Let’s face it, we’re all addicted to e-mail and, if we’re not, everyone we know is, so there’s just no escaping the stuff.  The “Converse by E-mail” features built into nGen Collaboration let you easily move back and forth between e-mail and your online presence.  This primer discusses how and, by the way, it was created via e-mail too!

Create your e-mail using Outlook, GMail, or your favorite editor, then follow these three easy steps:  

1. Where to send your e-mail?

Each hub has a mailbox name that you’ll use for the “To:” e-mail address.  The mailbox names for the most popular hubs are shown in the table below:

If you need the mailbox name for an alternate Hub, please contact IT support via their e-mail account. 

Once you’ve found your destination mailbox name, simple add “mailbox_name@ngenplatform.com” to the “To:” or “Cc:” addressees on your e-mail.  For example, if you wished to converse on the nGenera Members Community, you’d include members@ngenplatform.com together with any other addressees.  

2. Establish Your Identity

When nGen Collaboration receives your e-mail it looks up your profile and posts the e-mail as a conversation under that profile.  For this reason, you must make sure your e-mail originates from the same e-mail account that you’ve registered with the nGen Platform.  For example, most nGenera employees wanting to converse by e-mail should send from their employee_name@ngenera.com mailbox. 

Sending from a personal (or otherwise unregistered e-mail address) will cause nGen Collaboration to reject the conversation.  Should this happen, nGen Collaboration will send a failure notice to the originating e-mail account.

3. Tag or Secure Your Conversation

Converse by E-mail supports tagging of conversations using the following syntax: 

[Tags: tag1 “multi-word tag2” tag3]

Where you enclose any number of tags, separated by spaces, within brackets and prepended with the command “Tag:” or “Tags:”.  Tagging in this manner can be invaluable because it lets you converse privately or within groups by including the tags within the body of the actual e-mail.  For those new to tagging, please read the Data Security primer.

As a concrete example, this post included the command:

[Tag: “Converse by E-mail” Primer Tutorial]

When it was created and, as you can see, now includes those tags!

Future Directions …

Here’s the short list of things we’re considering and/or working on:

•  Attachments
• Continuous Threads – e-mail replies to existing conversations should attach themselves appropriately to the existing online thread
• Alert or Notification Replies – in a manner similar to continuous threads we want people who receive system notices to have reasonable choices from within their e-mail package for replying.
• Creating other content types, including wiki pages
• Embedded images, files, media
• Whatever else you suggest … ?