Want to quickly find that message from yesterday that came in with an attachment? How about the one where you wrote a note?

Email Center Pro lists this information in visual format, right next to each message in a list. Just scan down the message listing to find the icon you’re looking for:

1. The Note icon indicates that an internal note has been added to the conversation.
2. A red pencil lets you know someone else is reading this message and you won’t be able to make any changes.
3. A yellow pencil indicates that a draft has been saved for this conversation.
4. A paper clip indicates that a file is attached to the email.
5. A green arrow indicates that an outgoing message has been sent (usually a reply).
6. All conversations in the Archive folder show the archive box, instead of the envelope, as their main icon.
7. All conversations in the Spam folder show the spam shield, instead of the envelope, as their main icon.
8. All conversations which contain only a Draft, in the Drafts folder, show the Draft icon, instead of the envelope, as their main icon.
9. All conversations in the Trash folder show the trash can, instead of the envelope, as their main icon.

Tags: ecp update
Posted on January 8th, 2009 | 1 Comment »

Sometimes, you’re right in the middle of a detailed reply when – wait, what? A fire drill? Right now? OK, hold on…Don’t worry, Email Center Pro has you covered.

Save Draft

At any point during composing or replying to a message, you can click the Save Draft button on the toolbar. Your message will be saved for editing and sending later.

Edit and Send Draft

Ready to go back to that email?

1. Click the Inbox tab
2. Open the relevant Mailbox
3. Click the new Drafts folder (along the left side, by Inbox and Archive)
4. Click to select the Draft you wish to edit from the list
5. In the Preview pane below the message listing, click Edit Draft

After you’ve made any desired changes, you can click Save Draft again, or click Send to send the edited draft and add your message to the full conversation.

Conversation Tracking

You’ll also notice a few new features for better tracking the flow of conversations. The right-hand side of a conversation now displays the full Conversation History, including actions such as assigning a conversation, moving it to a different mailbox, archiving it, as well as any internal Notes. You can even click the RSS Feed logo for an individual conversation to get instant updates about it when you’re on the go.

Premium Perks
Premium and Standard-level account users get a couple of new Dashboard widgets for tracking Starred Conversations and creating Custom rules for tracking mail. Click Add More Widgets to preview these new features.

Tags: ecp update
Posted on December 28th, 2008 | No Comments »

Most people who use Outlook or Yahoo! Mail would say it’s like looking in the right drawer for a pair of socks, or finding a specific folder in a specific filing cabinet.

But your email conversations aren’t physical things, tangible pieces of paper you shuffle from one side of the desk to the other. They’re digital information. Little ones and zeroes that blip across the Internet to help you do business better.

Here at Palo Alto Software, Inc., we think finding a specific email exchange should be like finding information with a powerful search engine:

Dynamic results

Chances are, if you Google “economy,” you’ll get different search results from one day to another, because the relevant data keeps changing in real time. Your email changes every day, too, as you have real-time interactions with clients, customers, colleagues, and suppliers.

Sort across categories

Search engines don’t restrict their searches only to websites hosted in your city. They don’t artificially limit search results to websites created by people whose names start with A. We think finding email should be this flexible.

Saved Searches

Email Center Pro includes an advanced search function which lets you choose criteria, from full-text search, to mailbox name, assignee, most recent action date, or even whether the email had an attachment.
In addition, you can save your searches for future reference, see them on the Dashboard when you first log in, and even share them with other users.

Click here for detailed instructions on searching.

Tags: ecp update
Posted on December 18th, 2008 | No Comments »

Your Email Center Pro account has been improved, again! Today’s feature pack includes powerful new options for organizing, tracking, and connecting with your email Contacts.

Tag, you’re it!
Just as you can tag conversations, you can now add unique tags to individual contacts. Group various Contacts together to make them easier to find, and send emails to an entire tag group at once.

Calling the play
Have something so urgent it just can’t wait for email? Open a Contact, and use the new options to dial a voice-over-IP (VOIP) phone call and record notes about the conversation, or open up an Instant Message (IM) conversation. Now that’s integrated communications.

Foreign players
Email Center Pro can now mass-import your Contacts from an address book in Outlook or other software applications. And easy exporting of Contacts with the same format means you can always keep your most up-to-date contact information current across all your CRM tools.

Aren’t you glad you’re on the Email Center Pro team?

Tags: ecp update
Posted on December 11th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

Email Center Pro does a great job of helping your team get to “Inbox Zero,” especially since conversations are auto-archived after you’ve dealt with them (by default, but this setting can be changed).  Most of our users are big fans of this strategy, as conversations only hang around in the inbox when they need attention, and otherwise they’re tucked away safely in the archive.  When a customer responds, the whole thread comes right back into the inbox, ready for your next move.  The reality for many organizations is that the conversation isn’t always so back and forth – for example you’ve sent a quote but haven’t heard back… you want to give people a bit of time to make their decision, but you also want to make sure not to lose track of these leads.

Thankfully, with Email Center Pro’s saved searches feature, you’ll never lose track of another promising lead again.  I put together an example search (pictured) that will help your team keep tabs on these contacts.  When responding to a message to which you want to ensure some follow-up, add a simple tag such as “follow up.”  Then you can set up a saved search with the following 2 rules:

• Tag is “follow up” (or any other tag/tags you wish to use for this purpose).
• Action Date is older than 1 week (or your preferred follow-up window) – you could also specify Message Date as the criterion. The distinction is that internal activity such as adding a note, etc. will update the Action Date, whereas the Message Date is determined by the most recent message.

That’s it! Email Center Pro will track these threads for you and present you with a list of applicable conversations when the time comes to contact the lead again.  You can even set up alerts or an RSS feed based on this saved search and have the results delivered directly to your email or feed reader when there’s a conversation that needs some follow up.

Tags: ECP, ecp update
Posted on December 5th, 2008 | No Comments »

Sound familiar? You come into the office, power up the computer, turn off the voice mail, and when the PC finally boots up, start checking multiple email inboxes to see what’s come in overnight. Wouldn’t it be nice to receive a listing of email from all addresses into one place? If you’re an Email Center Pro customer, you can. Check out this video and see how simple it is to receive email alerts:

Tags: alerts, ecp update, Email
Posted on November 25th, 2008 | No Comments »

We’ve just released a remastered Director’s Cut of Email Center Pro with new features to help your ensemble cast manage email. Email Center Pro: Special Edition is available right now in a browser near you.

A Star is born

Throw the spotlight on important conversations by clicking the star. That little conversation from Kansas will be thrust into the Starred folder, where you can relive its triumphs again and again on DVD and Blu-Ray. Celebrity is fickle, of course; when its 15 minutes are up, click the star again to send it back home to the Sunflower state.

We’ll have our people call your people

You’re a famous movie star; you don’t need to sit in front of Email Center Pro all day waiting for the mail to come in. RSS is your agent, pounding the pavement for you while you sit on the beach in Boca. When new mail comes in, your RSS reader can notify you that it’s time to make an appearance. You can even subscribe to a Saved Search, which should satisfy even the most capricious taste.

Of course, if you’re more Boise than Boca this week, you can stay in the loop using the new RSS Feed widget and get updates from any RSS-enabled blog or web service right on your dashboard.

Lights, Camera, ACTION

The paparazzi never blinks and neither does the Recent Actions dashboard widget. Newly improved with powerful filters, you can use it to find out who keeps assigning you all the spam, or deleting all of your mail from casting directors.

Enjoy the new features in Email Center Pro- we did it for the little people.

Tags: ecp update
Posted on November 20th, 2008 | No Comments »

How often do you find yourself typing a response to a customer or affiliate and thinking, “Boy, how many times will I have to explain this?”

Email Center Pro lets you save a response as an email Template, so you can re-use it the next time the same question comes up. It’s more convenient, and because templates are accessible to all users, it helps you make sure everyone is answering the same question in pretty much the same way.

• Click the Template tab, then New template to create a template from scratch

• OR, after typing a reply, click the down arrow next to Send and choose Send and Save as Template to create a template based on your reply

Tags: ecp update
Posted on November 18th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

Account owners can now adjust the spam tolerance for the entire account to automatically send more or fewer messages straight to the Spam folder of the relevant mailbox.

1. Find the login links at the top of the screen (Logged in as…)
2. Click the Account link
3. From the Account Settings dialog, click the Account (Billing) tab
4. Under Spam Score, use the arrows to adjust your spam tolerance up or down. A higher number lets more mail into the Inbox; a lower number delivers more mail straight to the Spam folder.
5. Click Save (top right)
6. Close the Account Settings dialog

Tags: ecp update
Posted on November 13th, 2008 | No Comments »

On Thursday, your Email Center Pro account got a whole lot more useful.

The Dashboard can now be customized with a variety of fun and useful analytic widgets. Go ahead, click on any widget (that’s a technical term) like “My Mail” and drag it to a new location on the Dashboard.

You’ll see an option to “Add More Widgets” at the top left of the Dashboard, giving you access to a bunch of additional analytics to help manage your email process. Widgets available vary by account level.

Here are a couple examples of what you’ll find in the new feature pack for Email Center Pro:

Mailbox Breakdown

Make sure no one user is being overloaded with email assignments. This pie chart shows the breakdown of unassigned and assigned messages (by user) for a given mailbox. You can customize this by mailbox, or choose “Any Mailbox” to see assignments across all Inboxes.

 

Mailbox Response Time
See a running average of your email response time. Customize this histogram and detailed table by user, mailbox, and date range. This is an essential management tool.

We’ll be releasing more feature packs over the next several weeks, so stay tuned!

Tags: ecp update
Posted on October 31st, 2008 | No Comments »