Inboxes

This topic is organized into the following sections:

• About inboxes

• Inbox messages

• Access control in inboxes

• Email addresses

• Routing items in an inbox

About inboxes

An inbox is a special folder that can receive and store email. Anyone can send email to an inbox, so it is useful for receiving email from people outside of your project team or your organization. By sending copies of all email to an inbox, you can create an automatic archive of project correspondence.

Note: Inboxes in the recycle bin do not receive mail. If the inbox is restored, it will begin receiving mail as usual.

Inbox properties

When you create or edit an inbox, its properties are

• the name of the inbox -- required

• a description for the inbox

• whether members can add comments and take votes in the inbox -- initially on

• the access control settings for the inbox

• what the icon for the inbox looks like

• an address from which the inbox receives email

• whether the inbox has routing buttons

• whether the inbox has any custom commands (for details about custom commands, see the Server Extension Programmer's Guide within the eRoom API Help)

Allow new inboxes

Creating new inboxes is only allowed if the site option is turned on, and in addition, if the community option is turned on. If creating new inboxes is allowed at the site level, administrators have the option of turning it off at the community level. If "allow new inboxes" is turned off at the site level, members cannot create new inboxes in any community in the site.

When "allow new inboxes" is off for an eRoom (because the site or community option is turned off), the Create Item page still shows the inbox icon, but it is inoperable. However, when an eRoom is created from a template eRoom that has an inbox, both the eRoom and the inbox are created, regardless of this setting. Similarly, you can import an eRoom containing an inbox even if this setting is turned off.

Note: Inboxes must have unique addresses on a site, so in the event of a conflict, such as when you paste an inbox or import an eRoom containing an inbox with the same address as an existing inbox, eRoom automatically differentiates the name of the pasted or imported inbox.

Inbox messages

eRoom converts each email message sent to an inbox to an eRoom page like this:

• The subject line becomes the title of the page.

• The page contains:

• a member icon (). Clicking a member icon displays a menu with these options: Contact via email and See info.

• the text of the message

• attachments (if any)

You can edit the page (if you have the right to), add comments, and take votes, just as on other eRoom pages.

If rights management is enabled in your eRoom, eligible files that are attached to inbox messages may be protected by a rights-management policy.

Access control in inboxes

Inboxes have their own access control properties, as do the items they contain. When creating or editing an inbox, you can

• Set access control properties for the inbox.

• Specify the initial owner setting for the inbox, which determines the default Edit list for any new item created in the inbox.

Anyone can send email to an inbox, but you can prevent it from receiving email by setting the inbox to read-only. Only coordinators can edit email items received from someone who is not on the member list.

Email address

Each inbox has a unique email address.

When you create an inbox, eRoom uses settings on the Email page of Site Settings to generate a unique mail address for the inbox and displays the address at the top of the inbox page. The default email address for an inbox is eroomurl.inboxname@eroomserver.company.com if there is only one community, or communityname.eroomurl.inboxname@eroomserver.company.com if there is more than one, where inboxname defaults to an all-lowercase version of the inbox's display name, minus any invalid characters.

To create a descriptive and easy-to-read email address, edit text in the Address box when creating or editing an inbox.

Inbox addresses change after upgrading to eRoom 7.2

When your site is upgraded to 7.2, eRoom converts existing POP3 inboxes to SMTP inboxes. Existing inbox addresses change accordingly, as follows:

• Pre-7.2 inboxes have email addresses like this:

• As of 7.2, inboxes have email addresses as follows:

For a single community

For more than one community

Note: In the preceding 7.2 examples, inboxname is "0_425", which is ObjectID in the pre-7.2 example. For a new inbox created in 7.2, inboxname is the actual name of the inbox (such as "comments" or "feedback") instead of the item's ObjectID.

Routing items using an inbox

Just as in folders, in inboxes you can add routing buttons and you can route items.