Email Functionality
Purpose of Email Functionality In AdviceOS
Midwinter understands that no financial planning software will be able to match the capabilities of an established email system such as Outlook or Gmail. Consequently, the email
functionality within AdviceOS is designed to work and interact as a complimentary platform with your chosen email system
to ensure important communications can be stored efficiently.
The focus of this particular functionality is to ensure that only emails that are pertinent to your financial planning process can be stored in AdviceOS to both prevent irrelevant information on your clients profile & protect your AdviceOS from potential spam.
There is more than one way that you can manage client emails under AdviceOS. Please refer to the below to explore the different options:
Integrating Office 365 with AdviceOS
AdviceOS allows a user to integrate their Office 365 account with AdviceOS. Once integrated, they can link their outlook email address and calendar into AdviceOS for additional functionality. The outlook integration provides a user the ability to send emails from AdviceOS using the standard ‘Send Email’ dialog, an email record will be created in AdviceOS, however your client will receive this email from your outlook address.
For more information, refer to https://help.midwinter.com.au/portal/en/kb/articles/integrating-office-365-with-adviceos for details on how to set this up.
Drag and Drop your emails easily into AdviceOS
The
quickest and easiest way to upload emails from your own email system into
AdviceOS is via the drag and drop functionality. Just simply navigate to Client
> Client Records > Email, select the email you want from your
external email system, and then drag and drop this into the box provided.
A new
dialog will appear, asking you for a subject name, owner of the email &
subcategory type.
When dragging and dropping emails, there are several considerations:
- The file type must be .msg, no other file type is accepted.
- You can drag and drop multiple emails up to a limit of 10 at any time one, and determine whether the email owner is the client, spouse or joint.
- When uploaded, the .msg file and any attachments within the email will be included as attachments in AdviceOS. This is for two reasons; one since certain parts of the message format may not be fully imported in the body of the email, and to allow a user to open these within the record at any point. These will all be included within your clients Documents section as email attachments.
- Given the logic within AdviceOS, the ‘Sender’ within AdviceOS will be the AdviceOS User who has dragged and dropped the email into the system (similar logic to when a user forwards emails into AdviceOS). The original sender of the email can be seen when opening the .msg file that is attached.
- If an email has an attached
file that is unsupported, a warning message will appear and the user may
need to resolve this issue.
AdviceOS Unique Email Address and your Work External Email Address.
Each user receives their own unique email address when access is provided.
Its format is username@mail.adviceos.com.au
The username is your login name. This email is unique to you and only you, and allows you to forward email correspondence (including attachments) from your clients to AdviceOS so that they can be stored within AdviceOS against your clients record.
Important note - you should not provide your clients with this email address as you cannot write and send an email to it. It's purpose is for forwarding emails into AdviceOS or sending emails out of AdviceOS only.
Furthermore, all users will also have their work email address recorded against their AdviceOS user profile. We will refer to this as 'work external email address' from here on in.
Summary of Functionality
Below is a summary of our Email functionality in AdviceOS:
What happened? | What you should do? | Outcome |
| - You want to send an email from AdviceOS | - Locate 'send email' within AdviceOS - Create your email, including signature where relevant - Select from and send email | - Your client will receive an email* - This will be saved in AdviceOS > client records > email automatically |
- You receive an email from a client - You want to forward it to AdviceOS | - Press forward in the email - Include either: (1) the clients email address** in the subject or body of the email or, (2) the client number written 'CNXXXXX' in the subject of the email - Forward the email to your internal AdviceOS email address username@mail.adviceos.com.au | - Email will be saved in AdviceOS > client records > email - You will receive an email from noreply@adviceos.com.au confirming the email has been sent |
- You receive an email from a client to your mobile phone - You want to forward it to AdviceOS | - Press forward in the email - Include either: (1) the clients email address** in the subject or body of the email or, (2) the client number written 'CNXXXXX' in the subject of the email - Forward the email to your internal AdviceOS email address username@mail.adviceos.com.au | - Email will be saved in AdviceOS > client records > email - You will receive an email from noreply@adviceos.com.au confirming the email has been sent |
- You are sending an email to your client via a separate email system (ie outlook/gmail) - You want the email tracked in AdviceOS | - Create your email within your chosen system - Address email 'To' your client - Include in 'Bcc' username@mail.adviceos.com.au - If email address of your clients is not unique, include the CNXXXXX in subject | - Email will be sent to your client - A copy will be uploaded and saved to AdviceOS > client records > email |
* The email your client receives will be from username@mail.adviceos.com.au however if they click 'reply' it will send an email back to the email address under your client profile (ie work external email address)
** To use a clients email address it must be unique to that client. If for example you have client and partner with the same email address this will result in an error. The system must look for only one user with that email address. If it is not unique, use the client number as this will always be unique.
Sending An Email from AdviceOS
To send an email select your logo or the midwinter logo in the top left hand corner of your computer:
This will bring you to the home page. Under the quick links tile you will see the tab "Send Email":
When sending an email address from AdviceOS, you can choose who the email is from. Depending on your permission levels, you may be able to send an email from other users within your Practice.
Important - when an email is sent from AdviceOS the client will see that it is from username@mail.adviceos.com.au. This is because we are unable to impersonate another email address within the system.
As mentioned, your client will see that it has come from your username@mail.adviceos.com.au email address. However, if the client then chooses to 'reply' to this email, it will automatically reply to your AdviceOS profile email (i.e. work external email address). You will receive the reply within your email provider that is set up against your AOS profile (i.e. outlook/ gmail).
This is not automatically stored in AdviceOS, so will need to be tracked by yourself.
If your client selects 'reply all' it will attempt to send the email to both your work external email address and your AdviceOS email address username@mail.adviceos.com.au. This however, will not be received by AdviceOS. A notification will be sent to your client confirming that their email was undeliverable to username@mail.adviceos.com.au. Therefore, you must instruct your client to select 'reply' not 'reply all' so that they will only be emailing your work external email address.
They cannot send an email to username@mail.adviceos.com.au - a newly created email sent to this address will bounce back with an error.
The above process is set up to ensure you and your practice are the only ones who control what does or does not go into a clients records > email section. This ensures you reduce potential spam emails, irrelevant information or a long list of replies back and forth that just add noise to your clients profile. You as the adviser have complete control over what goes into AdviceOS, and this should be used as a supplementary service that works alongside your external email system rather than a stand alone.
As you can see in picture below, you are able to add attachments to your email (1).
Clicking include signature- will ensure that the email signature that you have saved in Settings > New Configuration > User Email Signatures will flow through for your email. Please note you will not see your signature in the body of the text (3) but be assured that your client will see it in the email (if you have successfully added a signature to the User Email Signatures tab in Settings).
How to Log Emails in AdviceOS
(Note- my examples below all focus on emails from Outlook- yours may look different if not using outlook, but the process is the same)
There are 3 important rules that you must be aware of:
- Make sure that the work external email address you are forwarding the from is the same email address that is linked to your AdviceOS username (if you are unsure, please call the support line on 1300 882 938). You can have up to 2 email addresses attached to your AdviceOS login.
- The email must be sent from from you external email that is linked to a practice in which the client resides.
- If you use option one below you must ensure that your clients email address is unique in AdviceOS. This means you CANNOT have 2 client with the same email address (including couples). If you do not have a unique email address for you client, AdviceOS will not be able to match the email to a specific event.
Option 1) Transfer to AdviceOS using clients unique email address (risks chance that there is another client in the system with the same email address-in which case it will not work).
To check your clients email address or to add your clients email address go to Client > Fact Find > Contact Details:
As you can see in my screenshot above- both members of this client group have the same email address- Therefore for this to work we would need to delete the email address against one of my clients names.
Next, you will access the email you would like forwarded to AdviceOS and select forward:
In order to transfer to your clients record in AdviceOS you can place your clients unique email address in the following three locations in your email and then forward to your AdviceOS email address- username@mail.adviceos.com.au:
Option 2) Using your clients Client Number to transfer email to AdviceOS (this will work 100% of the time as their client number is unique to your client)- This method is the safest.
Accessing CN Number.
First step is locating your clients Client Number. To do this click "select client" in the top left hand corner of your computer:
The following client dialog box will appear. Your clients client number can be found in the 5th row across:
Forward using CN
Next, you will access the email you would like forwarded to AdviceOS and select forward:
After locating your clients Client number, you will place it in the subject field with the prefix "CN" at the start (1) then forward to your AdviceOS email address- username@mail.adviceos.com.au (2):
Things to be aware of with this method:
- Ensure that there is no space between letters CN and the numbers. E.G don't do CN 123456 but instead do CN123456.
- Ensure that the prefix CN is in uppercase letters (capital letters).
- The following inputs will not work "CN123456-" and "CN123456update". Please follow above method.
Locating where your email is Stored in AdviceOS.
As soon as the email is sent, a file note is created and saved along with attachments- see below screenshot. The email subject becomes the file note heading and the email body text becomes the file note body text
To make sure that the email you have forwarded to AdviceOS has been saved there go to Main menu (1) > Client (2) > Client Records (3) > Notes (4).
The most recent email saved to AdviceOS will appear at the top:
As discussed above when you double click on the email it will appear in file note format.
Confirmation Email
Once you have successfully transferred your email to your clients record in AdviceOS, you will receive an automated email that will look something like this:
For any further questions regarding Email Functionality please contact:
Email: info@midwinter.com.au
Phone: 1300 882 938
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