Proposal for a change to EmailAgent
We’re considering a change to Dovetail EmailAgent, and wanted to float it by our users to see if anyone had any concerns or objections.
Currently, when EmailAgent adds more information to a case, it actually performs a Log Note action. Clarify has a "Email In" activity, but we don’t currently use that. This is odd.
EmailAgent also creates attachments for any files that were attached to the email.
One of the issues is that there is no relationship between the notes (notes_log) and the attachments (doc_inst), so it can be difficult to determine exactly which attachments were for which email.
Why Log Notes?
History, mostly.
We don’t have an "Email In" API in ClearBasic – which is the language that our original email processing engine was written in (it was then called SuperEmailClerk). So, the "Log Notes" API was used instead.
When SuperEmailClerk was ported from CB to .NET, the functionality stayed the same, including the use of the call to Log Notes.
We also don’t currently have an "Email In" API in the fcSDK.
Proposal
We’re proposing to create an "Email In" API within the fcSDK, and modify EmailAgent so that it uses this "Email In" API rather than "Log Notes".
This will actually store the contents of the email in the email_log table, as opposed to the notes_log table.
In addition, the email_log table already has a relation to doc_inst.
So, we will fill in this relation, thus all attachments (from that email) will be properly related to the email itself.
What will this affect?
Its possible that this will affect business rules that are setup to fire on "Log Notes", in particular those that are meant to capture Log Notes created by EmailAgent.
These business rules would need to be changed to include a start event of "Email In".
Concerns?
This should only be a minor issue (at worst) for our customers, but before we made this change, we wanted to float it past our users, and see if anyone has any concerns or objections.
Please leave your comments here, or you can also email me: gary [at] dovetailsoftware [dot] com.
