The Outlook & Sync blog

(This artcle was previously published in the ASPects regarding ReplyButler, but now I’ll make it available to everyone.)

CHOOSING THE RIGHT PRODUCT

Did I catch you? Great, here are a few things you should consider when choosing the right boilerplate software for you.

1. Subfolders (Multiple levels)
These are absolutely essential if you want to stay organized.

2. General or integrated
If you plan to use boilerplate only in your e-mails you might want to look for a product that can be integrated into your mail client, making the texts easier to access. If you want to use it in other places, too (software development perhaps?), you should use a program than can cooperate with all applications on your PC.

3. Multi-Language
If you speak more than one language and answer support mails in the other language(s) you’ll find it useful to have your boilerplate text in multiple languages.

4. Multi-User
If your company is not a one-man-show, you’ll probably want to share your canned text with other persons. You could probably just copy the configuration files around, but it would be easier if the program supports a multi-user environment from the start.

5. Icons
You’ll probably look down on this point. But I’ve found it very useful because it’s easier to memorize an image than a text.

Good luck with your boilerplate!

Thomas Holz is the owner of www.itsth.com, a company offering the “Easy2Sync” file- and Outlook synchronization tools as well as the boilerplate software for Outlook “ReplyButler“.

(This artcle was previously published in the ASPects regarding ReplyButler, but now I’ll make it available to everyone.)

ADVANCED BOILERPLATE ISSUES

If the boilerplates really become useful for you and your collection grows, you’ll face a different problem. Finding a text you’ve written months ago. That’s why you have to organize and maintain your texts. Giving the texts short headlines is essential and folders are very handy, too.

If you do support in multiple languages, you’ll probably want to use the same text in these languages, too. This can be difficult with most boilerplate products, as they don’t support it. As a workaround you can use folders or prefixes (or postfixes) with the language name in the headline (like “EN – Install problem”). But it’s important to use the same headline for the same issue, no matter what language the response is in. Otherwise you’ll constantly look for the wrong text. (Another mistake that I already made.)

The English language isn t very picky when it comes to addressing a person, but other languages offer more choices than simply “you”. Depending on your language and communication policies you may even want to store the same text in different styles: formal and informal. Otherwise you might easily end up with addressing somebody with his last name in the greeting phrase and using an informal addressing (“tu” in Spanish, for example) in the boilerplate. Sometimes texts are basically the same for several products or vary in other minor issues. So it makes sense to use one single boilerplate here and just fill in the gap when you re inserting the text.

Some boilerplate programs can ask for the gap text. If yours doesn t, simply use a placeholder like ######. The hash marks are great because you can very easily see them and it s less likely that you send out a mail where you didn t fill in the gap.

(This artcle was previously published in the ASPects regarding ReplyButler, but now I’ll make it available to everyone.)

They have many names. The dictionary calls them boilerplate text, but you ll also find them as stationery, AutoText, templates, canned text or text macros. The idea is always the same: Type a text once-use it many times. This article is about why they are useful for software support and how to get the most out of them.

Customers are asking questions. And chances are that they’ll ask you the same questions over and over again (probably ignoring any FAQ). And you’re typing the same answers again and again. You don’t? Sure? Test it! For the next twenty answered mails, pause for a second and think if you didn’t write that answer (complete or in parts) before. You’ll see that it happens more often than you thought. Still, you probably refrain from storing these texts in some form, because of the extra work this causes. Organizing the texts, choosing a wording that can easily be reused later for another customer, etc. But this work quickly pays off; you just have to start it. And the more boilerplate replies you have ready, the more time you can save, you’ll see.

As a side-effect, you ll probably also deliver the answers to customers quicker than you used to. Since canned text makes answering e-mail easier, you re less likely to procrastinate the answers.

Boilerplate has another advantage. Customers sometimes are unfriendly or simply write stupid things. It’s tempting to let your feeling go wild and write a hefty response. That may be satisfying for the moment, but it will definitely backfire. Trust me, I already made that mistake. If you have a boilerplate response to handle the customer’s issue (written in a friendly tone) it’s much easier to give the customer a professional reply.

Furthermore, a boilerplate library makes it easier for other persons to do your support work. Either while you’re on holiday or if you permanently give the support job to somebody else. This way they have to know less about your products and your company policies because they can just use pre-written texts.

Creating and using your boilerplate forces you to organize and categorize your support cases. This will also make it easier for you to see what the typical questions are that the people keep asking. That s very valuable knowledge. Perhaps you can change your product or website to make these issues clearer even before the customer has to write you an e-mail?

Organizing your canned texts for more efficient e-mail handling is great, but when you have lots of text, finding the right one can be a problem. (Even if you use the ReplyButler feature of organizing them in folders.)

For this problem ReplyButler has a great feature: The “Context” menu!

That is a new menu item that you will see your answer window in Outlook. Click on it and ReplyButler will display a lists of canned texts that could be useful to answer the current mail:

Automatically.

It’s great, have a try.

Yes, another version is out (1.28).

ReplyButler, our keyboard program. (Which just shorthand for Outlook-plugin-canned-text-storage-email-answerer-with-name-recognition-and-automatic-text-replacement-context. Now you know why we prefer the short name.)

Since the program has evolved very nicely, the changes are mostly details and bug fixes. For example the e-mail moving dialog now remembers the last folders you had the e-mail sorted it. (Automatic mail sorting feature)

So, it’s even better now and we have a free version: Why not download it for your Outlook?

It pays off to record your typical phrases in e-mails and store these canned texts to reuse them later (like in a macro key recorder). And there’s a trick in ReplyButler to make this very easy.

Simply type your e-mails as usual. (Note ReplyButler requires Microsoft Outlook as e-mail client.) When you’ve written the text and it strikes you that you might want to re-use a part of it later, simply:

• Select that part
• In ReplyButler: Choose “Extras” / “Generate cliptext from selection”

And that’s it. Our keyboard tool “ReplyButler” will create a ClipText for you and ask for the folder to store it in.

Give it a try:

Download ReplyButler

Ever tried doing support work. At least for smaller companies the huge help desk programs are quite cumbersome to handle and install.

But ReplyButler is an easy alternative. The unique program can store your canned texts, suggest matching answers for the customers e-mails and also moves the answered e-mails into the right folders. Basically, all the things you need for a small helpdesk.

And when your company grows, no problem. ReplyButler can even share its text blocks, so that multiple Outlooks can access your prewritten text blocks.

Try it and get ReplyButler now.

How many times did you send an e-mail, but forgot the attachments? Don’t try to count, fix it!

One of the many thing that ReplyButler does is to save you from this embarrassment. It analyzes your answer, and your attachments and asks you if it looks like you forgot the attachment. Automatically.

Try it! Download ReplyButler.

A new release of the text automation utility ReplyButler is now available. It fixes a problem with the default settings for the name recognition, improves the language recognition and improves the name recognition in some special cases.

ReplyButler is a great tool for everybody who writes a lot of e-mails and looks for an clipboard shortcut program that’s specialized on e-mails.

You can get a free test version here: Download ReplyButler!

Yes, a new Butler is here. No new features this time, but some minor improvements and bug fixes. No big thing, but worth the update. Get it here.

Do you keep the e-mails you answered? Probably. Do you keep them well organized? Probably not.

With ReplyButler that’s easy, because it’s done automatically. The program can automatically move and e-mail that you answered into the right folder. The customer is talking about “Product A”? Simply defined a rule for the products name and ReplyButler will move any e-mail where that product is mentioned in subject and / or mail body.

ReplyButler can move the original e-mail, or also your answer (after it’s been sent) – whatever you like.

Try it, I promise that you won’t want to miss it any more!

Yes, you can do that. It you’re using the Freeware Edition for more that 30 days, ReplyButler will add 2 small lines of text at the end of your e-mails which hint at our products.

And you can earn money with this. Register with Share-It (that’s completely free) and enter your affiliate number into ReplyButler (Extras / Options / Answer details / Footer). Now, if we sell a copy to anyone who was referred from your e-mail, you’ll get 15% of the purchase price (after deducting taxes and transaction costs). If you’re not interested in the money or don’t want to register, just choose one of the predefined charity affiliates.

Trick: If you’re using the Home- or Business Edition, or the Freeware Edition for less than 30 days, you can activate this manually in the options.

Version 1.25 is out. We’ve been busy during the last month, including lots of detail improvements. Probably the most interesting one is the new Linguatec translation engine:

If you have a text module in one language, simply click on the “new” button and pick a language to let the Linguatec website translate your text module. Great for everyone who does support work in multiple languages.

You can get the new version here.

At Christmas, New Year and several other times of the year, we use special greeting phrases in our lives. And ReplyButler can use them, too. Automatically wishing the people “Merry Christmas” is very easy:

• Open the ReplyButler Options (Extra / Options)
• Go to the “My answer” Tab
• Click on the Button “…” that is between the 2 combo boxes at the top

If you want to add Christmas or New Year greetings, simply use pre-defined menu-item for that and confirm the next dialog. Now you’ve got a next “special case” in the left combo box. Choose here the Christmas case and you can edit the phrases that you want to use here.

If you want to defined your own special case, for example a special greeting phrase in the evening, use the “…” and add a “user-defined” case with a nice name and the right conditions (here: the time). Then, while this special case is active, just enter the phrases that you want to use. Leave the edit boxed empty to use the default values from the “special case default”.

Word? No, I use Outlook. That’s what some people say, not knowing that they DO use Word to edit their e-mails And how can they know? It’s nearly invisible in Outlook! Here’s how:

• In the Outlook main window choose Tools / Options.
• Go to page “Mail Format”.
• Here you can see the option “Word as Editor”.

If you want to use ReplyButler you have to deactivate Word here, sorry. And personally I think that’s better anyway. Because otherwise you may be affected by potential Word security issues just by reading your e-mails…