MailTank - Blog

Safari4 flies on Mailtank

2009-06-08T23:50:24Z

Just wanted to let everyone know that Apple released Safari 4 today and it rocks.

Better still it flies on Mailtank!

We are thrilled to see some show stopper bugs that beta users reported broke the editor in Mailtank have been vanquished.

So enjoy Mailtank with Safari 4.

Keep an eye out for a new podcast coming later today.

Also, later this week we will do another in which we talk about the upcoming major update to Mailtank.

One bad apple...

2009-04-27T23:11:00Z

We had a customer abuse our terms of service and basically send spam.

Most of the providers worked with us to resolve the issue.

Barracuda Networks, a maker of an anti-spam appliance has a reputation list that is publishes to its customers and our primary SMTP gateway ended up on that list.

We have taken action to resolve the issue by submitting the information needed for removal and have joined their for-pay emailreg.org system.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Shooting with the board of the XLA

2009-03-11T18:15:00Z

The Express Delivery and Logistics Association was in town over the weekend for their annual conference - which was being held pretty much in my backyard.

This was a very special occasion for me because it meant I finally got to meet a long time MailTank customer, Claudio Bacchi, who is Managing Partner of Red Logistics an express delivery company that provides complete logistics solutions to Latin America.

In a nut shell, Claudio is how Amazon gets a book to a customer who makes a purchase through an internet browser, but lives in the mountains of Chile.

Claudio has been using MailTank for three years, and he began with just two users to see if it would suit his company’s needs. Today Red Logistics has 5 users working together inside MailTank, and Claudio is able to manage the day to day operations from anywhere in the world. Because Claudio is often in some pretty far away places, this is a big plus.

Claudio is such a gift. He is an incredible guy and has lived some amazing experiences helping to shape the express delivery industry as it grew past the continental American borders. Claudio is a board member of the XLA, so we decided the only thing to do was to take some board members shooting! Twist my arm…

Here are some pics from our day at the range - it was loads of fun. I take clients shooting whenever they come to town, so I will post more of our exploits soon!

[Small Arms] [Longs] [Longs]

Southwest Technical Supply embraces MailTank

2009-01-31T21:53:00Z

Southwest Technical Supply (swestech.com) is a MailTank customer. Grossing over 5 million in sales annually requires a lot of hard work and attention to detail. That is why they are so happy to have found MailTank.

While MailTank allows every business to gain time when it comes to answering email, it can also add structure where none exists in your business. At MailTank’s core is a work flow engine that guides your people through their work with customers. Take a listen to how Southwest Technical Supply put MailTank in place, and took full advantage of all of MailTank’s function to streamline their business process and dramatically improve their customer service.

This interview lasts 7 minutes and 30 seconds. Is it worth investing the time?

Southwest Technical now runs their business through MailTank, so they would agree. And they are not alone:

“It is another Saturday in the office and I have a lot to do, but I just wanted to take a second to tell you how much I LOVE your service. I have no idea how we would grow our business so fast and get the comments we do from our Eco Consultants about how responsive we are. Seriously, the reason we have been able to get 100 people to start a business as our local eco consultant in 6 months, spend $450 for training and products, and then invest 40 hours in training, is becuase Mailtank allows us to communicate in a very personal way with linked Templates to them AND their clients. So when our 100 consultants each have 50 clients, we have to deal with 5,000 end clients and 100 eco consultants…and we do so with a HQ staff of 5, including Rosamaria and I. That is Mailtank. ”

Green Irene

Inaugural MailTank Podcast!

2009-01-09T23:40:00Z

MailTank 4 is nearly upon us.

2008-09-02T08:22:00Z

We have been working like mad to bring you version 4 of MailTank and had hoped roll it out today, September 2nd.

Well, as with most well laid plans, things took a slight turn at the last minute.

Migrating and validating existing customer accounts is taking longer than expected.

We want to be certain the transition goes smoothly, so it will be a few more days before the roll out begins.

Please check back throughout the week for news on the rollout.

In the meantime, if your an existing customer and would like a guided tour of version 4 drop us a note.

We are confident that it will be worth the wait.

Thanks again for your patience.

MailTank 4 is coming!

2008-05-22T18:39:00Z

Hola!

Recently a few related things fell into place and produced an extremely vibrant vision here at MailTank central, so we felt it important to issue a breaking State of the Tank message!

So far this year, we have had a fantastic experience working with customers, mastering technical challenges that result from steadily increasing the flow of email through MailTank, and collaborating with you folks to forge cool new ways to improve how we all work with our customers.

We felt things were beginning to simmer when we blew past a million messages early this year, and if things keep cooking the way they are, we are looking at 2 possibly 3 million messages by the time we wrap up 2008.

And all those messages have taught us a lot about what worked, what kind of worked, and what exploded in big fiery chunks.

A number of improvements deployed along the way - including the new Queue structure which handles 10,000 messages as easily as 100, multiple message transfers, full conversation view in the contact record, assigned message notice at login, keyboard shortcuts for common actions, sticky searches in the message archive, an improved settings section, about 200 under-the-hood performance upgrades that make the Tank just crank, and the brand spanking new VirtualPBX ACD queue integration so groups can do with phone calls what MailTank does with email.

Now, a lot of companies would look at that short list, congratulate themselves, lock programming until 2009, and jack the price content with the sense that they have done enough for you.

But we see your work blooming. We see your businesses continuing to grow and change in organic, sometimes dramatic ways, and we believe that every time your business needs to take a step forward we should too.

So we have no plans for stopping where the other guys would chose to.

Which brings us to the visions appearing to us as we test the mind expanding new version coming THIS summer, when we rollout MailTank 4.

MailTank 4 will mark a complete redesign of the user interface and the addition of several significant new features - some requested, some we dreamed up while communicating with customers - all of which aim to improve your experience. THIS summer.

Contact revolution!

MailTank’s current interface is an excellent evolution of our internal messaging environment from a few years ago. Without a doubt it grew through many iterations, and could very nicely keep on trucking for years to come, but there are some places where light shines through. And that caught our attention.

So, we started over - focused on the heart of our workflow - and produced a new interface that communicates much more information with much less noise. Now you get right to the heart of the conversation faster with more tools to provide the answer.

We revised and polished the language used inside the new interface to provide the clarity and consistency of stalwart e-mail systems so MailTank remains easy to learn and use.

In MailTank 4, contacts take the stage in a more important visual role. E-mail can now be coupled to the contact who sent it throughout the interface. This new shift makes a huge difference in how we approach our work day and actually lays the underpinnings for some very powerful message handling techniques to help you get answers out to customers like lightening with even more personal service.

Sweet.

The shift to contact focus let us add a slick new layer to MailTank: Cases.

Cases let MailTank act like message centric CRM for a sales team, bug tracking software for an application developer, a help desk solution for a customer service team, or all three at once if your business needs it. And all of it is headed your way. THIS summer.

Arigato. Ashoge. Gracias. Xie xie. Thanks.

So this is where we get to say thank you. Because of you, we get to follow our passion. Because of you, we get to keep working. Because of you, we get to try to give something back to the world even if its just email.

We love to hear from you - it helps us stay connected to the things we love the most about what we do. Please, please keep the feedback coming, so we can continue to grow along side your businesses and help you help your customers.

Standing by,

Christian

Small steps and big announcements

2008-05-12T07:38:00Z

This weekend two new features were deployed.

Per user defaults for queue page refresh times and message status. Both options can be found in the advanced user settings.

While these are minor changes, they were back ported from the next major release of Mailtank.

In the next week we will be unveiling some of the great new features coming over the summer.

A planned series of updates will culminate in a major rollout in July and August of what we are calling MailTank 4.

This new version will include a major revamp to the interface and many new features.

Check back later this week to learn more.

Improved message management inside MailTank

2008-04-13T11:53:35Z

This week’s update focuses on message management inside your MailTank.

Locked Tight.

MailTank has always displayed locking information when viewing a message that another user is in the process of composing a reply to. Now, when attempting a Reply or a Quick Reply, the message status is scrutinized on a much higher level, so time spent working with messages becomes much more efficient.

If the status of a message has changed since you began viewing it, you will be redirected back to MailTank’s message viewer with an alert detailing the new status information of the message.

In the case of Rapid Replies, when processing a group of messages, if any message’s status changes while you are composing the reply for those messages, it will simply be left out of the bulk processing.

Neon Assigns.

Assigned messages are a key component in MailTank’s collaboration toolkit. To enhance their priority status, a subtle highlight will appear at the top of the main queue page, when you log in, alerting you to important information about your assigned messages. The notice will disappear after the Queue page refreshes or you perform another action.

Because getting information to users who are not logged in can be critical - email notices resume inclusion of the body of the message, along with team related comments and a link to the message itself, when a single message is assigned. Email notice of mass message assignments will alternately include only team related comments and information about the number of messages that have been assigned.

Team Loyalty.

A new, optional, per user setting establishes a default team from which newly composed message are delivered is now available.

Thanks To You:

Folks. Your feedback continues to remain outstanding!! A huge round of applause goes out to all of you for putting the MailTank through its paces like Olympic Champions. MailTank cruised past 1,000,000,000 messages so fast we didn’t even see it until long after it had happened. We absolutely love including your feedback because it is a big part of making you happy - and an integral part to making your customers happy - so please, please, keep up the fantastic work!! We are standing by…

6 more reasons MailTank rocks

2008-03-28T17:04:42Z

We strive always to improve MailTank by carefully considering and responding to your feedback. It is one of the great benefits of working with you. In keeping with this, we would like to start sharing the details of forthcoming updates before we push them out the door.So, without further adieu…

This weekend’s update will include the following changes and improvements:

Persistent logins.

You will now have the option to keep your login information live for up to 2 weeks. To do so, simply check the option on the login page.

From that point forward, if you do not logout, you will automatically land on the main queue page whenever you surf to your MailTank. To clear this option, all you have to do is click the Logout tab, and the next time you surf to your MailTank you will land at the login page again.

Sharper attachments.

We are moving attachments to a new location at the top of a message so they are easier to access. Attachments can now be found directly below tags in the message header section.

Also, we have changed the way attachments are transported to help when they are downloaded by ‘right-click’ or ‘control+clicking’ a link.

Keyboard shortcuts.

To improve productivity, we are adding some basic keyboard shortcuts to perform common tasks. Trigger them by simply pressing the designated key on your keyboard:

C - Completes a message when viewing it
A - Assign a message when viewing it
R - Reply to a message when viewing it
T - Transfer a message when viewing it

…and clicking
N - creates a New message, template or contact in the corresponding section

…and clicking
E - Edit a template or contact when viewing it

Cursor placement.

From now on, when you choose to reply to a message, the cursor will automatically focus on the body field in the reply editor. That way you can click the reply link and start typing right away - no more fussing with your mouse.

Sticky searching.

When you perform a search of the queues and then take action on a ‘found’ message, the search criteria will be retained when you return to that queue. This will speed up working through the messages in a search result set.

Comment dating.

The date a comment is created will now be displayed next to the comment in the message viewer. We are through the looking glass here, people. There is no going back…

We hope that these new functions will enrich your experience when using MailTank. Please keep all the excellent feedback coming and please let us know if there is anything at all that we can do for you.

New Feature: Message Reminders

2007-12-13T15:56:21Z

Hot on the heels of our last announcement, we would like to debut another new feature: Message Reminders!

To take advantage of this function, look for the “Set Reminder” option that is now available when composing messages or replies. When you click that link you gain control over the reminder.

Message Reminders are very easy to use. All you have to do is choose a time period after which the message is placed back in your Pending queue so you can address it appropriately.

Use Message Reminders to prompt your team to follow-up with a customer, review a message to determine if further attention is needed, or to remind yourself of a task requiring action.

You can set the number of days anywhere from 1 to 365. Functional, simple and effective.

If you have any thoughts, questions, or suggestions please let us know.

New Feature: Template tagging!

2007-12-13T15:55:05Z

We are very excited to announce our newest feature: Template Tagging!

Yes, you can now tag your templates, and it works just like tagging messages or contacts. With this new feature it is even easier to organize and identify your templates. But wait, there is more…

Any tags on the template are automatically applied to a message when the template is used to draft or reply to a message.

This saves you time by cutting out a number of clicks and improves the consistency throughout your team.

To get started, simply create a new template (or edit an existing one), add the tags you want, and then save the template.

Again, when you draft a message or compose a reply (including Quick and Rapid replies) to a message using that template, the tags will be applied to the note automatically.

Please let us know what you think of this new feature. We hope you find it as useful we do!

Manage queues faster with new tabbed queues!

2007-11-28T01:03:00Z

We have been working with a number of high volume customers, some of whom handle thousands of messages at a time, on ways to improve their productivity and the performance of MailTank.

Introducing tabbed queues!

We think we came up with a great solution.

This will roll out to all customers the evening of November 28th.

Requires QuickTime ( Free download for Mac or Windows )

Improving performance with real world examples

2007-10-31T16:07:52Z

Everyday, we are looking for ways to improve performance, make MailTank more efficient and help people get things done.

This month we have been focusing on improving performance everywhere - but the Queue page jumped to the top of the list with one email from a customer.

They wrote to say they had over 1300 messages pending in their MailTank!

Guess, their appearance on some major web sites and news outlets catapulted them into the spotlight, and inundated them with new customers asking questions.

This is exactly what MailTank is designed for, but we had never seen such a large burst of messages in such a short period or time.

So we swung into action, placed a filter on their Queue to improve performance and help them get things rolling.

The next 6 hours we mined for buried treasure, looking for those hidden pockets of efficiency lurking beneath the code.

Testing against a real world example made it much easier to find the bottlenecks and whip them into shape.

The result is that loading those insanely large Queue pages is now 600-800% faster.

So gratifying to help a customer in a way that helps everyone using MailTank.

MailTank account management improved

2007-10-26T17:43:54Z

Starting today, Administrators can access a new ‘Subscriptions’ sction in the Control Panel of their MailTank.

We were shooting to roll this out at the beginning of October, but we took extra time to find just the right company and to build the most secure and easy to use system, period.

After careful review, and consultation with other companies, we chose Trust Commerce as our e-commerce partner. They are a VISA CISP/PCI Compliant Service Provider.

This means they conform to a very high level of e-commerce security standards and are audited every year to insure they meet and maintain every standard.

The Subscriptions section gives you complete control over your MailTank subscription – add and remove users when you need them, update your billing information, and review your account details in no time flat.

We really appreciate your business – it is our dream come true – and so we also want to say, Thank You!