Helo with Outlook and Exchange

[knbink]

Hi All

I need some help or solution for a problem.
In the company where i am now, we have few departments, and in the sales department we have people leaving and coming in a short period of time.

So what i want to do is create a general mailbox, for example sales, which they all will use. I know i can do that, but here comes the problem, i want for the employees to be able when email is received, only 1 person will read it, and let everyone else know that they will take care of that email.

So any suggestions?

Thanks all for the help

 

[dhulbert]

Create sub folders under the InBox for each person, when they pick up the mail move to their folder.

As long as you don't have problem with people moving things in and out of other people folders.

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(1952-2001)

 

[knbink]

well, thats the problem, they might move so i am looking for a little better solution than this.

 

[Gruuuu]

This is doable, maybe, with a lot of coding.

So, are these emails going to be "addressed" to specific salespeople? Or will these be general emails that any salesperson can "claim"?

Furthermore, if people are leaving often, how do you want to handle emails that have not been taken care of as salespeople leave? (this is important to the setup)

 

[knbink]

No, this emails will be send to a general mailbox, like sales@example.com.
One way can be that each of them will be able to access this mailbox and see the emails.

Other way can be that each email that arrives to sales@example.com, will be forwarded to each of the salespeople, which is a little bit redundant.

Regarding when a salespeople leave, the email should be handled by any of the other salespersons.

Hopefully this answers your questions, even though like you wrote it, i would not like it to be setup this way.

Here is how i thought it should work, correct me if i am wrong:
Email arrives to sales@example.com, each of the sales persons can see it.
First one available, will read this email, and "claim" it.
Notice should be send and mark this email as read to all other salespersons.
Also, if it is possible the answer to the email to be seen again in the email that they are looking at.

So in this case, we dont have the extra need of setup for salespersons that leave, because if they took an email, they left, other sales person can just continue, because it has all the info needed.

I think that this can be done with rules and coding, but i dont know if it is a good idea and solution.

Thanks

 

[Gruuuu]

without using Rules and VBA, you would have to do something in javascript on the exchange server, which I would see as a much less desirable solution.

 

[knbink]

Well, i was thinking to use rules but I am not much familiar with VBA, but anyhow, please provide me with solution.

Isnt there some software that can do this?

 

[Gruuuu]

I, personally, haven't run across anything.

I'm looking into some event handling here, and I don't see a clean way of capturing the Read event on an arbitrary Mail Item.

Would a more manual approach work?
Example:
Have each sales associate set up an archive file, and move new inquiries into their archive folder as they come in?
The disadvantage to this is that other associates wouldn't see these items at all in the list.

This assumes that the sales people have their own station to work from. Or they could just password protect their archive folder.

None of this sounds like exactly what you want though.

 

[mintjulep]

You are assuming that your sales men will just act on things in the order that they arrive.

This seems a horribly wrong assumption.

Sales men work on commission. They will hover around, waiting for "the one big lead" that could land a fat commission, and the small fish will be unattended to entirely.

You need active management of the assignments.

 

[Gruuuu]

I'm definitely in agreement with mintjulep here.

However, that would be an Operations issue, which I am unqualified to offer solutions for!

 

[knbink]

Gruuu you are right, that wont be good.
mintjulep, thats true as well, they will look for a big lead and all the small will be unattended.

What will you suggest regarding active management of assignments?

 

[mintjulep]

I suggest that the assignments with the largest possible commission all go to the salesman who offers you the largest kick-back.

However your management may not be in full agreement with that arrangement.

 

[Gruuuu]

conversely, if you get a bonus for their success, you would assign the largest assignments to the most successful salespeople, who are most capable of landing big sales!

Come to think of it, that's pretty much how it should go anyway.