[Design] Bridging the gap - email options

[Philippe Bossut]

Mimi Yin wrote:
> Hi Philippe,
>
> Can you provide some examples of rules you might have for filtering 
> email directly into Chandler?
All my rules are as simple as "if (simple condition) move to (IMAP 
folder)". The (simple condition) is a test on the To or Cc fields (for 
lists) or Subject field (for spam for instance). That's about it. It's 
simple but very efficient. I've never more than a few dozen emails in my 
InBox with that system and I don't waste time switching context when 
moving from one email to the next.
> Another issue that hasn't been mentioned:
>
> If we postulate that the emails users will want to put into Chandler 
> are the emails that represent tasks, invitations, and emails need to 
> be reviewed in more detail and/or replied to...when users file emails 
> into the special 'Chandler' IMAP folder, will they want to keep those 
> emails in the Inbox as flagged items?
I'd say "no" and this is why I want to be able to do some decent email 
editing in Chandler: once I move an item in Chandler, I want to have it 
live there, even is that means loosing some editing capabilities. I 
don't want (as a user) to have to track the same item in 2 different 
places. Ideally, I'll leave all the "pure email" stuff in Thunderbird 
and move everything that's tasks, events (whether or not they contain 
Chandler specific task or even info...) and project in Chandler.
> Over and over again in our interviews, people lamented that their 
> Inboxes got out of control because they felt the need to keep 'emails 
> that need follow-up' in their Inbox, because it was basically the only 
> view they knew they would always be looking at / aware of.
Well, in a way, my filtering amount to having several InBoxes (one per 
list basically and I'm registered to a dozen) but that lowers my stress 
level quite a bit (I know I can live with several hundreds of unread wx 
emails and few dozen BayPiggies without jeopardizing my job...).
> It seems like the optimal workflow would be to set up a rule to 'Copy' 
> flagged items to the Chandler IMAP folder, while
"while" what?
> This gives users a familiar / easy affordance with which to 'add' 
> individual emails to Chandler without having to remove them from the 
> Inbox.
Not sure I got your point considering the previous sentence was 
incomplete. In any case, I personally would not use a Copy mechanism or 
I would have to force myself to never do email in Chandler and use it 
solely for tracking/searching/triaging. I'm not sure it would be very 
satisfying though.

Cheers,
- Philippe