How to swiftly response to customer proposals

[Arie]

Dear Forum OTRS users,

A month ago we started with OTRS. Therefore we used email outlook to keep track on our customers.
Lot’s of discussions went over and over about, did you answered this email? Or did you take care of it etc.
We had heard of a better way to deal wth this ordeal
As a small team we took a big bold step to start with the beta. 3.0 b4 at the moment.
For sure, OTRS we love it, embrace it, and will not go back to ms outlook again.

One thing in particularly we do not “get the hang-of”

I will try to explain:

Among many things we do, is, build customized server systems.
A customer, asks a certain configuration and we do a business proposal, an offer.
Hopefully they can't refuse. (In dutch we call it an offerte) Lets say to build it for certain amount of money.

When the customer replies by email to our proposal we want to respond asap.
But the follow up email does not pop up? It hangs in there, underneath the old one, somewhere in the queue.
But not on top. In the dashboard. So sometimes we respond to late.

Is there a (simple) way to keep track on these for us important vital email follow ups?

Maybe we look something completely over the head. And is the answer right before our noses.

thanx in advance, Arie de Leen Ykoon BV Leiden Netherlands

[crythias]

Are you saying that you're not using your email system to receive the updates on followups? Because to me that's a critical component to know the followup exists. In addition to that, I'm thinking of the following scenario:

Instead of simply "open", a ticket that is waiting on a proposal response should be of a state "waiting for customer" (still of state TYPE open). Optionally, but critically, the ticket in this state should also be unlocked, so followup emails can go to all agents who have notifications turned on for the queue (My Queues in agent preferences, and notifications turned on). Unlocked doesn't change owner, though the first agent to follow up *might* change the owner if the ticket is unlocked.

This would normally be what I'd suggest checking:
PostmasterFollowUpState

Default value: open
Defines the state of a ticket if it gets a follow-up.

But what I'm thinking about here is that perhaps a PostmasterFilter should be added to check for this:
Filter:
X-OTRS-State: waiting for customer
Set:
X-OTRS-State: received response

(make sure these states are valid in the Admin, States section)

Then when you interact with this as a "normal" ticket, you change the state to "open".

Well, it's an idea, anyway... I'm open to a dialog on this, if you'd like to further tweak or understand what I'm saying.

[Arie]

Thanx, I'll look into it

We merely use the dashboard to keep track on our (new to become) customers. More CRM like wise.
All email notifications are switched off. Why look at two places, ms outlook, OTRS, back and forth.

It would be nice when a customer responses, that for example, on the dashboard a yellow star or exclamation mark will be visible.
(where are the sometimes yellow stars for anyway?)
Maybe this is totally out of the scope of the OTRS concept. And is email notifications the way to keep track on things.

I've made the two states as you mentioned. In a test environment.
But now comes the tricky part. How to filter the states out? To make them above all be noticed on the dashboard?

The PostmasterFilter is not completely understood.
This is not a PostmasterX-Header to be scanned? Or the PostMaster::PostFilterModule###000- part? In the config.
Maybe Frontend::Module###AdminPostMasterFilter that's where I lost track.