Personalities

[Jeremy Howard]

Good idea, spruce! Um, yeah, sure we were already thinking it... Actually, we had got as far as deciding that people with full accounts could associate an alias with a personality so that it does all this, but I hadn't got as far as thinking about the general case. Although now that I think about it, I'm not convinced if it's a good idea or not--some mail programs don't like '+' in addresses, so maybe there should be a preference to turn this off...

[spruce]

Turn it of optionally for free users with the default to off? Fine with me as long as I still have access to it. I'm looking forward to seeing these aliases you are talking about, but I am using the secret words / plus addressing extensions in lieu of setting myself up to pay for multiple "accounts" when you decide to end beta/free for all mode.

[tenekun]

Yes. Plus-addressing is a great thing you have going, and I like it as much or better than having separate accounts. If anyone is interested, I have unlimited e-mail redirects available from my website (nukenet.com) - I can have them redirect to a plus-address (for example bob@nukenet.com could redirect to bob+linux@fastmail.fm, and therefore any mail sent to bob@nukenet.com would be delievered to Bob's fastmail acount in the folder called "linux"), or just to your main address. I have used almost no of these redirectors, so almost all common names are available (bob, john, matt, scott, sarah, jenny, christine, allison), and pretty much anything else. Please drop me a line via e-mail at email@nukenet.com if you are interested in a redirector!

Second - I must be one of those who doesn't like the personalities idea. I have many different signatures, but only one "from" e-mail address. I select which signature to use depending on who I'm sending the message to, not who appears to be sending it. That's my two cents' worth. Wait a sec... If I offer my two cents' worth, but someone will give me a penny for my thoughts... isn't someone making a penny? Oh well... Can't beat the system. Unless there is no spoon.

--Brandon

[Edwin]

That's the same way I use email - I send from one address, but I have over a dozen signatures depending on the recipient and what I am talking about/selling.

Perhaps personalities could work so that each personality has a BATCH OF signatures, and each signature can be selected individually.

That way, people with e.g. 5 aliases each with 10 signatures will be happy, and people with just one alias just keep the default personality but can choose signatures.

IMO this is much more intuitive as this is how email packages (e.g. Pegasus) work now...

[tenekun]

Or for even more complication... You could make "sig-groups" which work as thus:

1. You add as many signatures as you need independantly of any other function. They are each given a blank list.
2. Each address in your address-book can now be added to a signature's list (ie. Bob, Mary, and Jane - business associates - would be added to the list for your professional signature; whereas Paul, Tom and Sarah - family members - would be added to your personal signature's list.)

This seems like a nice idea - but from where I see it, it is a bit complicated (for users and coders alike). However, I would certainly use this function.

--Brandon

[robmueller]

I just got an email which reminded me about personalities again. I've been a bit distracted recently, but wanted to make sure we can get all the specs sorted for when I'm starting on it again.

Each personality will have:
1. Display name (name to display in the popup on the compose screen)
2. Full Name (to attach to email, can leave blank if none)
3. Email address (used as the From and Reply-To fields)
4. Optional list of extra email addresses to associate with this personality
5. Default Inbox folder (email sent to addrs in 3 and 5 above go into this folder automatically)
6. Default Sent Items folder (email sent as this personality goes into this folder (optional on compose screen))
7. (Maybe a signature)
8. (Maybe an optional Pop Link associated with this personality)
9. (Maybe an optional Secret Word associated with this personality)

We'll have to decide about signatures. A few people seem to have several different signatures they switch around with within the same 'personality'. I'm not too sure how common or how important this is too people. I think most people would be happy with 1 signature per personality, but of course you can't please everyone all of the time...

The Pop Link and Secret Word association basically has to do with when you're Bcc'd in on an email. Say you have a pop account joe@myisp.com and someone Bcc's email to you there. Then joe@myisp.com doesn't actually appear anywhere in the email itself. So if you setup a Pop Link to retrieve from that account, it won't get automatically filed into the personalities inbox because it can't find the email address from item 3 above in the email message.

The two possible solutions are thus, associate an optional Pop Link with a personality, or a 'secret word' which people can use when sending to you so it automatically goes into the right folder.

Any more thoughts, comments, questions?

Rob

[Jeremy Howard]

I think that you should be able to associate a personality with a Pop Link from the Pop Links screen, rather than have a Pop Link field in the Personalities screen. I may well want multiple Pop Links to be associated with the same personality.

I suggest making the name of the personality automatically become the secret word. You just have to make sure that people don't put illegal address characters in the personality name.

[pobelly]

So if you setup a Pop Link to retrieve from that account, it won't get automatically filed into the personalities inbox because it can't find the email address from item 3 above in the email message.

i may be not grasping the full scope of this situation, but it seems like if you looked in the x-poplink: header for identity information, a person could just give the pop link the same name as the identity they want it associated with... then you wouldn't have to clutter either interface trying to cross-reference them... just a thought.

whoops, i wasn't thinking about this when i posted the first part:

I may well want multiple Pop Links to be associated with the same personality.

maybe not such a good idea... but yeah, making the association from the poplinks set-up still makes sense to me.

[spruce]

Well, here's an idea:

Let people optionally set up personality templates.

These would include most of the previous list of stuff you set up for the personality, and one or two personality variables. I don't know how you'd delimit them or whatever, but hypothetically they'll look like var1 and var2 Then your template signature could have user+ var1 @fastmail.fm; as could your template return address; and even a template rule that looks for this and maybe bounces it if it is in the Envelope or whatever; and your template folder could just be var1

Then, for people setting up a massive amount of personalities, you would just have a resulting wizard available that asks you for your template (maybe defaulted to one,) a secret word, and the email address of the person whose address you want to add. It would then use the template to create the new address, folder, signature, and filter in one easy step, resulting in far more flexibility, far less typing and maintenance, and fewer configuration typos.

I'd use it!

[Sequoya]

I can hardly wait!!!

I have plans to use at least 3 personalities that I can think of right now.

This is by far the best email service I've ever used. My guess is I'm headed for Premium Membership!