Let me add some detail to my issue, so that perhaps others will recognze the
problem and suggest a solution.
The e-mail form in Outlook 2007 has a ribbon across its top called
"Message". In that ribbon is a panel called "Business Contact Manager".
That panel contains two buttons, "Link to Record" and "E-Mail Auto-link".
The "Link to Record" button allows you to manually link that particular
e-mail to an Account, a Business Contact, an Opportunity or a Business
Project in BCM. If you use that button only, then each e-mail has to be
manually linked. The "E-mail Auto-link" button seems to offer a partial and
automated alternative to manual linking. It seems to offer the option to
link an e-mail address to a Business Project in BCM, and thus to
automatically link future e-mails from that same address to the selected
Business Project.
Here is how I think it works, or should work. When I receive an email from
say "joe@yaha.com", I click "Email Auto-Link" at the top of the e-mail. This
opens a box titled "Select Addresses and Business Projects to Link". There
are two tabs in the box; a tab called "E-mail Addresses", which shows the
e-mail address
joe@yaha.com with a check box, and a tab called "Business
Contact Manager Projects", which lists all my Business Projects with check
boxes next to them.
I think what is SUPPOSED to happen is that by checking the box for
joe@yaha.com on the first tab and the box for a Business Project (say "Smith
v. Jones") on the second, I am linking
joe@yaha.com to the Business Project
Smith v. Jones for the present e-mail and all e-mails I receive in the future
that contain this address.
The benefit of course is avoiding the time needed to manually link every
future e-mail for
joe@yaha.com to Smith v. Jones.
What I find, though, is that this auto-link feature works well sometimes and
not at all in other times. For example, it may be that I used the auto-link
as described above, but the next e-mail from
joe@yada.com is not linked to
Smith v. Jones when I open it and check it. So I have to manually link it.
Sometimes the auto-linking will work for a while, and then mysteriously stop
working for a particular address. Sometimes the utility goes a little crazy
and links an e-mail address to more than one Business Project, including
Projects to which the address has no relevance and was never auto-linked.
I have spent a lot of time explaining my problem. I hope someone out there
has a good suggestion. Thanks for listening.
"Bill Mack" wrote:
> I find that Email Autolink only works sometimes. I use it to link emails I
> receive to difference Business Projects. I try to be careful to check both
> the email address in the first tab and the relevant Business Project in the
> second tab. On many occasions, however, even after I have done this, I find
> that the next email I receive from the same address is not linked to the
> Project, as it should be.
> I have the feeling (but have not conducted a real study) that if I link the
> FIRST email I receive from a new contact to a particular Business Project,
> Email Autolink tends to work, but if I try it with later emails, it does not
> do so well.
> Any thoughts on what I may be doing wrong or have not done right?
> > Bill Mack