Automatic Email Archiving

When emails are sent from Answers, they can be sent one of various ways.  If emails are sent through Outlook or Windows Mail, or some other integrated Windows application, the emails are created by Answers and put into the Outbox and the application sends the email, and then moves it to the Sent Items folder.  This means a copy of the email is retained on the user's PC, just like any other email they send.  But, these emails are only accessible and viewable by the user who sent them.  If the emails are sent through VSI-Fax or the SMTP email method, there is no Outbox and Sent Items, so there is no copy of the emails retained.  This can make it difficult for other users to find copies of emails and what attachments may have been sent with the email.

Answers has an option that it can automatically make a copy of the emails sent and put them into the Attached/Scanned Images window for the appropriate document.  So, if you email a quote, it will make a copy of the email, including the attachments, and save it as an attachment to the Quote.  This allows you to to at any time, look at any email sent by any user and it will show all the copies of the quote and additional attachments that were sent.

 These attachments are easily identifiable because they say "Email Message xx/xx/xx @ xx:xx:xx.  And, if there were multiple documents sent (such as multiple invoice copies) or statements, those documents will show what type of email it was (statement, invoices) and be attached to the customer. 

When you look at one of these attachments, you see all the fields from the original email:

And, the user has the option of viewing the attachments and even clicking on Edit and Resend to send basically the same email with the same attachments.

Obviously this type of history and archiving is extremely useful, but can take us storage space, so the Scanned Images/Attachments Purge has an extra option that allow you to only purge the email messages.  This allows you to clean up older emails and keep all your other scanned documents.

There is a configuration option that can be used to turn this feature on and off, it is # 5 under the Advanced Menu options in the Answers Configuration.

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