Thunderbird search folder for viewing the full customer history

Emin Gabrielyan

Updated on 2008-11-15

Created on 2008-11-13

Questions addressed to support@ are now sorted throughout IMAP folders and sub-folders representing the classes and sub-types of questions respectively. The traditional quick search of the Thunderbird interface is not appropriate anymore for searching old emails of customers. Emails are “lost” in a complex hierarchy of sub-folders. The use of Thunderbird search folders becomes an absolute necessity. A search folder is a virtual folder, marked by a magnifying glass. Such folder can simultaneously access and retrieve emails from multiple IMAP folders and filter only certain emails according the rules you provide. This document shows how to create and modify search folders, you need the most for answering to support@ questions.

Thunderbird search folder for viewing the full customer history. 1

1. From tags to IMAP folders. 1

2. Search folders of customers. 3

2.1. Creating a new search folder 3

2.2. Choosing the multiple IMAP folders of the search folder 4

2.3. Search criteria. 7

3. References. 8

1. From tags to IMAP folders

We changed the way of classification (coloring) of incoming emails addressed to support@. Instead of tagging the questions into three colors (Red for “Reception”, Orange for “Phone”, and green for “Service”), we move all emails into corresponding IMAP folders already created on the server. In the inbox of support@, we have three IMAP folders “Reception”, “Phone”, “Service”. Each of these three folders has subfolders for all types of questions known for the given class. The emails are manually dragged from the inbox directly to corresponding subfolders. Such a “chirurgical” classification by types (and not simply between the three large classes) is much more precise, but is also a more difficult task. Such a sorting must improve the quality of answers, because the person responsible for answers can treat a single type of questions at a time, and can therefore concentrate to all details related to that type. The IMAP folders of support are currently organized as follows (the links point to the corresponding book marks of the how-to doc):

[01 Reception]

[02 Phone]

[03 Service]

Each type of question contains an additional sub-folder called “answered”. Thanks to an automatic BCC, copies of all your outgoing emails are sent by default to the “Inbox” of support@. After replying to a question of a customer, you must drag the copy of your answer together with the question of the customer into the “answered” sub-sub-folder of the concerned type. The type folders themselves shall keep only the unanswered questions.

2. Search folders of customers

In spite of the new changes, the “Inbox” will stay nearly empty all the time. You cannot find anymore old emails in “Inbox” by typing a subject or an address in the quick search bar. Instead you have to use a search folder.

Create a simple regular folder “Search” in your “Local Folders” (Right-click and select “New Folder…”). You will store all your search folders in this regular folder called “Search”.

2.1. Creating a new search folder

In order to create a search folder select the main “Inbox” folder of support@ account, right-click, and choose “Search”. Make sure that in the Search panel the box “Search subfolders” is checked. This will avoid you in future the individual selection, one by one of all the subfolders of “Inbox” with their individual subfolders. For the moment, without specifying any search criteria, click on the “Save as Search Folder” button of the search panel. In the Save-search-folder panel select the location of your search folder (i.e. the previously created “Search” subfolder of “Local Folders”). Give the search folder a name “full email history”. Without specifying any search criteria click on “OK” button.

2.2. Choosing all multiple IMAP folders of the search folder

Once the search folder is saved, you can find it in the location where you saved it. It is the time to start its configuration. Right click on the search folder and select the “Properties…” menu.

First, you have to choose all IMAP folders this search folder is supposed to access. Click on the “Choose…” button and select all IMAP folders of all accounts which can theoretically contain an email addressed to, or received from a customer. The concerned accounts are “support@”, “billing@”, and “contracts@”.

In each account we must check the “Inbox” and the “Sent” IMAP folders. In the “billing@” account, we must additionally check all “invoice” sub-folders (to access the invoices addressed to the customer) and all “ignore” subfolders (to access also the payment notices sent to the customer).

In the “support@” account, the emails are not stored in “Inbox” folder. Therefore, we must make sure that all question types of all classes, where the emails are stored after classification, are all well checked. Additionally, in each type, we must see that all “answered” sub-sub-folders are checked as well.

Hopefully, for the subfolders of the “support@” account, the checkboxes were already all selected, since we started the creation of the search folder by saving a search panel of the “support@” account, where we marked the “Search subfolders” box. Therefore, in support@, we must only uncheck the useless folders (such as “Trash”, “Junk”, “Drafts”, and “Templates”).

By now the important step is done: all IMAP folders are specified.

2.3. Search criteria

We can now specify any set of search criteria. Most often, we will need only to search the emails sent-to or received-from a particular customer. Open the properties of our search folder “full email history” and configure its search criteria. The example below shows a panel for searching all emails of the user “user@bluewin.ch”.

If we click now on our search folder “full email history”, we will see all emails of the customer since his/her subscription. The emails of contracts@, support@, and billing@ will all appear in a chronological order in one single window. Such global view helps to see, integrally, when the subscriber signed-up, what billing or support questions he/she asked, and what our answers were.

In order to view the history of another customer, you need only to provide in the two email address fields (“To or cc” and “From”) of the properties of the search folder a new email address. You need to refresh the search folder by clicking somewhere else, then back to the search folder.