Auto Text / Canned Response Text

[Per]

Hi,

Most professional CRM-type systems have this, and you need it if
you're running a business -- you need the ability to have a small
library of text snippets that you can insert into an email.

5 times a day, we get questions about international shipping speed.
The answer is the same. 10 times a day, people ask about how to enter
a particular discount code. The answer is the same. Every few days,
someone asks if they can become a reseller of our product. The answer
is the same.

It drives you crazy to write the same answers over and over and over,
so you should be able to make a small library of text snippets
(Microsoft call it Quick Parts), that you can insert. Our previous
email system had this, and we used it extensively, as does most people
who have the feature. However, we had to abandon that system for
unrelated reasons.

Currently, we maintain a separate Wiki for the sole purpose of having
access to our text snippets. This is obviously unbelievably
cumbersome, like starting a car with a hand crank.

I think that Google Apps deserves this feature. At least the paid
version. Companies answer the same questions over and over and over,
and to use Google Apps professionally, you need the ability to use
canned responses.

Best,

Per

[Fred Calm]

There are lots of futilities for Windows that will work with your
favorite email, IM or chat system and your favorite browser.
Softvoile's FlashPaste is one such tool and supports template text
with macro substitution when the template is instantiated and
inserted.

I don't know what's available for the penquin or the big cats (Tiger,
Panther, Leopard, and their feline friends).

</Fred>

[Per]

No, but you're missing the point. You use Google Apps because it's web-
based. If I wanted to be tied to a specific machine, I'd use Outlook
in a heartbeat. The whole point of Google Apps is that it's web-based.

Canned text responses are a mainstay of so many systems, and reading
through even just the last week of postings in this group, it has been
requested independently something like 5 times in the last week. Email
templates are a FUNDAMENTAL WORKFLOW. This is not some weird niche-
feature. The are plenty of programs to manage snippets on a single
computer, no problem whatsoever. But then you kill the entire purpose
of using Google Apps in the first place. Trust me, updating snippets
every time a change is made on the 5 to 10 computers you use during a
regular week, is a grotesque task.

But you're missing the point. If it's not a Google Apps feature, it
can not and will not be used. Unless you tie yourself to one computer,
and then why in the world would you use a web-based email solution.
The entire purpose is to be computer independent.

Per

> > Per- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Fred Calm]

1. Just which point am I missing? I described a workaround for a
missing feature. That doesn't mean baking it into Gmail would be a bad
idea or something I recommend against.

2. Using a customized browser does not tie me to a particular machine.
See my response to your post in the other thread about snoozing.

3. Lots of people are happy with Email and don't need or want a
workflow manglement system or a fully-featured CRM tool. As to
managing your snippets an a bunch of different machines at work, who
says the snippet tool and your DB have to be installed on the local
disk? Some futilities such as Softvoile's FlashPaste support a
personal library of canned text in addition to snippets shared at a
company, division or department level, and within the enterprise's
network, all of them can be on network drives.

This suggestion is a good one and more versatile than signature per
account. Whether Team Gmail feels it can be integrated into Gmail
smoothly with a nice interface and should take priority over other
enhancements is not for me to say.

</Fred>

[johncongdon]

I agree that this would be a great feature to have. Especially for
customer service.

On Aug 10, 3:19 pm, Per wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Most professional CRM-type systems have this, and you need it if
> you're running a business -- you need the ability to have a small

> library oftextsnippets that you can insert into an email.

>
> 5 times a day, we get questions about international shipping speed.
> The answer is the same. 10 times a day, people ask about how to enter
> a particular discount code. The answer is the same. Every few days,
> someone asks if they can become a reseller of our product. The answer
> is the same.
>
> It drives you crazy to write the same answers over and over and over,
> so you should be able to make a small library oftextsnippets
> (Microsoft call it Quick Parts), that you can insert. Our previous
> email system had this, and we used it extensively, as does most people
> who have the feature. However, we had to abandon that system for
> unrelated reasons.
>
> Currently, we maintain a separate Wiki for the sole purpose of having

> access to ourtextsnippets. This is obviously unbelievably

[Tom Martin]

As do i

[Gregory C. Harry Jr.]

Would it be possible to add a subject and pre determined recipients to canned responses?  The user case being if you send the same message to particular users, it would be easier to have this information pre-populated, instead of having to compose each time.

[Werner Moecke]

Hi All,

I have a question regarding this plug in. I have enabled Canned Responses in my Gmail account and set up a few responses to certain e-mail filters I had previously configured.

I had it running for quite some time now, but I see no visible results (meaning, my sent mail folder shows no responses that supposedly, would be there if the response emails had been sent according to my filter rules). Is this normal behaviour, or should there have been messages sent by this plug in?

My question arose due to the fact that my filter rules do not necessarily explicitly contain fully-qualified e-mail addresses; they mostly filter by domain, or other key words that encompass spammer domains not as efficiently caught by Gmail's spam filters as my own filters.

One may ask, "why is this dude setting up canned responses for spam senders" - well, I set up a canned response that says I do not want to receive unsolicited electronic mail; in my country, there is no law or enforcement that punishes spammers who continue to send mail and refuse to remove my address from their contacts. So, I had to take matters in my own hands. Whenever I receive some mail from some person I do not want to see: filters are triggered -> mail gets redirected to Trash -> canned response gets sent - unless it doesn't...

I hope someone can shed me some light on this matter.

[Arlo Belshee]

+1

Canned Responses are a great start. Please productize.

They're so close! Let me save header fields (subject, CC, BCC, To) and remove the special computation for my from email address (just use my default, rather than concating +canned.response into it). Two simple changes, one of which is just deleting some code, and this great feature would be ready to rock!