[Pydotorg-redesign] webmaster email handling

[Richard Jones]

On Tue, 15 Apr 2003 08:00 am, Steve Holden wrote:
> It also requires a lot of (most likely unnecessary) programming. Your
> [apparent] failure to recognise irony makes me suspect I should have added
> a smiley before.

*blush* sorry, my irony detector didn't come online until 8am this morning, so 
that smiley slipped through :)


> If this turned out not to be the case, *then* we could go for automated
> issue assignment, but frankly ot sounds like a nightmare to me - both
> socially and logistically.

I'm a little concerned by the use of "nightmare" and no smiley :)

What, specifically, do you see as the nightmarish problems?


> > What happens to messages the user sends back in response to an webmaster
> > reply? Thrown in the bin? As far as they're concerned, they're just
> > adding further commentary. Roundup just handles that by reopening the
> > issue and passing the new message on to the issue's nosy list.
>
> Well, if roundup puts an identifying code in the subject line I'm sure the
> email extracter could recognise it as a followup, but that would certainly
> make the database work more complicated.

Hurm. I'm guilty of assuming knowledge of Roundup, again. To clarify (I hope):

- Roundup stores off issues with associated message spools (messages are 
stored on disk if other systems need access to them)
- each issue also includes a "nosy" list - the original author and assigned 
user are automatically placed in this list. New assigned users are also 
included. People on the nosy list automatically receive a copy of any message 
added to an issue's spool (if they haven't already received one via email 
cc'ing). I will be adding (trivial) code that automatically closes an issue 
when an "assignable" user submits a message to the spool and reopens an issue 
when an external user submits a message.
- email messages are managed such that Roundup is kept in the loop by being 
the reply-to address of messages it sends, and by including a marker in the 
subject line indicating the issue of interest. New messages for an issue are 
added to the spool (and sent to the nosy list). New messages not relating to 
an issue create one.

I would set this tracker up so that it owned the webmaster address - all email 
to it goes into the tracker, and all email from the tracker will have the 
webmaster address. The web form would be an alternative access point if we 
really want it.


HTH,

    Richard