151925 - [RFE] filter action to auto-suggest responses

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Filters, enhancement)

Description

[Kaitlin Duck Sherwood]

This is similar to bug 151887 (auto-response), but much more powerful.

What I propose is that the filters be set up to prompt the user to select one or
more responses from a list of possible responses; the user should then have the
option of either send-as-is or to edit the message.

I actually got to use such a system in 1995 when I was the UIUC webmaster, and
it was *wonderful*.  For "customer support"-type jobs, it can make a 10x
improvement in response speed.  (Really.  If there's anyone at Netscape around
still who was at NCSA then (alanb?), ask them about Ben's @ATS.)

This would be a major competetive advantage over other email clients in the
customer-support niche.

EXAMPLE
Here's an example.  I had a rule set up so that if the string "admission"  was
in the body of the incoming message, it would suggest the "graduate admissions"
response and the "undergraduate admissions" response.  I also had a filter which
suggested the "I need more information" response for all messages.

When I read a message that had "admissions" in the body, at the bottom of the
message would be three checkboxes, marked "undergraduate admissions", "graduate
admissions", and "I need more information".  I could click on the titles of the
canned responses to bring up a window with the response.

Below the checkboxes would be "Edit" and "Send".

If I could tell that it was about undergrad admissions, I'd put a checkmark in
the first box.  If I could tell it was about graduate admissions, I'd but a
checkmark in the second box.  If I could tell that it was about admissions but
not which type, I'd check both boxes.  If it was some sort of word salad that
made no sense, I'd check the third box.

If it happened to be about a department that I knew something about, I might
click "Edit"  and add a line or two about the department.  Otherwise, I'd just
hit send.  Boom, done.

This is particularly useful when there are lots and lots of canned answers that
you might use.  It's much faster to choose from three answers than from three
hundred.

It also helps less-well-trained people do support.  Instead of someone having to
know how to explain a feature , instead of them having to know that a writeup on
said feature exists (and where to find it), all they have to be able to do is
read the question, read the suggested response(s), and recognize if the response
answers the question.


IMPLEMENTATION DETAILS
Should you implement this, the response corpus could come from responses stored
locally (see bug 21210).  

It would also be good to allow URLs (of all types, including file:) for the
suggested responses -- so that a group of people could take advantage of the
same answer corpus. 

It would also be good to be able to import/export filters on a per-filter basis
(bug 151612) so that the team can share the same filter corpus as well.

To best use this, there should be multiple actions per filter (bug 13145) or
even better, an autodownload of filters (bug 126688).

Comment 1

[Sander]

Confirming, valid RFE. This one would be really neat and could be the next best
thing after spam-filtering.

Comment 2

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

mass re-assign.

Comment 3

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

sorry for the spam.  making bugzilla reflect reality as I'm not working on these bugs.  filter on FOOBARCHEESE to remove these in bulk.

Comment 4

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

Filter on "Nobody_NScomTLD_20080620"