Mail Rocks, er, Rules

You just might say that once you've had a chance to play around with this feature. Up until now, email appears in your mailbox and you take it or leave it, right?

The new First Class 7.1 lets you have complete control over how things appear. You just write a rule to handle it.

The rule creator is available from the "Collaborate" menu of the 7.1 client. Let's create a rule to handle specific incoming mail. Select "Rules" from the "Collaborate" menu. Create a new rule from the File menu or by clicking the left most button on your button bar.

Some mail that you receive needs your immediate attention. However, when it's mixed in with the rest, it can get lost. Let's make that important piece of mail leap from your mailbox. If you can handle a little "IF" this is true, "THEN" do this logic, you're off to the races.

I would hate to miss an email from Rod Peturson. So, I'm going to write a rule that makes anything from him "Urgent". Urgent mail messages appear bold in your mailbox and are prefaced with the text "Urgent".

I'm going to label this rule "Rod" and then from the pull-down menus, decide how to handle the message.

The first section is the "IF" section. Literally, I've told First Class that if the author of the message is exactly "Rod Peturson", I want First Class to perform an action. That action appears in the "THEN" section that follows. I'm instructing First Class to set the priority of these messages to "Urgent". Make sure that the rule is enabled and we're done. Now, I'll never miss a message again.

There are lots of things that you can do with rules.

The "IF" section on the left lets you identify the message to which you apply the rule and the "THEN" section gives you a wide range of choices as to what to do with it.

Word of advice...just "Reject" judiciously!

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