7.3 Sending email

7.3.1 Sending messages

7.3.2 Sending attachments

7.3.3 Replying and forwarding

7.3.4 email address book

7.3.5 Sent mail folder

7.3.1 Sending messages

Note that you can send email without having set up a MailBox. However, a copy of the messages you send will only be stored once you have specified your sent mail folder - see section 7.3.5.

To send an email, click on Add  |   Compose E-mail  . A page will appear allowing you to compose a message (i.e. type in the recipient, subject, message etc.).

Figure 7.3-1 shows what this page will look like:

Figure 7.3-1: Composing an email

The three boxes at the top are for specifying the destination addresses. Email addresses typed in the "To" box denote the message's primary recipients. Often, this is the only one of the three fields which you will use.

Those in the "Cc" box will receive "carbon copies" of the message - the addresses will be visible to all who receive the email. Finally, the "Bcc" box is for nominating those who will have the message sent to them, but whose address will not be displayed in the message when it is received.

The "To", "Cc"and "Bcc" buttons to the left of these boxes are linked to your section 7.3.4.

If you wish to send an additional piece of information along with the text of the email message, you may do this by attaching it to the email. (Note that the information should first be stored somewhere on the Business Collaborator server.) The "Attach" button takes you to your bag, where you may select the documents to be attached to the email message. Alternatively, navigate round your folder hierarchy to find the files to be attached to the message. Once you have located the desired object(s), select it(them) by clicking on the checkbox next to them and click on  Selected  |  Attach  . You will be returned to your composition and the selected file(s) will be attached to the message.

Type the subject of your message in the "Subject" box - this should be brief.

Finally, you should type your message in the box beneath it. When you have finished composing your message, click the "Send" button - your email is now on its way.

If you wish to completely clear the current composition, because you no longer wish to send it, click the "Clear" button, whereupon you will be prompted to confirm the action. Caution: deleting the contents of a composition is irreversible!

7.3.2 Sending attachments

You can use Business Collaborator email to send documents to colleagues who are not registered with the server. Simply select the files to be sent and then click on   Selected  |  Attach  . This will automatically start up an email message with the appropriate attachments. Once you have selected the recipients and typed in the subject and message in the usual way, the documents can be sent.

7.3.3 Replying and forwarding

To reply to a message, click on   View/Change  |  Reply  while viewing the message. The message composition screen will appear, with some details already completed - the "To" and "Subject" fields will contain text, as will the "Message" field. (Note that the "Message" field will only contain text if the original message was in plain text). Edit the text as appropriate and send the message in the usual way.

To reply to all addressees (including those in the Cc: field), click on  View/Change  |  Reply to All  and proceed as described above.

Forwarding a message is equally simple - click on   View/Change  |  Forward   while viewing the message and it will be sent as an attachment. You simply have to fill in the remaining details.

7.3.4 email address book

When you click on the "To", "Cc" or "Bcc" buttons, you are presented with a view of your address book. In fact you see two lists - the one on the left represents your normal Business Collaborator address book (containing users of the system) - see section 4.4. The right-hand list is your personal email address book. This is purely designed to help you maintain a list of your most regular contacts.

Adding addresses to your personal email address book is easy - when viewing an email, click   View/Change  |  Take Addresses from Message  . The system will check the current message for addresses, and present you with any it finds. To add one of the addresses found to your personal email address book, click the checkbox to its left. You may optionally enter a name describing the address, e.g. a nickname. When you have chosen the addresses you want, click the button marked "Take these addresses"and they will be added to your personal address book.

To select some of these addresses as recipients of an email, click on the "To" (or "Cc" or "Bcc") buttons in the email composition page. To select several recipients from the list, hold down the CTRL key and click on the entries you want. Click the button at the bottom of the page to continue with your composition.

Note

The procedure described above for adding people to your email address book will not always show you every address found - those that are already in your address books are omitted to save space. If you want to view all of the addresses found, simply click the button marked "Show all addresses found". To return to the more sparse view, click "Show new addresses only".

7.3.5 Sent mail folder

To store all outgoing messages, you should nominate a mail folder for this purpose. You will find "Set sent mail folder" in your Personal Email Area.

Until you set up a sent mail folder, every outgoing email message will trigger a warning message.