Linus & Co! Save me from correspondance hell! Please.

[Spontaneocus]

Dear Linus,

You once said in your videos that you sometimes have a problem deciding on scripts/ideas for your videos

I actually have one that might be of interest to you. It would certainly be of interest to me.

I literally have thousands of emails and I also have a need to write snail mail to many of the different organisations, companies etc for myself and for my mother who is disabled.

Unfortunately sorting everything is a complete and utter pain in the rear end.

Firstly, have you considered actually doing a "ask Linus and co" submission service where your viewers can actually ask questions on specific topics. Because that would be cool.

Secondly, would you consider doing a video on setting up some kind of software-based facility which is free that allows a person to save emails to organisations, responses from organisations and attach normal letters from words in a specific software where a person can simply click on the name of the person and everything is there (preferably done automagically). Rules in email are a pain in the butt, loads of folders is a pain in the butt etc....something simple would be awesome Like CRM or tickets that companies would use but for the home user? Please save me from this living correspondence hell.

[Spontaneocus]

9 minutes ago, PacketMan said:

Have you taken a look at this forum? There are a lot of subforums for different topics where anyone can ask things

You can ask here or here

Thanks for the links mate. 

[lewdicrous]

Most of what you asked for is already in the forum, under various subforums, you just gotta post a topic in the correct one (without posting multiple topics in multiple subforums, cause that's annoying..)

 

Edit: Also, make sure that the topic you want to post hasn't already been posted, or the question you have hasn't already been answered.

[Spontaneocus]

9 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

-snip-

Thanks for the response. Simply put i'd like to have some form of software or app which reads incoming email, outgoing emails and files them under a profile by individual or company. I deal with a lot of disputes for people with organisations like the department for work and pensions in the UK (UK Social Security System) so it would be nice to have say all the emails I have sent and recieved from the DWP in one place where I could also upload/attach letters I have written in word and other notations about the DWP. So rather than having to setup rules for every single organisation and person to file all of the emails and store my snail mail letters written in word on a server then keep a spreadsheet of which letter belongs to which organisation etc, it's all held in one place by date order. So in a nutshell, I open up my browser (or the app), type in DWP and bang! Their contact numbers, email addresses, a list of emails in and out, notations on them and letters I have written and sent by normal mail are all there. 

[dalekphalm]

2 minutes ago, Spontaneocus said:

Thanks for the response. Simply put i'd like to have some form of software or app which reads incoming email, outgoing emails and files them under a profile by individual or company. I deal with a lot of disputes for people with organisations like the department for work and pensions in the UK (UK Social Security System) so it would be nice to have say all the emails I have sent and recieved from the DWP in one place where I could also upload/attach letters I have written in word and other notations about the DWP. So rather than having to setup rules for every single organisation and person to file all of the emails and store my snail mail letters written in word on a server then keep a spreadsheet of which letter belongs to which organisation etc, it's all held in one place by date order. So in a nutshell, I open up my browser (or the app), type in DWP and bang! Their contact numbers, email addresses, a list of emails in and out, notations on them and letters I have written and sent by normal mail are all there. 

What is your budget for such software?

[Spontaneocus]

11 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

What is your budget for such software?

I do most of my work as a volunteer so as close to zero as possible is what I will say. 

[dalekphalm]

8 minutes ago, Spontaneocus said:

I do most of my work as a volunteer so as close to zero as possible is what I will say. 

What are your web coding/PHP/SQL skills like?

[Spontaneocus]

2 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

What are your web coding/PHP/SQL skills like?

Novice. 

[dalekphalm]

5 minutes ago, Spontaneocus said:

Novice. 

Unfortunately, you're pretty much out of luck.

 

As far as I'm aware, there's no free software that will do exactly what you want. Email rules are by far the easiest and cheapest way to achieve most of your goals.

 

In terms of the "snail mail letters", you could create a Database (SQL or Access - Access is very easy to learn) to track and even "contain" the files.

 

There's really no easy way to combine the email + the snail mail letters, unless you ingest all your emails into the Database - but that's advanced level DB design.

 

You could buy an off-the-shelf IT Management system, but it's going to be pretty expensive to get the features you want.

[Spontaneocus]

36 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

37 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

As far as I'm aware, there's no free software that will do exactly what you want.

 

 

I don't have a problem with paying for one, just that it not be too expensive. 

[dalekphalm]

1 minute ago, Spontaneocus said:

I don't have a problem with paying for one, just that it not be too expensive. 

You should do some research into CRM/Ticketing systems then. Specifically ones that deal with both emails and paperwork - maybe insurance focused, for example.

 

I know this is definitely beyond the capabilities of Spiceworks, nor any of it's closest competitors.

[LogicalDrm]

Incoming email part is just about filters tagging emails based on sender, topic, receiver and maybe some keywords. This will have misses time to time ofc.

 

Snail-mail... I actually saw kinda solution. Made partly in-house as its part of another system, partly used in partnership with local postal service. So the coded part has templates which take some info from dropdown menus and lists. Others, like date and sender/signing part come automatically. Rest can be filled manually. Then print to PDF and add to postal services system with invoice details.

 

There probably is free and opensource stuff for this. But learning them will take time, and require some willingness to learn SQL while at it.