Why does GW prevent reply to email I have sent? ie RE-reply?

[bwhiteside]

Yes, I can reply to emails sent to me and I can forward an email I have sent to some else, but why does GW prevent (grey out reply button) on emails that I have sent? IE why can I not "RE-REPLY" to an email?

All other email tools I have used in the past 28 years (yes, since 1980), allow this. Why not GW?

FYI we using GW 7.0.3

 

[marvhuffaker]

I think you're jumping to conclusions way too quickly by assuming it's GroupWise and not your particular installation/configuration. I have never heard of this before, and I've been working with GroupWise for a long time. There are several ways to reply to a message. You can open the message, then hit the reply button. Or you can right click the message and reply.. And depending on the view you have, could possibly be others.

I just checked on my system to confirm, and do not see this problem you mention. We are running GroupWise 8 beta in production and I can reply multiple times, no problem. We also have a GroupWise 7.03 demo system, also fully functional, and it doesn't have this problem either.

How are you looking at the message, and where do you see the button you are referring to that is greyed out?

Based on what I know about the architecture of GroupWise, it sounds like you may have the wrong 'Views' configured, and perhaps your system has some legacy views that are displaying differently than you should be seeing. And maybe those views have some kind of disconnect between buttons and dialogs with gw7. I see that problem a lot when upgrading in place from older versions of GroupWise. The views changed quite a bit with GW6.5 and gw7 but views that were in place previously are not necessarily removed, even though they are not needed or supported any longer.

If you could post a link to a screen shot, I would know pretty quickly if this is the case. I would need to see the dialog that is open when you reply to a message.

Also, I see a lot of systems that are severely neglected and never configured optimally. So I'm speculating (making a big assumption) that your system may not be configured optimally either. There is probably a laundry list of things that need to be done to clean it up, tune it, secure it, and get it running at peak performance.

Marvin

Marvin Huffaker, MCNE
Marvin Huffaker Consulting, Inc.
A Novell Platinum Partner

http://www.redjuju.com

 

[marvhuffaker]

I was just looking into this a little more and think I may know where you are struggling..

Are you going to the actual sent items, and trying to re-reply from there? Because yes, in those cases, it does grey out the reply button. This is just a matter of understanding the logic.

You can reply to the same message all day long, but you need to reply on the correct message, meaning the message that was originally sent to YOU. If you are trying to Reply to the Sent Message (In the Sent Items Folder), no it won't let you. That's because you'd essentially be replying to yourself. The logic is wrong.

Instead of trying to reply on a sent items message, you can RE-Send any message you want. Just right click and hit Resend, then enter what you want to say (or whatever)... Then send it. It will ask you if you want to retract the original, but you do not have to. It will send it again, and thus appear as a re-reply.

Just as a reference, I rarely look in my sent items, I do most of my work from my regular mail folders.





Marvin Huffaker, MCNE
Marvin Huffaker Consulting, Inc.
A Novell Platinum Partner

http://www.redjuju.com

 

[bwhiteside]

Hello Marvin,

Thank you for your input.

You say "...it won't let you. That's because you'd essentially be replying to yourself. The logic is wrong."

OK, the "logic is wrong" only if your model of email is exclusivley A to B, then B to A, then A to B..., but in my real world that is not the case. So the "logic is wrong" only if the wrong model is asummed.

Let me try to give an example. A sends B an email with three questions. B replies to A with answers to two questions but needs time to research the third question. Some time later later, B gets the third answer and (having no new reply from A) has to "re-reply" to the previous thread to satisfy A.

Option 1: Go to the Sent Items folder and use Action-Resend. Problem: The timestamp of the original email is lost so it is not clear that A had the answers to two of the questions immediately. And the sequential nature of the replies is lost.

Option 2: Create a wholy new email thread to A for the third question. Problem: One has to manually recreate the email lists (TO:, CC:, BCC if "A" is a list of interested parties and the continuity of the subject line and email thread is compeltely broken.

Option 3: Forward the first reply to A with the third answer. OK, this has a timestamp, but again one has to manually recreate the email address lists.

Other email systems (Thunderbird, UNIX mail, etc) do not impose this faulty model and "logic" on the user. Why does GW?

 

[marvhuffaker]

I'm not Novell, I don't work for Novell, and I can't speak for them and I don't make it a practice of defending them.

That said..

GroupWise 8 (Currently in public beta) has a 'threading' feature that you can use to view a complete message thread, and it embeds a thread ID into the messages so that they can be tracked. I do not know if it works on the messages that
are resent since I have not tested it that extensively.

You can always make an enhancement request to Novell at:

http://www.novell.com/enhancement_request/

Good luck.

Marvin Huffaker, MCNE
Marvin Huffaker Consulting, Inc.
A Novell Platinum Partner

http://www.redjuju.com

 

[blister911]

bwhiteside,

Can't user B just include themself on the first reply as a CC: ? Then, when they have a follow-up answer, they can reply to the first reply, not the original message...or maybe I'm way off track, here.

 

[bwhiteside]

blister911,

I am new to this forum and I see that my original entry describing my issue has disappeared.

What you missed is that I _am_ addressed on the reply but when I view that email item GW insists on "graying out" the reply button. So, no, I can not just reply to the reply (as I can in all other emaill tools I have used in the past 28 years).

marvhuffaker says a reply to myself is 'not logical'. But it happens to me a few times each week, as I tried to explain above.

 

[marvhuffaker]

Why don't you just use thunderbird then? You can certainly use it as a client and either pop or imap from the groupwise server.

Marvin Huffaker, MCNE
Marvin Huffaker Consulting, Inc.
A Novell Platinum Partner

http://www.redjuju.com