Send E-mails from Power Views

Date: Nov. 22, 2008 Categories: email , templates

You can start an E-mail directly from the Contact list or Matter list using an E-mail link in its Power View. For the Matter list you will need to peek under the hood of Time Matters and make a tweak, but you are rewarded by significant time savings.

You can send e-mails from Time Matters whether your primary e-mail software is Time Matters, MS Outlook or another program. Doing so allows you to link the e-mails to Contacts and Matters automatically. That makes it easy to quickly see what e-mails have been sent on a Matter or regarding a particular Contact by clicking on the email tab of the corresponding record.

Screenshot from Power View

E-mail links in Power Views let you start an e-mail and link it to a Contact or a Matter very quickly. Just find a Contact or Matter in its list and click on an e-mail link in the Power View. Up pops a new e-mail form already linked. Optionally, you can have the e-mail address filled in automatically, too.

Adding these links requires that you use Windows Notepad (Start | Run | type: notepad | Enter) or another text editor. There are a number of steps, but no single step is hard. The Contact List already has an e-mail link in the Power View: Form View. Try clicking on an e-mail address in this view. (If your Contact Form has been customized this may not work, but you can change that using these instructions.)

To add an e-mail link to the Matter Form Power View, I recommend that you make a backup copy of the Power View and then open the Power View in Notepad. You will need to know where your Power Views folder is. It is usually in a location like: F:\tmw9\data\files, where F: is the network drive where your Time Matters data folder is located. If you are using Time Matters Document Management, you can check your File Locations for the location. Go to: Main Menu | File | Utilities | File Locations. Double-click on TMW.CFG OR TMWE.CFG. The folder entered in the Files Directory field is where your template folder is located.

To backup and open the Power View:

1. Open Windows Explorer by holding down the Windows key (between Ctrl and Alt) and pressing: E.
2. Go to the template folder and open the powerview folder and then the Matter folder.
3. Right-click on Form View(M).htm and select Copy.
4. Right-click on the background of the window
5. Select Paste to create a backup copy of the Power View file, named Copy of Form View(M).htm
6. Right-click on Form View(M).htm and select Open With | Notepad

Next, you need to add an e-mail link. For this you need a customized e-mail field in the Matter Form. For example, you might customize the Custom1 (User1) field to be an e-mail field. Right-click on the field and choose Customize Field. Copy (select and press Ctrl-C) or make a note of its Core Field Name. In this example I use Custom1 with the Core Field Name: MAT:MAT1_04_01.

To add an e-mail link to the Power View that you have open in Notepad or another text editor:

1. Press Ctrl-F for Find. Type or paste: MAT:MAT1_04_01 and press Enter.
2. Press the down arrow key. You will see: {MAT:MAT1_04_01}
3. Replace this line with:

{MAT:MAT1_04_01} 4\. Save and close this file.

That's it! Close and reopen the Matter List. When you have the Form View selected as the Power View, you can find an Matter and click on the e-mail link to send an e-mail. The an e-mail form will open with the Client and Matter already filled in.

Prompt to Select email Field

This option lets you either accept the existing e-mail address (the one entered in the Custom1 field in the example, above) or press Cancel and pick a different e-mail address using the Lookup button next to the To: field. In either case the e-mail links to the Client and Matter.

I tip my hat to Jean of New York for inspiring this tip with her question on the CIC Solutions Forum - Time Matters.