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New Smartermail BETA still has a missing features that prevent migration from Exchange to SmarterMail: mail messages and To Do LIST
Problem reported by Gabriele Maoret - SERSIS - 12/12/2022 at 10:14 AM
Being Fixed
Sadly the ability to flag an email as "to be completed" and the related ability to manage completion is still missing even in the new SmarterMail Beta...

This is where I asked about it for the STABLE release:



Gabriele Maoret - SERSIS - Head of SysAdmins
Currently manages 3 SmarterMail installations (1 in cloud for SERSIS which provides service to a few hundreds 3rd party Mail Domains + 2 on premise to customers)

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Andrea Free Replied
Employee Post
Hello Gabriele, 

I know this was discussed in the linked thread, but I wanted to copy the information here for anyone here. Please see Tim's response on the linked thread: 
"Webmail doesn't have the ability to modify some items but does maintain the state in the background for clients and protocols if supported by the protocol/client.  

If you used EWS to migrate an account with the BETA and then used Outlook Windows or Mac that data would be available.

OWA is missing about 50% of what is in Outlook but maintains state in most cases so clients can manage pieces that aren't offered in OWA.  We do something similar in SmarterMail.

EAS does not support these attributes (protocol limitation not us).

Mac Mail and other clients do not support these attributes even though they use EWS.

If you test further and see issues that contradict what I'm expecting based on the work we have done, please let me know."


As a quick follow up to Tim's comments... I did some testing, and I found a small issue with this behavior. Exchange/Outlook have 7 flag states (Today, Tomorrow, This Week, Next Week, No Date, Mark Complete and Custom). When you do a Mailbox Migration from Exchange, then you connect that SmarterMail account to Outlook MAPI, I found that some of those flags aren't retaining all of the info. (They are flagged with no date, rather than keeping their original dates/statues.) 

I compared this to Outlook Mac and found that all flag types were preserved as expected. So this issue appears to be limited to Outlook Windows. I'll get this reported so we can get it resolved. 

As an aside... I found no issues with connecting a SmarterMail account to Outlook MAPI, then removing the profile and re-adding it. All flag types should be preserved in that scenario. 

Please give it a try, and let me know if you have differing results! 

Andrea Free
SmarterTools Inc.
877-357-6278

www.smartertools.com

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Gabriele Maoret - SERSIS Replied
Hi Andrea! I checked my MS Exchange WebMail (OWA) server and what you and Tim say is incorrect...

As you can see in the image below, in OWA I'm not limited to just flagging or not flagging a message.
Using right-click I can also set the completion deadline or set it as "completed", the same way I can do in MS Windows Outlook...


So for me this is a missing feature in SmarterMail WebMail, and I hope it can be implemented the same way it is on MS Exchange OWA.


Gabriele Maoret - SERSIS - Head of SysAdmins
Currently manages 3 SmarterMail installations (1 in cloud for SERSIS which provides service to a few hundreds 3rd party Mail Domains + 2 on premise to customers)
1
Andrea Free Replied
Employee Post
Hi Gabriele, 

Tim was referencing that OWA has only 50% of the functionality that's offered in email clients. OWA does contain this feature specifically; however, there is other functionality available within Outlook that is not supported in OWA. The same is true for SmarterMail. Webmail won't contain everything that various clients support. You'll find some features in webmail are nicer and more thorough than in clients, and for other functionality, we rely on client support. However, although SmarterMail does not have various flag states within webmail, the flag state is maintained for email clients that support it.  

That said, I'm not very familiar with this functionality in OWA, and I'm curious about your usage of these various flag states in OWA. I know that in Outlook you can enable a To-Do bar that allows you to see all of your tasks and flagged emails in a consolidated list, separated by due date. However, in OWA, it appears that the flag information appears only on the specific email. 

How do you use that functionality in OWA? What's your work flow look like in relation to flags? Do you sort the message list by Flags, and then look through each email to see which are due first? 

Kind regards,

Andrea Free
SmarterTools Inc.
877-357-6278

www.smartertools.com

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Gabriele Maoret - SERSIS Replied
This in OWA is simply used similarly to the same function as Outlook Desktop: it allows me to flag an email that is then tagged "by completion" (a corresponding activity is then added in the tasks).
With the right mouse button I can choose various periods for the complete of the activity: by today (Also default with single left Click), by tomorrow, within this week, next week.



I can also mark it as without expiry (in the task no expiry date will be reported), completed (which also complete the corresponding task) or remove the flag (the corresponding task will also be removed).




Outlook Desktop has some more options (for example, setting a personalized completion period and also enable a reminder) which I hope will still be supported:




Gabriele Maoret - SERSIS - Head of SysAdmins
Currently manages 3 SmarterMail installations (1 in cloud for SERSIS which provides service to a few hundreds 3rd party Mail Domains + 2 on premise to customers)

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