[pmwiki-users] Email response management system

kirpi at kirpi.it kirpi at kirpi.it
Wed Aug 16 09:22:00 CDT 2006


I work for the German National Tourist Board.
As it happens, a lot of people write email and ask, let's say, info
about Berlin or the Oktoberfest.

And here is my Midnight Summer's Dream: I would like to see if it is
possible to build a basic email response system within my wiki site,
thus also enjoying a web knowledgebase open to all.
Some rough ideas I started with...

a) Small pieces of information are kept as individual pages, let's say
on a "Knowledgebase" group.
This way they are
- web based
- individually editable
- "atomic" (I mean "they make sense even alone", "selfstanding", they
are basic pieces of information, small bricks, units)
- examples:
                - Webcam in Berlin Mitte http://www.dhm.de/webcams/VID2.html
                - Wheather forecast for Berlin
http://it.weather.yahoo.com/GMXX/GMXX0007/index_c.html

b) Pages for any topic can easily be written, with the convenient
inclusion of the "Knowledgebase" pages. Grouped under "Topic" those
pages also are:
- web based
- individually editable
- "organic", sort of "cells", richer pieces of information.
- example: A page about "Berlin" could show some text and then include
other pages both from the "Knowledgebase" and the "Topic" groups.

c) Here comes the hard (to me) task: the core of the email response
management system.
A special page is set which has two parts:
        1) A pagelist (say on the left) from both "Knowledgebase" and
the "Topic" groups
        2) A mail form (say on the right). As long as I click on every
single link in the pagelist, the content from the clicked page fills
the textarea, one after the other. Just add the mail address and the
subject, and the email is sent.

----

This way, composing and sending emails is a matter of seconds.
Also, precomposed mails with the most common topics can be stored in
advance as individual "Topic" pages (example: Weekend Trip to Berlin).

Having an online knowledgebase adds value to the project, in that it
is available to everybody on the internet, and is not hidden within an
office for internal use.

We just handle 50-100 emails per day, so we do not need specialized
and sophisticated software.

As I'm not a programmer, I started by searching for available pieces
of code to be used.
A few of them are listed here
http://www.kirpi.it/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Mail.HomePage (please add, if
interested).
The hard part (to me) would be to let the page contents jump into a
textarea when clicking on the links, and then add more contents as
long as I keep on clicking.

Does anybody think it could be an interesting idea?
Feasible?
Better ideas?
Willing to contribute?

Luigi




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