FogBugz 6.0 Online Help

Handling incoming customer email

FogBugz incorporates extensive features for receiving, tracking, and responding to customer email:

  1. A message arrives in a mailbox on your mail server.
  2. Periodically, FogBugz uses the POP3 protocol to check your mail server for new messages.
  3. If any messages are found, FogBugz downloads them from the mail server and creates a case out of each one.
  4. If you're using the AutoSort feature, FogBugz discards spam and sorts the rest of the messages into areas according to topic.
  5. If desired, FogBugz sends an immediate reply to the customer, providing them with a URL they can use to check on the status of their request.
  6. Once the message is in FogBugz, you can treat it like any other case: you can prioritize it, assign it, track it, slice it, dice it, deep fry it, etc.
  7. At any time you can reply to the message from within FogBugz. FogBugz will insert the case number into the subject line of the outgoing message.
  8. If the customer responds to your reply, as long as they don't remove the FogBugz case number from the subject, their response will be appended to the current case rather than opening a new case.
  9. FogBugz will keep a complete transcript of everything that happens with the case, including all relevant incoming and outgoing email and even private internal conversations about the case which the customer does not see.

You can use FogBugz email integration to manage customer service or a helpdesk. FogBugz can set automatic due dates on incoming email so you can be certain that customers are receiving replies to their email inquiries in a timely fashion.

Another use of FogBugz email integration is to create a customer bug-reporting address or a suggestion box. Since all customer emails go right into FogBugz, you can treat them just like bugs or features: assign them to developers, schedule them, assign priorities and due dates, and so on. When the feature is implemented or the bug is fixed, with one click you can reply to the customer to tell them.

Customers can also submit new cases via public projects, and can post on public discussion groups (you can turn a discussion post into an internal case with one click).

To learn more about managing customer email, read these topics: