CSM: Closely Integrated Email Functionality
In quite a few organizations that use 4me, email is still an important form of communication around the fulfillment of requests. This is often referred to as Customer Service Management, or CSM. For this reason, it is possible within 4me to send emails from requests (and problems, tasks, workflows, releases, projects, project tasks, and risks). These emails, and the replies to them, are stored within that request, as notes. This way, all relevant information about the request is then kept in 4me, instead of in an external email client. The email functionality in 4me has now been given a much more prominent place.
With this, it is now just as easy to write an email from within 4me than it is to write a note. A selector is available next to the field name of the note, which can change a Note field instantly to an Email form. For this selector to appear, there needs to be at least one email template available in the account to which the specialist is logged in.
The Email form contains a few additional fields, compared to the note. The email template needs to be selected and the To and (optionally) CC fields must be populated. The Subject and Body fields are populated (at least partly) based on the values from the selected email template. A Preview button is available to preview what the email looks like when the email design is applied.
As an email from a request or other record type is now created in Edit mode, and no longer in View mode (as it was when the functionality was still available from the Actions menu), it is now also possible to update the status of the request and send an email in one swift action. This also means that a required note may now also be an email: the note generated from that email is then regarded as the required note.
Of course, it is also still possible to send an internal email, of which the note becomes an internal note. To write an internal email, the selector next to the internal note should be used to change to the email form. An email template from the account to which the email (and note) should be internal must then be selected.
