see in-line :o)
On Jul 24, 2006, at 10:48 PM, Philippe Bossut wrote:
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.
Can I bug you with a few more questions to clarify your workflow?
+ Are these rules primarily for mailing lists?
+ If the above is true, would you filter all of your mailing list
emails into Chandler?
+ Do you have rules for auto-filtering emails that represent tasks
for you? Could you provide some examples?
I think the point I'm trying to get across is that it's going to be
very hard for people to come up with a priori rules that 'auto-select
emails they will want to keep track of in Chandler'.
In other words, I think the most likely 'Email client-Chandler'
bridge scenario in the Beta timeframe is: Users hand-pick 'signal'
out of 'noise' from their email clients to add to Chandler via one of
the following mechanisms:
+ Drag and drop,
+ Drag and drop to IMAP folder
+ Flag emails + set up IMAP folder to automatically pick up flagged
items.
BONUS scenario:
+ Select a few rule-based IMAP folders that are of great importance
to me to auto-dump all emails in that folder into Chandler. e.g. I
might do that with the design list because basically every email to
the design list is a task on my todo list.
Performance-wise, in the Beta timeframe, is Chandler going to be
ready to deal with all of the noise from people's email clients as
well as the signals? (My worry is that if people start populating
Chandler with rule-based IMAP folders, they will end up with a lot of
noise in Chandler.)
Personally, from a design standpoint, I don't feel that Chandler will
be ready to deal with both noise AND signal. The NOW section of the
Dashboard (given the design we have in the Alpha 4 spec) could be
easily overwhelmed with too many irrelevant emails.
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.
I think it's great that you would move task management workflows over
to Chandler, but I'm not sure we can depend on all users to do that.
I think we need to provide users with workflow ramps to gently nudge
them towards depending on Chandler more and more over time by
allowing them to keep their umbilical cord to their Inbox / Task list
intact.
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?
oops. while allowing users to keep an eye on flagged items in their
Inbox.
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
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