposedly scheduled for Q3 of 2009:
https://www.myintervals.com/forum/discussion/426/critical-features/#Item_4

then it was supposed to happen 2010
then it was on the roadmap for Q2 2011.
then it was scheduled for late Q2 / early Q3
now it is scheduled for Q3.


i understand that things get shifted around slightly, but this is really getting absurd.... and i feel really misled/abused here.

will it ever happen? is Q3 FOR REAL?

Do you have an update on when this is likely to be released?

Great - can't wait to start using it (should reduce admin quite a bit).

Just to confirm, we're talking about "Email Integration for task comments & milestone comments"? The blog post seems to be more about "Email Hopper", although I appreciate they are closely related features.

Any news on this? It's still down for August 2011, but I notice there has been a release but this feature wasn't in it.

This is mostly working well for us.

We got caught out when it was first released, because you changed the from address on emails sent from Intervals - we had been planning to change our intervals domain name but hadn't got round to it yet. We didn't want people to reply to emails from our old domain, so we changed to our new name that lunchtime. In general, changing name isn't very good as there is nothing to help people who still have the old details.

The only other issue we've got relates to emails from non-users. Previously if they emailed our request queue email address (that we host) they would be added to the request queue even if they weren't a user, but using the request@ email address they get rejected - we'd like to keep the old behaviour for request queue emails.

The same happens for emails to task+n@ emails, which for these cases is the correct behaviour. However, I'd prefer that the email gets sent to the project manager, rather than the intervals administrator (who is probably busy doing something else and has no idea how urgent or otherwise a specific email is).

It might be helpful to explain some of the intent with the new functionality. The same functionality that exists in the web interface applies to emailing tasks and milestones. In order to email a task or milestone the person must be able to do so via the web interface. For this release of email integration the intent is to allow people who can already comment on tasks and milestone to be able to do so via email. Many of our customers work on a very high volume of tasks a day so being able to reply to notification emails is a huge time saver especially with workers that do not work in front of a computer all day and also for those using mobile devices when away from the office. In the example above if Intervals recognizes that the email recipient can email the task directly the email will include the task+1234@example.com for the reply to. If the person does not have access email the task the email will come from the sender so that the recipient can reply to the email and send an email to the sender. In essence this works exactly as it always has if the person cannot email the task directly. Regarding emailing project managers when an email address it not allowed we considered this functionality but since many projects are managed by manager level users that cannot add people, edit settings, etc. they wouldn't be able to take any action to get the person's email approved. As for the whitelisting of entire domains, we'll take that into consideration. This feature is still officially in beta, so we do plan on making updates to it based on customer feedback. Thank you for your input.

> Regarding emailing project managers when an email address it not allowed we considered this functionality but since
> many projects are managed by manager level users that cannot add people, edit settings, etc.

Fair point. I guess the email says two things:
1) I know a task number, but Intervals doesn't know me
2) I want an Intervals user to do some work for me

Item 1 needs to be resolved by an Administrator, who may need to check with the Project Manager that this user should have access to Intervals. If they shouldn't, then a reply would normally be sent by the Project Manager.
Item 2 needs to be resolved by the Project Manager, and may be time-critical.

If the email was sent to the Project Manager, they could resolve item 2 immediately, then forward the email to the administrator to create an account at their convenience.

In our installation all our Project Managers are Administrators anyway (because they need to approve their teams timesheets), so have the access rights to create new users anyway.

WORKetc has a really great email integration tool. You download an app and it works directly from Outlook (would be nice if it had an Apple version too).

If there was an email that you wanted attached to a project or client, you simply left clicked on the email and a dialogue box opened with drop-down menus. You selected the project or client, click submit, and you're done. (You would also have to sign into your account if you hadn't already done that for the email app.) No need to know the project or task number.

Since most project communication is done via email, this is by far the most efficient means of tracking.

Any chance of Intervals developing such an app?

Cheers,
Scott