September 2007 Archives

After having the pleasure to work with so many neat companies over the past 2 years, I thought it would be fun to tell you about some of them. If you would like to hear about some of these unique and interesting organizations you can find them here each weekend. (And if you are a customer and would like us to write about you, drop me a note and we’ll interview you.)

I just finished speaking with André Cymbalista at CAN – Cyclist Advocacy Network. It is a New Zealand-based not-for-profit that works to influence local and national policy in support of cyclists. The end goal is to encourage health and happiness through cycling as well as help the planet with a few less cars on the street.

Long ago CAN took a look at countries like the Netherlands and Denmark, which benefit from large cyclist communities, and decided they would like to see the same in their own country. Over the last decade they have been very successful in establishing good relationships with local and national governments. Because of their direct efforts there has been a noticeable drop in cycling incidents and an increasing view of cycling as a means of transportation; not to mention all the great people who have been connected through their various groups within the network.

André, who is in charge of their digital communication initiative, explained their latest efforts involving the creation of an entirely new web platform where each of the user groups will receive a “fully customizable, ready to use, cycling user group website template, and training workshops to upskill group members in web publishing.” The idea is to continue to encourage more cycling by using these communication tools. What’s really great is that their government is completely on board as CAN was given an $80,000 grant to complete the project.

With 3 to 6 people (volunteer and paid) who try to answer all the incoming email from their website, CAN is using Mailroom centralize their email and standardize some of their responses. That way, their volunteers can log in at anytime from anywhere to help respond to the needs of their local user groups.

All of us here at Sproutit love to ride our bicycles around Silicon Valley both for pleasure and as an alternate means of transportation. We really appreciate things like marked bike lanes and courteous drivers. That’s why we jumped at the chance to work with CAN in their efforts to make a more cyclist-friendly world. Besides, you never know when you might want to visit the beautiful islands of New Zealand.

BONUS We haven’t officially announced it yet but if you work with other great not-for-profit organizations like CAN we would love to help. Send us an email in exchange for a free basic account.

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One of the best ways to stay on top of what’s happening in Mailroom is through its RSS feeds. (If you don’t know what RSS is read this) There are actually two types of feeds you can get in Mailroom:

The Page Feed

The page feed is probably the most useful. It is available by clicking on the RSS feed icon next to the item count in the bottom right edge of your Mailroom window. This feed will show you only events related to messages that appear on the page you are on. If you are only interested in being notified of specific events, this feed is for you. For example:

• To receive events for conversations that need your attention only click on the page feed in the Needs Attention page.

• To receive events on conversations that need attention by anyone click on the All Messages page, choose “Anyone” from the who menu and “Needs Attention” from the status popup and click on the page feed there.

• To moniter events on another person’s conversations that happened this week choose All Messages, choose the person you want to monitor from the who meny, “Any Status” from the status popup and “This Week” from the When popup. Then click on the page feed icon.

• To be notified of all Spam (just to make sure no false positives end up there) choose the Spam page and click on the page feed icon.

As you can see, there are a lot of possibilities with this feed icon. It’s a great way to receive a continuous stream of events just for the bits of Mailroom you are interested in straight to your feed reader.

The All Events Feed

The All Events feed is an entirely different beast altogether. You get this feed by clicking on the orange “All Events” button at the bottom of your Mailroom window.

As the name implies, this feed will return all events that occur in Mailroom, even spam messages. On a lower-volume account, this is a good way to keep an eye on everything that happens in Mailroom. In you’re a manager, this feed is probably just for you.

Now About That Non-Authenticated Thing…

Mailroom has had RSS feeds since the day it launched. However, they have never been usable by most of you because they were “Authenticated” to protect your privacy.

Authenticated feeds require you to enter your username and password before you can access them. Unfortunately, most start pages (like My Yahoo or iGoogle), and feed readers – especially web-based ones – don’t support these types of feeds.

Starting today, however, RSS feeds in Mailroom are no longer authenticated. You can use them in any start page or feed reader you want.

To maintain your privacy without authentication, each feed now contains a secret “feed key” that is connected to your specific user account. To access your RSS feed, someone would need to know your feed key, which is only available from inside your account.

If you ever suspect someone has gained access to your feeds, of course, we have a way for you to lock them out. Just go to your preferences and choose “Reset Feed Key” on your personal settings page. You will need to resubscribe to your feeds, but anyone else who has access will now be cut off.

So there you have it: RSS feeds from Mailroom, now available for your favorite start page (like My Yahoo or iGoogle), or feed reader. Another great little feature from your friends at Sproutit.

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