Working with the other apps
A message rarely ends in Mail. It becomes an appointment, a task, a distribution list, a file in Drive, or something a user drags into an application that has nothing to do with email. These are the ways the content of a message leaves the mailbox without anyone retyping it.
Add an email to the portal
Summary Pins a message to the portal page as its own widget, showing the message subject. The widget stays there until it is removed, so a message that still needs attention sits on the start page next to the other portal widgets instead of only in the inbox.
Why it matters An inbox is ordered by arrival, so anything that stays relevant for more than a day sinks as new mail comes in — the booking reference, the contract, the message the user keeps coming back to. Pinning it to the portal moves it to the page that is already opened first and keeps it there however much mail arrives afterwards. It takes one click and says, in effect, that this message is not finished.
Description
- Add to portal creates a sticky mail widget showing the message subject
Availability Since 7.10.6 or earlier. The Portal ships with the Provider Edition; without it there is no portal to pin to. Requires webmail and portal. Not available on smartphones.
Create an appointment from an email
Summary Opens the appointment editor prefilled from the message, with the recipients already entered as participants and the message's content carried over. The action is offered in the message toolbar and in the context menu, so the appointment is created from the message itself rather than from a blank editor in Calendar.
Why it matters Most meetings start as a thread, with a few people agreeing that they should talk. The step that gets dropped is turning that agreement into an entry in everyone's calendar, because it means retyping a subject, looking the addresses up again, and copying over the details that matter. Prefilling the editor from the message removes all of that, so the appointment is created while the conversation is still open and the participant list is exactly the people who were on the mail.
Description
- Invite to appointment from the message toolbar or the context menu
- The participants are taken from the message's recipients
- The content of the message is carried into the appointment
Availability Since 7.10.6 or earlier. Requires webmail and calendar.
Create a task reminder from an email
Summary Makes a task out of the message, prefilled from it, so the message turns up in the to-do list with everything else that needs doing. The action is offered in the message toolbar and in the context menu.
Why it matters An inbox is a poor to-do list. A message that needs work looks exactly like one that only needs reading, and the only way to keep it visible is to leave it unread or near the top, which stops working as soon as the next few messages arrive. Turning it into a task with a due date moves the obligation to where the user already tracks work, and the message itself can then be filed or archived without the work being forgotten with it.
Description
- Reminder from the message toolbar or the context menu
- The task is prefilled from the message
Availability Since 7.10.6 or earlier. Requires webmail and tasks. Not available on smartphones.
Create a distribution list from an email
Summary Collects the addresses on the selected messages and makes a distribution list out of them in the address book. The group that existed only as a recipient line on one message becomes an entry in Contacts that can be addressed by name.
Why it matters Groups form in mail long before anyone writes them down: the five people on a project thread, the parents on a class mail, the handful of colleagues who were on the last version of a document. Addressing them again means digging out an old message and copying its header, and whoever is missed in that copy is quietly dropped from the conversation. Building the list from the message that already has everyone on it makes the group reusable and keeps it in the address book, where the next message can reach it by name.
Description
- Create distribution list collects the addresses of the selected messages
Availability Since 7.10.6 or earlier. Requires webmail and contacts.
Drag an email to a desktop application
Summary Selected messages can be dragged out of the browser onto a companion application running on the same machine, which downloads them. The application is contacted on a local port, optionally protected by a shared security token, and the drag is offered in the toolbar, the inline toolbar and the context menu.
Why it matters Organizations that file mail into a records, case or document system do it all day, and through the browser that means downloading the message, finding the file, uploading it and deleting it again — several steps for something that happens dozens of times a day. Dragging the selection straight onto the desktop application collapses that into one gesture. For the deployment, the configurable port and the shared token mean the integration is set up once and only the intended application receives the messages.
Description
- Drag to desktop (App) in the toolbar, the inline toolbar and the context menu
- The companion application is contacted on a configurable local port, optionally with a shared security token
- Clear messages are shown when the application is not running, or when the token does not match
- Desktop Linux and Windows only
Availability Since 8.51. Requires webmail and drag_and_drop_native. Feature toggle dragDropHelperApp, on by default. Desktop Linux and Windows only. The port and the token are configured with io.ox/mail//drag_and_drop_helper_app_port and io.ox/mail//drag_and_drop_helper_app_token.
Drag an email to another browser window or the desktop
Summary Opens an overlay with a draggable item standing for the current selection. Dropping it into another web application hands over download URLs for the messages, each backed by a token that works without a session and expires after a few minutes. In Chromium-based browsers a single message can also be dropped onto the desktop as a file.
Why it matters Not every deployment can put software on its users' machines, and the message often has to reach a web application anyway — a ticket system, a case file, a shared archive. A token URL needs nothing installed and works in any browser, because the receiving application fetches the message itself rather than going through the user's session. The tokens are short-lived, so a URL that ends up copied into a page or a log stops working within minutes.
Description
- Drag email to browser opens an overlay with a draggable item for the selection
- Each URL works without a session and expires after a few minutes
- A single message can be dropped onto the desktop as a file in Chromium-based browsers
- The number of messages per drag is capped, and the user is told when the selection is too large
- Desktop only
Availability Since 8.53. Requires webmail and drag_and_drop_http. Feature toggle mailDragOutToken, on by default. Desktop only. The number of messages per drag is capped by io.ox/mail//dragAndDrop/maxTokenListSize.
Save an email as a file
Summary Downloads one or more messages as .eml files. What is saved is the original message rather than a rendering of it, and a selection of several messages is downloaded together, so a whole thread can be taken out of the mailbox in one step.
Why it matters Mail is evidence as often as it is correspondence: the order confirmation, the approval, the message an auditor or a lawyer asks for. A .eml file is the message itself, which is what makes it worth keeping — it can be opened in another mail client, passed on to someone who needs the original, or stored outside the mailbox, and it stays readable after the folder is cleared or the account is closed.
Description
- Save as file downloads the selection
- Several messages are downloaded together
- Not offered on iOS, which cannot handle the download
Availability Since 7.10.6 or earlier. Requires webmail. Not offered on iOS.
Save an email as PDF
Summary Converts a message into a PDF document and stores it in Drive. The user is asked for a target folder and a filename, and what comes out is an ordinary Drive file that sits with the rest of the material it belongs to.
Why it matters A .eml file needs a mail client to open it; a PDF does not. For anything that has to be read outside the mailbox — attached to a case, handed to an auditor, kept with a project's documents — a PDF is the format that everyone can open and that still looks the same years later. Writing it straight into Drive also saves the download-and-upload detour and files the message where the related documents already are.
Description
- Save as PDF asks for a Drive folder and a filename
Availability Since 8.15. Requires webmail, mail_export_pdf and infostore.