On 16/03/2012 01:23, Francis Irving wrote:
On Thu, Mar 15, 2012 at 09:43:58AM -0700, Julian Todd wrote:
It's simple: Just put the title of the request and the unique
identifier number you're using for the email address into the subject.
And then verify against it and override the email address id number
in cases where they were both issued for the same authority.
Looking at some of the emails Paul has received in the admin
interface, they often have subjects that have been reentered from
scratch by the council, usually inserting their own reference.
e.g. "Request for Information Ref:P0008478"
Yes; any automated system which relies on the subject line being
preserved will always be unreliable.
Part of the difficulty is that WDTK is used to contact authorities of
all sizes, from small organisations who get maybe one FOI request a year
(if that) and deal with it just as a normal email to large ministerial
departments which get hundreds (or more) a week and have a dedicated
ticketing system in place to handle them. So a one size fits all
approach isn't going to work, and it's entirely unrealistic to expect
all authorities to amend their own workflow in order to suit WDTK.
Personally, I think that the current system of a unique reply address
per request is most likely to give the right result more of the time
(certainly more often than relying on the subject line). The cases where
it doesn't are best addressed, IMO, by giving users the ability to move
move responses themselves when they're misdirected rather than having to
email WDTK volunteers to get it done. And maybe a bit of user education
as well, possibly by including a line in the actual request which says
"Please send all replies to this request to [email protected]"
rather than relying on the authority using the "reply" button.
Mark
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