MailTank configured by the control panel

The Control Panel and administrative set up.

MailTank makes use of a Control Panel to adjust the various settings required to get your MailTank to work exactly the way you want it to. Like the controls used in the main queue page and while working with messages, the control panel manages a number of functions. Changes you make inside the control panel take effect the moment you make them, but may not show themselves until seen inside a message, depending on the nature of the change.

If you do not have administrator's privileges the link to the Control Panel will not appear in your MailTank.

To access the 'back end' of your MailTank click on the Control Panel link in the list of links in the left hand margin. From there you can reach the tabs governing the various sections of the control panel.

The Account tab

The account tab displays an overview of your MailTank. The login URL is listed for reference. The number of active users is listed as well as the entire number of users that can be given access to your MailTank. Active users have login and password information described in their user settings while the account limit shows the total number of users.

The number of teams being utilized in your MailTank is also displayed. There is no limit to the number of teams you can add and each team represents an email box that can receive messages from one of your existing addresses.

The number of contacts inside your MailTank is listed, the number of messages sent in from customers is listed, and the number of replies sent out by your teams is listed.

Links to track your referrals, as well as mobile and iPhone access points are listed at the bottom.

Give the referral url out to those you think could benefit from using the MailTank and their accounts will be tracked. You will receive $5 each month for each seat that is subscribed through your referral. If a group subscribes 4 users to MailTank you will receive $20 each month that they are a customer.

The Teams tab

Clicking the Teams tab takes you to the Team overview page, where you can review all the existing teams as well as configure the teams inside your MailTank. You can also create new teams and view statistical reports for each team or all teams

To Destroy any team click the Destroy link. If you destroy a team, all of the messages associated with that team are destroyed along with it. Be sure to contact us prior to destroying a team unless you really don't care about losing the messages.

To see the details specific to any team just click on the name of the team. To create a new team click the 'Create' link which will take you to the team Editor.

Team details part 1

Once you click on a team name, you are taken to the team details page where you can see all of the elements and settings for that team. Some elements of a team you can edit while others you cannot.

Perhaps the two most important elements on the team page are the incoming 'Email' address and the 'Reply-to' address. The email address is the address of the mailbox in your MailTank that will receive the forwarded email from your public email address. You cannot edit this email address. The reply-to address is the address, in most cases, that is being forwarded into this team. The only case in which the reply to address would be different from the address that is forwarding email in to the MailTank is when you want to direct users to follow up with you at a different email address.

The Alert address is a second email box in your team reserved for urgent messages. It is bottomless like all email addresses in MailTank. Any email sent or forwarded to the alert address is displayed at the top of the main queue page in the Alerts queue to provide the highest visibility. You cannot edit the alerts email address.

The Escalation address is the default email address to which escalated messages are sent when you click the Escalate link when working with an email message from a customer. You can edit this address, as well as change it in the escalation editor when working with a message.

The BCC address is used to blind copy all outgoing messages from this team to an email account if you want to audit the workflow or just catch outgoing messages for archive purposes.

The Use Tickets element turns on MailTank's built in ticketing system for this team. It creates a unique ticket number for each new message that arrives in your MailTank, which is applied to the message when a user replies to that message. You can have teams that use ticketing and those that don't inside your MailTank.

When the Use Training Mode element is set to 'true', all of the replies sent out of your MailTank are delivered to the Escalate address above. This way you can train people using live messages without exposing them to customers. When replying to a message set the message status to Pending so the message remains in the main queue page.

Use automatic responder configures your MailTank send an automatic response to each customer when their message is received. Your auto response can contain up to 2000 characters.

Team details part 2.

'Use rich email' configures your MailTank to send rich email replies so you can create replies that carry a particular style. The rich email uses html markdown to format replies.

'Use web reply' includes a URL in each reply sent out that will allow the recipient to respond through their web browser instead of using another email if they require further assistance.

'Send threaded reply' attaches the customer's original email at the bottom of your reply, like box cars on a train. This helps the customer keep reference to their original message.

'Trailer' is a team wide signature that is added at the end of each outgoing reply. Like a signature for an individual user, the trailer is a "signature" for an entire team.

'Auto responder' is the text field that contains the details you want sent to your customer in automatic response mode.

'Issue form URL' is the URL included when your team uses the web reply element. This is for reference and it can be pasted into any number of different documents.

'Embed issue form URL' is the URL necessary to include in the web pages at your own website that will allow customers do submit requests directly into your MailTank without needing to draft you an email.

The 'Edit' link lets you edit the elements that require typing to update. The True / False elements are click-to-change.

Team details part 3 - team membership.

At the foot of the team detail page is the team roster which lists the users in your MailTank that are allowed access to this team. Those barred from the team will not see any of the email that has come into the main queue page

Editing team details

To edit the details for a team click the 'Edit' link.

MailTank creates the primary email account for the team automatically which you cannot edit. It follows the syntax:

subdomain-teamname@mailtank.com

If your sub-domain is Colt and your team is named revolver then the team email address would be colt-revlover@mailtank.com.

Email from your customers is forwarded to this primary address so it will flow into your MailTank.

The Alert address is designed to receive priority communication so messages sent to that address reside at the top of the main queue page. It follows the syntax:

subdomain-alerts@mailtank.com

and is created for each team automatically. You cannot edit the alert address either.

The escalation and BCC addresses can be anything appropriate or left blank. Training mode requires an address be entered in the Escalation field.

The Trailer is the team wide signature, which is appended to all outgoing replies.

The Auto Responder text can be sent upon receipt of any message by your team. To enable the auto responder, click the check box.

To use MailTank in training mode, click the check box to activate it. All messages will be sent directly to the escalation address.

To enable the ticketing system simply click the check box and MailTank will provide a ticket number for all the issues for that team.

Creating new teams for your MailTank

Teams can be created around anything you want: products, services, businesses, or groups of people. In general we suggest that you create a team for each email address that you have published for your customers. Again, each team comes with unlimited storage and can accommodate all of the incoming email from your customers.

Name - call the team anything that you like.

The optional elements can be activated by clicking the check boxes for the elements desired.

Escalate - the address to which escalated issue are sent. This default can be edited by hand inside the escalation editor at the time of escalation.
Bcc - the blind copy address will generate a blind copy of every reply sent out of this team.
Trailer - this is the team wide signature used on each outgoing email from the team.
Auto Response - this field contains the text returned to the sender of each message received. After drafting the message to be sent to customers, to turn on the auto response, click the 'Use automatic responder' box.

To save the changes to your team, click the 'Submit' button - to leave them as they are or discard your changes click the 'Back' link.

Team statistics

MailTank tracks the useage of each team you create. To view the stats overview click on the 'Stats' links.

For teams statistics are displayed in order of team name, the number of messages the team has received, and the number of replies that have been sent out from that team.

Statistical reports can be exported from the MailTank as a comma separated value document which can be imported to most spreadsheet applications.

Creating statistical reports

MailTank allows you to generate statistic reports for a given period based upon the filters you specify.

Using the perimeters described in the range drop list you can drill down to get the level of detail you require. Use stats to watch performance, set goals and understand how your customers are talking to you.

Creating users

To set up users for your MailTank, click the Users tab in the control panel. To create a new user, click the 'Create' link.

You can search for users by team using the search dialog.

To reset a user's permissions to default click 'reset permissions'

To destroy a user, click the 'Destroy' link. The user will be deleted from your MailTank and removed from all teams.

New user settings

To set up a user's settings, click the create link. Once the user's settings have been set, this setting editor can be accessed by both administrators and users. Users have the ability to make changes to their settings as do administrators. Users who do not have access to the control panel can reach their settings through a tab at the top of the main queue page. Administrators can access their settings through the control panel.

A user's settings start with designating a user name for the user. The user name selected will be used at login when the user arrives at the MailTank for work. This name will appear in the list of users logged in on the main queue page - the user listing helps people know who else is working on customer messages.

The Address listed is the user's email address. This is the address to which email notification is sent when the user is not logged in and they are assigned a message.

The time zone setting is the time zone local to the user. This can be adjusted for times when a user is traveling and needs to see current time and date information reflected in message data. The time zone does not have to be set.

The language setting controls the language in which pages and action links are displayed in the user's MailTank. MailTank can be viewed in up to 7 different language encodings. The languages currently supported are English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Spanish.

The signature field contains the user's chosen signature. This appears at the end of all messages sent out by the user. A trailer for the team is appended below the user's signature if the team has one.

The user's password can be set and re-set from this page.

To save or discard changes: click the Update button, or cancel.

Review user details.

To quickly see or adjust any user's privileges click on their name in the list of users presented under the User tab. The user detail page controls the access each user has to messages and actions in your MailTank.

All the privileges are click-to-change, so all you need to do is click on the term to change it. Clicking 'Yes' will set the privilege to 'No' and vice versa.

'Access Alerts', 'Access Pending', and 'Access Open' allow the user to see messages in the Alert, Pending, and Open queues on the main queue page for all the teams the user is a member of.

'Access Control Panel' allows the user full control over your MailTank. While this does not automatically designate manager level control, access to the control panel can provide this. The default for 'Access Control Panel' is NO.

'Can destroy' and 'Can escalate' allow the user to escalate messages out of your MailTank, or destroy them all together. The default for 'Can destroy' is NO.

'Can Manage Queues' and 'Can Manage Templates' allow the user to view the contents of all other user's Owned and Assigned queues and to create the templates that can be sent out to contacts.

Each user's login and password, time zone, and language settings can be changed by clicking the Edit link.

Recent replies sent out of your MailTank by a user are displayed at the bottom of the user details page.

Frequently accessed link settings

Your MailTank can display links to frequently accessed websites in the left margin. Any user can click a link and the website will open in a new page.

The links page in the control panel displays the list of currently active links in your MailTank. Links are displayed according to the team they are associated with.

The link to MailTank's help documentation appears in every MailTank, and access to the Control Panel only appears if the proper privileges have been granted.

From this page you can review a link's address and create or destroy links in your MailTank.

Creating a link

To add a link to your MailTank, click the Create link.

Inside the link editor you can associate the link to a team inside your MailTank. Select the team from the drop list.

The Name you choose for the link is displayed in the margin of your MailTank, and can be any text you like. To access the linked web page click the name.

The URL is the Internet address of the website, including http:// or whatever service the site requires. Enter a fully qualified url, either by hand or by pasting it in the field.

Notes appear in the MailTank below the name of your link. This can contain login and password information or instructions for using the website.

To save or discard your changes click update or cancel.

Rules to manage messages

New to MailTank 3.0 is the rules system that allows you to program MailTank to handle messages based on certain criteria.

Rules instruct MailTank to 'read' sections of each incoming message, looking for text you specify, and then perform a series of actions based upon finding a match.

Name the rule as you see fit and then choose the section of the message you want MailTank to watch. MailTank can read the sender, subject, or the body of the message.

Add the tag you want MailTank to apply to each message that matches the criteria you set. If a contact record exists for the customer sending the message their contact record will be tagged as well. If you leave the field empty matching messages will go untagged.

Matching messages can have their status set:
complete - moves the message directly to the archive.
open - moves the message to the open queue on the main queue page.
pending - moves the message to the pending queue on the main queue page.
destroy - destroys the message permanently deleting it from your MailTank.

MailTank can also send notification to an email address or series of addresses separated by comma. Enter the addresses in the 'Send notification to' field and then specify the text you want sent in the text field below. The macros used in the templates can be used in this field as well.

To save this rule, click the submit button and the rule will be applied to all messages that arrive after it has been created.

Tag management

To see a list of all the tags inside your MailTank, you can click on the Tag tab. To remove any tag from your MailTank, click the destroy link and it will be stripped for all messages and contacts as well as from the list of tags displayed in the left margin of your MailTank.

Return to the main queue page

Once you have finished configuring MailTank click the Return to Queues link and you will exit the control panel.