Webtop User’s Guide
Copyright © 2003 – All Rights Reserved
Last updated on April 18, 2003
Suggestions, errors, and feedback
How to setup a new email account?
Setting the primary account and what effect making it primary has?
Checking the status and errors from email accounts
Adding, renaming, and deleting folders
Setting up and using email filters
Calendar month view from in the appointment view
The Webtop is a web-based email system with personal information management (PIM) components such as a calendar, notepad, webfiles, automated email reminders, and contacts. It was initially created to overcome some of the shortcomings of currently available web-based email systems. The Webtop runs as a server on your computer; it is meant to always be running unlike traditional email clients that only run when your click on an icon to start them. Since the Webtop runs as a server, it has several advantages over the standard email clients:
1. It can send and receive large emails whether you are logged in or not. You don’t have to wait for a 10-megabyte email to download before doing other tasks.
2. Autoreponders and email filters happen as soon as an email is received – not just when you log in to read your mail. For example, a filter could automatically redirect an email to your cell phone if it met certain criteria (ie. Urgent priority).
3. You can access your email from anywhere in the world where you have web access. You aren’t tied down to one computer for your email and other personal information.
4. Multiple users can access their own email and information using a single server instance of the Webtop (with a multiple-user license).
While the Webtop is a web-based email system like Yahoo or Hotmail, it is also a software package that you purchase, download, and install on your own computer. This means that you do not have any storage limitations (like the 5 or 6 megabytes on Yahoo and Hotmail) – only the limits of your own hard drive. This also means that you should have a broadband Internet connection or java-enabled web hosting account to allow access to the Webtop from the web.
The Webtop supports Internet Explorer 5+ and Mozilla (or any browser using the Gecko rendering engine).
To get the latest news and software updates, visit the Webtop web site at http://yourwebtop.com. For support, you can join the Webtop support mailing list by sending an email to webtop-help@yourwebtop.com with the word “subscribe” in the subject.
To receive email notifications on new releases of the Webtop, you can subscribe to the announcements mailing list by sending an email to announce@yourwebtop.com with the word “subscribe” in the subject.
This manual is the most definitive reference document about using the Webtop. As such, this document is meant to be used however you intend to use the Webtop. If you are planning on simply using the email functionality, then a perusal of the Email section should be considered. If you are going to be the “Webtop admin” at a small business, then you should probably become very familiar with the Administrative Guide. Either way, this is a reference manual to which you can refer to whenever you have a question about the Webtop.
The Webtop is comprised of two types of components: services and administrative components. The current services available are: Email, Calendar, Notes, Webfiles, Reminders, and Contacts. The administrative components are: Settings, and Admin. The administrative components exist simply to support the services. All of the services, except for the Calendar, share common elements between them that are worth explaining at this point.
Each service has the ability to have custom folders created by the user. These folders are used to organize the resources a service deals with (such as email messages, notes, reminders). Folders can have subfolders (which can have more subfolders), and folders can be expanded and collapsed to show and hide subfolders.
When a user account is first created, a set of “system folders” is created to help support each of the Webtop’s services. For example, the email service creates the folders: Inbox, Draft, Sent, Outbox, Spam, and Trash. These system folders cannot be renamed or deleted. However, all folders created by the user can be renamed and deleted. To add new subfolders, rename, or delete a folder, select the radio button next to the folder, then click on the action you wish to perform at the top of the folder window (where it says “folder options:”).
Folder summary views are line-item view of the resources contained in a service. For example, a view of the emails in your Inbox folder is a folder summary view; so is a list of all your files in a webfiles folder. These views have some common attributes that are worth noting here.
First, at the top of each folder summary view is a list of the options available in this service. For example, in the email service, there are the following options: check mail, compose, move, delete, search, options. In the notes services, the following options are available: new note, move, delete. Below these “service-level” options is the folder header that includes: the name of the current folder you are in, the icon associated with that service, and an approximate folder size. Some services will have additional information in the folder header as well – such as the email service, which has “total messages” and “unread messages”. Below the folder header is the paging options. These are the links that allow you to jump to the next page, previous page, first page, or last page. Paging options are also located at the bottom of the folder summary view page. Below the paging options are the column headers for that service. All column headers are clickable to allow sorting by that column. Click the same column again and that column will be sorted in the opposite direction. Below is an annotated view of a folder summary view for the email service:
Tools for viewing “text-only” version of email, sending
an “undeliverable email bounce” and deleting this message. Folder size
|
There are a few standard icons used throughout the Webtop that are worth noting here. Here is a quick reference displaying the icon and its meaning:
Icon |
Description |
Popup a window allowing you to select contacts or email groups from your contacts |
|
View a printable version of this resource (ie. email, note, contact, etc…) |
|
View a PDF version of this resource |
|
Automatically create a reminder from this resource |
|
Delete this resource |
If you find any bugs in the Webtop (or this document) or would just like to send us some feedback on your experiences with the Webtop, please send all communication to info@yourwebtop.com. For support, you can join the Webtop support mailing list by sending an email to webtop-help@yourwebtop.com with the word “subscribe” in the subject.
The email functionality in the Webtop was designed to be as fast and as functional as a traditional email client. It is also a multithreaded email system and has been designed to support a large number of concurrent users. For example, if you are sending a simple text email message at the same time someone else is sending an email with a large attachment, your messages are sent in separate threads so that one user’s email processing does not interfere with another’s email.
When you first login to the Webtop, you will see six folders already created for you. These are called “system folders” and cannot be renamed or deleted. Here is a quick explanation of each folder and its function:
|
System
Folder Name |
Function |
|
1. |
Inbox |
This
is where all of your incoming mail will appear by default. Email messages deleted from this folder
are moved to the trash folder. |
|
2. |
Draft |
If
you need to save an email message you are composing in a “draft” state, you
can click on the “save as draft” button on the email composition page and the
email will be saved in this folder.
To continue editing the email, click on draft and then click on the
email message you are working on. |
|
3. |
Sent |
A
copy of every email message you send is put into this folder by default. This includes any reminder emails that are
sent or any emails sent from an action run by an email filter. Any email deleted from this folder will not
be moved to the trash folder – they are permanently deleted from the
database. |
|
4. |
Outbox |
When
you send an email, it is first put into this folder before being sent
out. The reason this is done is
because there are many issues that can occur with sending mail. This folder acts as a staging area to save
any outgoing email just in case any problems have arisen. If there is a problem sending an email, an
error icon ( |
|
5. |
Spam |
This
is a folder to use however you wish.
If you are being overwhelmed with spam email, it is recommended that
you set up filters to process your incoming email looking for spam and move
those messages into this folder. Any
email deleted from this folder will not be moved to the trash folder –
they are permanently deleted from the database. |
|
6. |
Trash |
Email
is moved into this folder when deleted from most folders (exceptions noted
above). Email deleted from this
folder are permanently deleted from the database. |
|
To setup a new email account, click on the “Email” button to enter the email service mode. Then, click on the “options” button:
Email accounts
Current user-defined email filters
Next, click on the “add new account” link and you will see the screen where you fill out your email account information. The following is a screenshot of the “add new account” page:
Email account information
Mailing list options Email receipt request options
After you enter this information and click the “add account” button, the Webtop will immediately start checking email for this account.
You may have noticed that when you setup a new email account, you can specify options for requesting: “email delivery receipts”, “email read receipts”, and “email delete receipts”. First, let me explain what an email receipt is. When you send an email to someone, typically you never receive any verification that they received the email or have read the email. When you request a delivery or read receipt, this means that you would like to know when the email was delivered and read. This receipt notification comes in the form of another email reporting to you the date and time that the email was delivered or read.
Email receipts are typically dependent on the email server and/or client of the email recipient. Meaning, if the person to whom you sent the email uses an email client or server that does not support sending delivery or read receipts, then you won’t know when the message was delivered or read. For example, Microsoft Exchange server does support delivery receipts and Outlook does support read receipts (if the user has configured Outlook to return the receipt).
The Webtop, however, does have a feature to enable read receipts from the recipient whether or not the recipient email client supports that feature. If you, as a Webtop user, enable the read receipt option, send an HTML-formatted email to a user, and that user reads the email with a client that is able to display the HTML-formatted email, then you should receive a “Webtop read receipt”. The Webtop read receipt is different from a regular read receipt (which is sent from a recipients email server or client) in that it will give you the IP address and hostname from the recipient as well as any other HTTP header information that the user. The Webtop uses a “spammer” trick to generate this read receipt – any outgoing HTML-formatted email sent with read receipt requests enable will have a transparent, one-pixel gif image appended to the end of the email. When the recipient views the HTML-formatted email, the recipient’s HTML rendering client (meaning the HTML-capable email client) attempts to display the image by connecting back to the sender’s Webtop server. When that image is requested, it triggers a process allowing the sender to know when their email was displayed and from what IP address. This is similar to viewing the log files of a web server to know who came to your web site and what they looked at. It is worth noting that when you read an email sent from someone who is trying to request an HTTP read receipt from you, the Webtop will filter out the HTML image tag triggering the read receipt before you read the message.
We have found that requesting “delete receipts” is not very well supported across email servers and clients – hence, you will rarely receive delete receipt notifications.
If you have more than one POP account setup in the Webtop, you can select which account will be the “primary” account. Selecting a primary account basically means that the selected account will be the default account selected when first composing a new message and it will be the account used to send emails for any automated functions such as reminders or email filters that send email.
In the window that shows the list of email folders, there is a link at the top that simply says “Email”. If you click on this link, it will show you the status of your email accounts. This status includes: if the account was successfully contacted last attempt and what the last error message received was. If there is a “last error message” for a particular account, it does not mean that there is a problem with this account. It simply means that at some point in the past (which could be days or weeks), an error occurred and here is what it was. If the status says that your account is not active (indicated by “false”), this means that the Webtop is not currently able to access your email account. Possible problems could include a downed email server, incorrect authentication information, or a “locked” POP account (when there multiple concurrent attempts to access the same POP account, some POP servers will lock out all but the first user to login). Look at the “last error message” to get a better idea of what the problem is.
The Webtop, in the background, automatically checks your email. The default frequency to check email is every 5 minutes for each account. You can also force the Webtop to check your POP accounts by clicking on the “check mail” button when in the Email service.
When you have a new email message, the Webtop will popup a window for 30 seconds to let you know that a new message has arrived. A popup window is also used to show reminders that occur while you are logged in. Having your browser periodically ask the server for any new, updated information triggers these popup windows. The frequency at which these checks occur can be changed in the settings section. Enter in the number of seconds you would like the browser to check for new email. After you make a change remember to “save your settings” at the bottom of the screen.
Folders are able to help you organize your email more efficiently. To add a new folder you need to be in your email section. At the top of your folders list there is a small blue bar named “folder options”. This area allows you to add, rename, or delete folders. To add a new folder, click the button next to email, then hit add in the blue bar. A screen will come up asking you to name the new folder. Enter in the name and click “ok”. You have successfully added a new folder in your email.
To Rename a current folder, select the folder you would like to rename by clicking in the button next to the folder name. Then click the “rename” button in the options bar. A screen will come up asking you to type in the new name. When you are finished click “ok”.
To Delete a current folder, select the folder you would like to delete by clicking the button next to the folder name you would like to delete. Then click the “delete” button in the options bar. A screen will come up asking you if you are sure you want to delete. Press “ok” to delete the folder.
Why folders show up as bold and what the numbers next
to them mean?
A folder will be emphasized in bold print when it contains one or more unread messages. The number next to the bold folder will tell you how many unread messages that folder contains.
Your email can be checked 2 ways. Manually by clicking on the “check mail” button located at the top of your screen in the email options bar. The server also checks email in the background automatically whether you are logged into the Webtop or not.
Compose
To compose an email, begin by clicking the “compose” button located in the email options bar at the top of your screen. A new screen will appear. Your primary email account will appear in the “from:” section. Check the “priority” in which you would like the person to receive the email. Enter the receivers email in the “to” box. (note: by clicking on the blue person icon, your contacts screen will come up and allow you to select contacts to send email to). If the receiver is someone in your contacts list and you know their nickname, you can simply type in the nickname in the “to” field instead of their full email address. For example, if you have “Joe Blow” setup as a contact you’re your nickname for him is “Joe”, you can just type in “joe” in the “to” field to send an email to him (assuming that you have specified an email address for Joe when you set up his contact entry). You can also type an email group name here as well. See the “Email groups” section for more information.
Next enter in the “subject” as to what this email is about. The “cc” means carbon copy; enter in anyone who you would like to receive a copy of this email. The “bcc” means blind carbon copy; enter in anyone who you would like to receive a copy of the email but do not want other recipients to know that you copied this person on the email.
Now you can type in your message in the large white text area. You can adjust the size, color and font you would like to type in using the text-formatting bar above the message area. The text-formatting bar is only available when using Internet Explorer. Currently, the Mozilla browser does not support such a feature.
To attach a file from your hard drive, click on the “browse” button to find your file, click on the file you want to attach, and then click the “attach” button. This will upload your file to the Webtop and include it in the list of files to attach to the email. If you would like to save this attachment to the webfiles after you send your email, you can click the “save attached files to webfiles” checkbox option. If you would like to attach a file from your webfiles, click on the “launch webfiles explorer” link, select the files you want to attach, and then click the “add and close” button.
If you would just like to save your email and send it later, click “save as draft” button. This will store your message in your drafts section and you are able to send it when you are ready. To send your email, click on the “send email” button. This will queue the email in the “Outbox” folder until the “send email” process runs to send any unsent messages (the default frequency for the send email process is 1 minute and can be modified in the Admin section).
Manually select / deselect request for a read receipt Type email message in this area Send plain text email instead of HTML email
Attach
files from local hard drive
Attach
files from the webfiles Save attached files to the webfiles after sending
email
By default, all emails sent with the Webtop are sent as “multipart/alternative” which means that you can use text formatting options to format your email message they way you want it and most email clients will be able to view that formatting as you’ve specified. However, email clients that are not able to display your formatting will see a simple text message. Multipart/alternative emails are sent as both HTML and plaintext emails in order to give the receiving email client the choice of which version to display. If you’d prefer to send a simply, plain-text email instead, simply click the checkbox below the message text area that says “Text only”.
It is important to note that if you are sending a “text only” email, but have requested a read receipt, the Webtop will send a multipart-alternative message in order to enable the HTTP read receipt option. If you truly want to send a text only email, then you can simply uncheck the read receipt checkbox.
To move an email message from one folder to another, you begin by clicking on the checkbox next to the messages you would like to move. A checkmark will appear next to the emails you are moving. Then click on the button next to the folder you would like to move the email to and hit the “move button” at the top of the screen in the “email options” bar. Your email has been successfully moved.
You are able to delete an email 3 ways. When you are viewing an email you can simply
click the “delete” button at the top of screen. The message will move into your “Trash” folder. The second way to delete a message is to
click on the checkbox next to the message(s).
A checkmark will appear next to the box. Then click on the delete button at the top of the page. This will also move the message from your
“inbox” to the “trash” and is useful for deleting multiple messages at
once. And, finally, you can click on
the trashcan icon from the email folder view to execute a
“one-click” delete – which will immediately delete the email by sending it to
the trash folder. Note that when you
delete a message from the “Sent” or “Spam” folders it does not move the folder
to the “Trash” folder; it deletes the email permanently.
This option allows you to search through all of your email. The search results will appear in a view similar to the “Inbox” folder view. The search results are also temporary – meaning, once you run the search, you can only access the results while they are on the screen. Once you go to another page other than the search results, the results are gone (unless you hit the back button or rerun the search). Using the search in conjunction with the split screen option would help keep the search results on the screen while viewing emails.
The options button is located at the top of your screen in the “email options” bar. When you click on options a new screen called “Email Options” will appear. In this screen you are able to add / edit email accounts, create email filters, and import / export email using the “mbox” file format.
On the email “folder view” page, there is a check box just under the folder title (“Inbox” for example) that says “split screen view”. By checking this box, your folder view will reload with a split screen view of your email: in the top frame will be the standard folder view list of email and the bottom frame will display any email you click on from the top frame. This is also commonly called the “preview” frame. Here is what the Webtop looks like with the splitscreen option enabled:
The Webtop, by default, will display the HTML version of an email if it exists. HTML emails – especially spam email – can contain special image references that don’t actually reference images. Instead, when you view their email, the image will reference a program running on the sender’s web server letting them know that you have read their email. This is useful to a spammer to validate that your email address is valid which, in turn, makes their database of email addresses more valuable to their clients. The Webtop has a setting (which is set “on” by default) that will filter out any of these image tags from the email before you read it. The Webtop will filter out these tags if the image URL does not end in .gif, .jpg, .jpeg, .png, or .bmp and contains the characters “?” or “&”. You can turn this setting off in the Settings section of the Webtop, but we highly recommend that you leave it on.
When an email has been sent to you, you have the option to reply to the email. To reply to an email simply click the “reply” button located at the top op the screen in the “message options” bar. A new screen will appear. Your email will appear in the “from” section. The person you are replying to will appear in the “to” section. In the subject it will remain the same with a Re: in front of the subject words. This means you are replying. Below you will see the sender’s message and above that you will be able to type in your own message. When you are finished click on the send email button at the bottom and your email will be sent.
When an email has been sent to you and others, you have the option to reply to the sender and the others that the email has been sent to. To reply to everyone that was included in the email click the “reply to all” button, located at the top of the screen in the “message options” bar. A new screen will appear. Your email will appear in the “from” section. The people you are replying to will appear in the “to” section. In the subject it will remain the same with a Re: in front of the subject words. This means you are replying. Below you will see the sender’s message and above that you will be able to type in your own message. When you are finished click on the send email button at the bottom and your email will be sent.
When reading a message that was sent to you, you have the option to forward the email onto others to allow them to view the message. To forward a message on to others click the “forward” button located at the top of your screen in the “message options” bar. A new screen will appear. Your email address will be located in the “from” box. In the “to” box you type in the email address of whom you would like to receive the email. In the subject box you will notice it now has “Fw” in front of the subject. This indicates you are forwarding the receiver a message that was previously sent to you. Also, any attachments that were in the original email will also be attached to this email. You do have the option to type in your own message if you choose to. Click the “send email” button when you are finished and your email has been forwarded on.
You are able to delete an email 3 ways. When you are viewing an email you can simply
click the “delete” button at the top of screen in the “message options”
bar. The message will move into your
“Trash” folder. The second way to
delete a message is to click on the box next to the message. A checkmark will appear next to the
box. Then click on the delete button at
the top of the page. This will also
move the message from your “inbox” to the “trash” and is useful for deleting
multiple emails at once. Also, you use
the “one-click delete” option by clicking on the trash icon next to the email
you want to delete ()
When viewing an email, if you click on the “show headers” button, it will show you all of the email headers included with this email. This can be useful to better understanding from where an email was sent and by whom.
This option will display the raw email source text. Be careful when using this option when the email has attachments. The source text can be very large when displaying the source of an email with attachments.
As described in the Webtop conventions section, each Webtop element (such as an email) can have a set of common options denoted by icons available to it. As in this case, an email has the following options available:
Icon |
Description |
|
Option allowing you to automatically add this user to your Contacts list if not already there |
|
An icon you can mouseover to see this sender’s contact information if the sender is already in your Contacts list |
View a printable version of this email (in a popup window) |
|
View a PDF version of this email (in a popup window) |
|
Automatically create a reminder from this email |
|
|
Send an “undeliverable email response” back to this sender (mainly useful for replying to spam messages). |
When viewing an email, a link will appear next to the sender’s email address that says “add to contacts”. Clicking on this link will automatically add this email address (and their name if present) to your contacts list. After adding this person to your contacts, you can add and edit additional information by going into the contacts service.
By adding an email address to you contacts list, a new icon will appear next to the sender’s email address when you are reading a message from them. By mousing over this icon (show in the screenshot below) a popup window will appear displaying this user’s contact information. You can close the popup contact window by clicking on the “X” next to the “Contact Information” title.
Sender’s contact information popup window
Icon to mouseover to display sender’s contact
information
·
Create a reminder from this email ·
View printable version of email ·
Create a PDF from the email ·
Send undeliverable email response to sender
|
Email filters are rules that you setup to automatically perform some action on incoming or outgoing email according to a set of criteria that you define. Filters are useful for:
To set up a new email filter, go to the Email service and click on the “options” button. There you will see your email accounts in the top half of the screen and email filters in the bottom half. Click on the “add new filter” link to start adding a new filter. The next several screens act as an email filter “wizard” to help you set up your new filter based on the criteria you specify. The final screen will give you an English description of the filter you have created. If you are satisfied with your filter, click on the “save filter” button to add it to your filters list.
After adding your email filter, you will be sent back to the email options screen. On this screen, you can change the order in which the filters are processed, activate or deactivate filters, or delete filters.
Delete filter
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Spam has become an unfortunate fact of life. To deal with this, the Webtop comes with a few spam prevention features to help keep spam out of your Inbox.
First, a system folder has been added called “Spam”. This folder has a feature where you can delete all messages at once by clicking on the “delete all this spam!” link. Messages deleted from this folder will not be moved to the Trash folder – they are deleted from the database. Another feature of this folder is a link in the folder header that says “send undeliverable responses to all”. This will send an undeliverable email response to every email currently in the Spam folder. More on this feature in a minute… One of the best ways to use this folder is to create filter rules to identify spam messages, move the email to the Spam folder, and periodically check this folder for messages that may have been incorrectly categorized as spam.
Second, there exists a filter rule that says, “if an email was sent from a sender not in your contacts list…” then do something with that email. This filter was specifically created to all you to easily filter out spam. Creating a filter using this rule and moving email into the Spam folder will keep spam out of your Inbox and allow you to more easily manage unwanted messages.
And, finally, we have added an “undeliverable response”
function. This link is an icon located in the “tools” column on
the email “folder view” page (next to the trash can icon) and on the page where
you read email (represented as a larger version of the same icon:
). By clicking on this link, you will send an
email message back to the sender that will look as if the sender’s email
was never delivered to you. The
response back to the send says, “this user’s email address is no longer
valid”. This would be similar to a
telemarketer getting a “this number has been disconnected” message when dialing
your phone number. When you send this
response back to the sender, many spammers use mailing list software that will
look for this type of message. If the
software receives a response like this, it will automatically remove your email
address from the spammer’s list and, hopefully, reduce that total amount of
spam you receive. When you execute an
undeliverable response, the Webtop will attempt to verify that the domain from
which the sender sent the email is a valid domain name. This will prevent responses from being sent
to domain names that do not exist.
Hence, if you use the “send undeliverable responses to all” option in
the Spam folder, you may not actually send the same number of responses as
there are messages in your Spam folder.
This is because one or more of those messages were from bogus email
addresses where the domain name did not even exist.
On a final note, the best method of spam prevention is to be careful to whom you give your email address and where you post your address (ie. posting your real email address to a newsgroup is an open invitation to email “harvesters” who scan web sites and newsgroups for addresses).
The Webtop has the capability to import and export email using the “mbox” file format. This file format was chosen because of its wide support across email clients, its ease of use, and its portability. These options are available in the “Options” link from the “email options” bar at the top of the screen. Below is a screenshot of the import / export screen:
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When import email, you must have an existing mbox file with mail already in it. These file are usually used as the master data source for an email client or an email client can already export to this file format for you to use as an import file (for example, Mozilla uses mbox files to store all of its email).
To import email, go to the “option” menu selection from the email menu and scroll down to the “Email import and export” section of the page. Next, select an existing email folder in to which email will be imported. Then, click on the “Browse…” button to file the mbox file on your local hard drive. And, finally, click on the “IMPORT” button to import the email.
When you click on the “IMPORT” button, a couple things happen here. First, the entire mbox file must be uploaded to the Webtop server. If you mbox file is too big, or if your network connection is too slow, your browser may timeout causing the upload – and subsequent import – process to fail. If this should happen, reduce the size of your mbox file (ie. split it up into multiple mbox files) and try again. After the mbox file has been uploaded, the Webtop will then start importing the email into the database. At this point you will see a “import status” screen telling you how many emails have been imported as the import proceeds. The import status screen should look something like this:
If any of the email messages being imported fail to be imported for whatever reason, there should be log messages saying so in the Webtop error log file.
Microsoft’s Outlook (and Outlook Express) use a closed, proprietary file format to store email. Until recently, it has been considered very difficult to export email from these clients. There are at least two options now to migrate email from Outlook to the Webtop. First, there is an excellent project located at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ol2mbox, which is specifically aimed at converting Microsoft Outlook .PST files into the standard mbox file format. Simply download this program (there are both Windows and unix versions) and run the utility on the command-line against any .PST file you have. For example:
C:\libpst_0.4.3>readpst
inbox-1.pst
Opening PST file and
indexes...
About to start processing
first record...
Processing items...
Processing Folder
"Inbox"
Finished.
After running the “readpst” program, take the resulting mbox file (in this case a file called “Inbox” was created) and import that file into the Webtop using the import feature. Thanks go out to the developer of this project, Dave Smith (dave.s@earthcorp.com), for this useful utility.
Another option for importing Outlook mail into the Webtop is to use Mozilla’s mail client (www.mozilla.org) to export mail from Outlook to Mozilla. Mozilla natively stores all email in the mbox file format – this means that you can easily import email from Outlook to Mozilla and then to the Webtop.
Exporting email is very simple. Go to the “options” menu selection from the email menu and scroll down to the “Email import and export” section of the page. Then, under the “Export an mbox file” header, select an existing email folder to export. It is important to note that when you export an email folder, only that folder will be exported. The export process will not recursively traverse a folder subtree and export all subfolders. Any subfolders under the exported folder need to be explicitly exported individually. After you have selected the folder to export, select a file format to export. The file format options are: plain-text (regular text export), zip (compressed export file using the zip format), and gzip (compressed export file using the gzip format). And, finally, click on the “EXPORT” button. The browser should prompt you to “Open” or “Save” the file – usually you will just want to save the file to your hard drive.
The Webtop is an “email client server” that is always on and running. Because of this server status, it is capable of acting as a simple mailing list server as well. You can setup an email account as a mailing list by selecting the “is this address a mailing list?” option to “yes” when creating or editing an email account under the “options” email menu option. Also, located on this screen is an option to select whether or not the list is moderated. By selecting “no”, any list subscriber can post messages to the list, which, in turn, will be forwarded, to all other subscribers; selecting “yes” to moderate the list means that only you – as the list administrator – can post the list. By setting up the mailing list, you become the list administrator by default since you own the email address.
After an email account is setup as a mailing list, anyone can send an email to this address with the word “subscribe” in the subject to subscribe to the list. To unsubscribe, any current email subscribers can send an email to the list address with the word “unsubscribe” in the subject. Upon subscribing or unsubscribing, an email confirming the action will be sent to the requesting user.
The Webtop’s mailing list functionality is relatively simple compared to full-featured mailing lists. It has been provided to allow regular Webtop users quick and easy setup of mailing lists without complicated installations or the need for system administrators. An email account that is acting as a mailing list is using the Webtop’s built-in send and receive functionality to send and receive email for the mailing list.
When a list subscriber posts a message to the mailing list, all subscribers to that list will receive that user’s email – assuming the list is unmoderated. To post a message to the list, a list subscriber simply needs to send an email to the email address setup as the mailing list address. The Webtop will periodically check for new email messages for any POP account setup – including accounts set up as mailing lists. When the Webtop receives an email message from the mailing list email account, it will then check to see if the account is moderated or not. If the list is not moderated, it will then resend the message to all subscribers (using BCC) on the list. When the message is resent, the Webtop uses the list administrator’s Webtop account to resend the email. This means that, if you were the administrator of a list and a subscriber posted a message to your list, when the Webtop receives that message it will then create a new email in your “Outbox” folder (with the list subscribers in the BCC line of the new email) and will move the message to your “Sent” folder after the message was sent. It is recommended that email filters be setup to deal with the additional email traffic that will occur in your account when mailing lists are active.
The calendar is a very useful tool. By clicking on the calendar at the top of your screen you have accessed the calendar service of the Webtop. It shows you the current month with the current day highlighted in blue. At the top you can click on the previous year and month, or you can click on future months and years to scroll through the dates. At the bottom you of the screen you will see the previous month in dark blue at the left and the next month in dark blue at the right. On this page you can click on any date within the calendar and a new “appointment view” screen will appear.
When you click on a day in your calendar a new screen will
appear. This is the appointments page.
On this page you will see a screen at the left containing each hour of the
day. At the right you will see a
monthly calendar at the top and “add new appointment” screen below. On the monthly calendar days that have
appointments will be highlighted in red.
You are able to print your appointments by clicking on the printer icon
at the top. To view it in a PDF format,
click on the icon.
To add a new appointment click on the day you wish to add the appointment to. Then enter in the time of the appointment, what the appointment is and if you wish to receive an email reminder about the appointment click the box. When you are finished adding your appointment click the “add appointment” box. Your appointment will appear at the left.
At the right and top of the appointments page you will see a monthly calendar page. On the monthly calendar days that have appointments will be highlighted in red. By clicking on the month name you will be sent back to a full view of the month. When clicking on the day, you will see the days appointments appear on the left in the appointments screen.
The notes service of the Webtop is a simple web-based “notepad-like” utility that allows you to enter and save notes online. These notes can be organized into folders, have PDFs created from them, or have email reminders created from them. Unlike emails, text formatting is not available for the notes – all notes are created in plain text.
All conventions described in the Webtop conventions section of this manual apply to this section.
The webfiles is a Webtop service that allows for the storage of files and document in order to make them accessible online.
Here is a list of the uses for which the webfiles can be used:
· Web access to any files you put into the webfiles
· Organize files into user defined folders
· Email attachments can be saved directly from an email into the webfiles
· Files in the webfiles can easily be attached to outgoing email messages
· Files can be viewed and saved directly from the webfiles
To add a new file to the webfiles, first, change to the folder that you would like to add the file to. Then, click on the “browse” button near the top of the webfiles window. This will open a file selection window to allow you to select the file you would like to add to the webfiles. Find and select your file, then click on the “upload” button to send the file to the Webtop. After the file is uploaded, the webfiles screen will refresh showing your new file in the list of files for that folder.
All other conventions described in the Webtop conventions section of this manual apply to this section.
Reminders are one of the more useful
services in the Webtop. Reminders are
simply emails that you schedule to be sent to any email addresses you
wish. Reminders can be sent one time or
on a recurring basis (i.e. once a week at 1pm until the end of the month). Reminders can be sent to yourself, to a
contact in your contacts list, or to any email you type in. Reminders can be created manually in the
reminder service or automatically from email messages, calendar appointments,
or notes by clicking on the icon.
Below is a view of the reminder setup screen.
The contacts section contains all your addresses, phone numbers, etc… that are important to you. When you click the “contacts” button at the top of the page and new page appears. To the left you will see folders with each letter of the alphabet. Your contacts can be found here by clicking on the first letter of the last name you are looking for. To the right your contacts will be displayed alphabetically according to the person nickname you have entered.
To add a new contact click on the “new contact” button at the top of the screen in the “contact options” bar. A new screen will appear asking you to enter in all of your contacts information. When you are finished click the “save contact” button located at the bottom of the page. Your contact has been filed and saved.
To edit a contact on your contacts page, click on the pencil located next to the person’s name. This will bring up the person’s information and allow you to make changes.
To delete a contact, click the box next to the contact you wish to delete. A check will appear. Then click the “delete” button located at the top of the screen in the “contact options” bar. You can also delete a contact by clicking on their name then pressing the “delete” button located at the top of the screen.
Contacts can be printed out as a whole or individually. To print out all of your contacts click the “print all contacts” button located underneath the “contact options” bar. To print out an individual contact, click on the contacts name. Their information will appear along with three icons under the “options” bar. You have the option to “edit” by clicking on the pencil, “print” by clicking on the printer or viewing the contact in PDF format by clicking on the PDF icon.
Below is a screenshot of the “add new contact” screen showing the data points available to store per contact:
Email groups are groups of contacts that you create to use for sending email to – similar to your own personal mailing list. When you have a list of friends, family, business associates, etc… that you are continually sending email to, it becomes cumbersome to type in all of their email addresses every time you want to send them an email. Hence, you can define an email group, add these contacts to the email group, and then next time you send an email to these contacts, you can simply address the email to the name of the group you have defined for these contacts.
When you add a new contact (or edit an existing one), you can assign that contact a group by typing in a group name next to the “or, add new group:” label on the “add contact” screen. When you add a new group for the first time, it is then added to the list of defined email groups. The next time you add a new contact, the email group you just added will be displayed in the list of email groups next to the “email group(s):” label.
If you want to remove an email group, you must first remove each contact assigned to that group. When the last contact is removed from that group, the email group will automatically be removed from the list of defined groups.
The real benefit of creating email groups and assigning contacts to them is when you actually go to use the email group. You use an email group when you send an email. Instead of typing the email address of each recipient in the “to”, “cc” or “bcc” line, you can type the name of the group (or groups) you have defined to send the email to – the name is case-insensitive. If you specify multiple email groups to send an email to, the Webtop will automatically eliminate duplicate email addresses in the event that a single contact belongs to multiple email groups.
Instead of typing in the group name, you can also click on
the contacts icon to popup the “contacts explorer” window (discussed further in the Email section).
This window will give you the option to select as many email groups and
addresses from your contacts as you wish.
You can also click on the email group name to view a list of who is in
that email group. Below is a diagram
showing the contacts explorer window:
The settings option is an administrative function that allows you to alter system settings. This page is also where a user can see what their current disk quota usage is. The following table shows the settings currently available, their meaning, and the default settings for each:
Setting |
Description |
Default setting |
Startup
service |
This
option is asking you which service you would like to see immediately after
logging in to the Webtop. The most
common settings are Email, Calendar, and Contacts depending on how you intend
on using the Webtop. |
Email |
Server
update frequency |
This
option specifies how often your browser should check back with the Webtop
server looking for updated information such as new emails or new reminder
messages. |
1
minute |
Rows
to display per folder |
This
option defines the default number of rows to display per folder summary view
(such as the email Inbox). A lesser
number of rows could potentially increase the speed at which the folder view
is displayed. |
50 |
Email
popup window |
This
option is asking you whether or not you would like to see a popup window when
new email messages arrive. The popup
window is displayed for 30 seconds and then closes itself if not closed by
the user. |
Yes |
Email
sound notification |
This
option allows you to select whether or not a chime will play whenever a new
email message is received. This chime
will play only while you are logged into the Webtop |
Yes |
Reminder
popup window |
This
option is asking you whether or not you would like to see a popup window when
new reminders are executed (in addition to sending an email reminder). The popup window is displayed for 30
seconds and then closes itself if not closed by the user. The popup window is only displayed if the
user is logged into the Webtop when the reminder is executed. If not, no popup window will be displayed. |
Yes |
HTML
or plain text email |
This
option allows you to specify whether you want to send HTML or plain text
emails by default. |
HTML |
When
reading an HTML email, remove HTML image tags that refer to non-images |
Using this option, you can prevent potential malicious code,
HTTP read receipts, and spam email validators from executing when you read an
HTML email. It is recommended that
this option be set to “yes” at all times. |
Yes |
Turn
on compressed HTTP response from the server? |
This
option will send compressed (using zip or gzip) HTML to your browser to help
speed up the response time from the Webtop.
This is a good option to enable for slower internet connections to the
Webtop server. |
No |
Change
password |
This
option simply allows you to change your Webtop login password. This option does not change your
email account’s password. |
N/A |