The customer service of the company I work for would need a simple tool to
enforce some kind of "workflow" processing on the e-mail messages coming
from the customers (bug detection, signalled problems and so on).
I'm thinking to use ProcMail to implement a workflow system like the
following:
1) The user send us an e-mail compliant, with an attached file
2) Using ProcMail and Python script, we strip away the insults, analyze the
message contents and decide the kind of path it will have to follow
(analyst->support engineer->programmer->exorcist...)
3) Using ProcMail we forward the message from step to step, until we get rid
of it (no matter if the problem is solved...)
At every step, I think to pass the message to a Python script and analyze a
specially-written "message footer" in order to decide what to do next. This
message footer will contain a custom "tag language" script that will
describe the path that the message has to follow, something like this:
<reception>
<analysis first="bug fixing" second="solution writing" third="dispose">
<bug fixing>
<solution writing>
<archive>
<dispose>
<currentstatus="bug fixing">
Am I reinventing the wheel? Are there better (freeware) tools to perform
this task?
Is it possible/better to centralize the workflow management (For example,
using a single "hub" mailbox and a database containing the info regarding
the document to be processed)?
Any suggestion? Comments? Laugh?
Thanks
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Alessandro Bottoni (Alessandro(_dot_)Bottoni(_at_)Think3(_dot_)com)
Web Programmer @ Think3 inc. (www.think3.com)
I do not speak for think3 and they return the favour