Multiple Users Sharing Email Accounts - How to make messages “unread” for each user? [closed]

Question

Sorry if this isn't appropriate for webmasters stackexchange, but i'm not sure where it would go since it has to do with the logistics of setting up a website/email for a small company.

I have an ecommerce store with multiple addresses such as: - help@mystore.com - orders@mystore.com

I'm not the only person managing the store. My partner and I both have those email accounts set up on each of our respective computers (right now it's using IMAP - he's on outlook and i'm on thunderbird).

We have one major problem with this setup - If I read an email before he does, he doesn't know it ever arrived because the IMAP tells the server that the email has been "read". Of course, the same problem exists if he reads an email before I do.

I understand that i can fix this problem by switching to POP3 and leaving the messages on the server. I'm okay with that... but it creates a NEW PROBLEM. If he replies to an email, it is no longer sync'd back to the server and therefore I can't read any emails that he has sent out. Same problem vice versa. This is also important for us because we want to know if one of us has already replied to an email so that the same thing isn't being done twice. With IMAP, all our sent emails are put in the Sent folder and synced to the server.

What's a good way to set this up for a small company where email sharing is involved? My website is hosted on arvixe business ASP...

Answer 1

I would stick with using IMAP as it probably will avoid bigger problems. IMAP does have provision for a client to read messages without setting the "has been read" flag and for separately reseting the "has been read" flag, but I don't know if Outlook and Thunderbird have ways to take advantage of either.

In your situation, I would make use of the in-head "has been read" flag, even if it is not all that reliable. If you see that somebody has read a message, and can't remember if you have read it, you can read the message (possibly again). I don't see why that would be a large problem.

Answer 2

Just a suggestion: You might want to see whether you can set these up as some form of mailing list instead of single email inboxes. We did this some time ago -- in fact we now use a request tracking/ticketing system to manage orders and support. The downside is having to make sure that sent messages get archived somewhere that everybody who works in that customer service role can see them (cc'ing to the list can generally solve that). On the plus side, we found that having a mailing list archive, especially one that is designed to make it as easy as possible to keep track of unanswered/unclosed queries, has been very helpful for customer service in general.

Answer 3

You have two options

1. Sync your email clients using the following method by sharing your outlook pst files.

   http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2011/05/how-to-sync-your-desktop-email-client-across-multiple-computers/

2. Stop using desktop email clients and move to online web mail. Either use Gmail to handle both accounts which you can share access to. Use Google Apps, or Zoho email. Some other reasons to switch to cloud based email http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/stop-desktop-email-clients-stop-opinion/

I would use web based email to avoid headaches of syncing mail. Figure if you're smart phones have to have internet access to download emails. Same with your desktops why not just use a web based provider? You can read all emails sent, conversations between customers and know which emails were already read. You can read them again to catch up with whats going on and integrate say gmail with google calendar and tasks etc. There are just many more options IMHO with cloud based email these days.