Replying to a community post by email

[Jaime_Lee]

How does one add the option to reply by email? And, anyone that has this enabled what are your thoughts on enabling this feature? Are there Pros or Cons that I should think about?

[Jaime_Lee]

Thank You! This was helpful insight!

[LarryI]

Hi Jaime_Lee!

To enable reply by email on your community, here's the help article on that: https://community.lithium.com/t5/Reply-by-email/Enable-Reply-by-Email/ta-p/36554

As for pros and cons, I see it as a great option for users and super users that subscribe to content to reply and give kudos via email.  It's great for those types of users.  For the majority of users, I don't expect you'd see a great amount of users using it but it can be an option for all registered members via a Permissions grant.

The potential downside and there isnt too much data around this yet, is that it keeps users out of the community. With a holistic desktop/mobile responsive experience, it's better for them to natively post rather than through email as they'll have more posting options, be able to accept solutions, etc.

I recommend updating the reply by email template in Studio to encourage users to visit the community for more posting options and to try to help others.

Would love to hear more thoughts from those who have this feature enabled in their community!

[Jaime_Lee]

@LarryI

Hi, I tested the functionality here by replying by email.

Some questions:

1.  How quick should the Reply show up in this thread?

2.  Why is the time stamp showing 13 hours ago when I just sent this reply by email within the last 15 minutes?

3.  Why did the reply show up below my original post instead of under your reply to keep the conversation "inline."

Thanks!

[LarryI]

@Jaime_Lee The email reply will appear nearly immediately after you send it, as soon as the system receives it and processes.

Regarding the issue with your test in this thread, that is not expected behavior and I have escalated to the Lithium Community team.

[Jaime_Lee]

Thank you for escalating!

[Jaime_Lee]

And, the last post "Thank you for escalating!"  was via reply by email also and was inline so maybe  the other was a fluke?  Still interested why it displayed that way, nice to see it works as I was expecting it to the second time.

[Jaime_Lee]

Now I am being asked by my community members what happens to images in the reply email.  Let's try it and see  how it looks!

[Jaime_Lee]

@LarryI   I am not getting my messages in my email to test this.  I am subscribed though.  Maybe you could reply to me so I can see if that subscription comes through.

[LarryI]

Hi @Jaime_Lee, replying to you to ensure you get the email message from this.

[Jaime_Lee]

Thanks, Larry! So I am replying to this message via email and I want to include an image in my reply.
Text Above Image
[cid:image003.jpg@01D42275.043E8070]

Text Below Image

[Jaime_Lee]

@LarryI  Hi, Larry!  So, is this the expected behavior for this feature?  If I copy and paste and image into my email message does it not come through to this discussion board.  If you reply to me again, I will test with an attaching an image.  Thank You!

[LarryI]

Hi @Jaime_Lee,

Looking into this further, that is expected behavior.  The image that you have in your email would be considered an email attachment and that is not supported.  Here are other notes from our article on Reply by Email:

Notes

• Rich text formatting supported by the community can be entered and sent via Reply by Email.  If users do not have permission to use certain HTML tags in their posts, their post will not go through.
• Reply by Email does not support email attachments.
• Posts made using Reply by Email look just like normal community posts.
• For security reasons, the Reply by Email link is active only for the first usage. 

In this case, if a user wanted to add an image, they'd have to go to the community to edit their post.

[KhodrT]

Just mentioning in addition: if you have the feature enable and a user replies by email also the preconfigured Email signature gets posted as it is included in the reply when a signature has been set up in Outlook etc.

Important to note to the users so they don't post by accident any credentials like phone numbers etc they usually shouldn't. 😉

[Jaime_Lee]

@KhodrT @LarryI

I have an Outlook signature and here on the Lithium Community my signature did not come through.

See my reply on this thread "Thank you for escalating."  What is the official Lithium documentation on this feature and whether or not the signature is of concern or if it is an intermittent concern.  Thank You!  JL

[LarryI]

By default, the signature in Outlook is not included when you click “Reply” in the email.  You can likely change this in your Outlook settings to ensure a signature is added for every email. In this message, I included my signature above the line stated in the email response.  If the signature appears BELOW that line, it will not be present in the community post.

Larry Imgrund | Sr. Social Solutions Consultant

225 Bush St., 14th Floor

San Francisco, CA 94104

P: 209-834-6095

Lithium
Delivering an awesome digital
experience to every customer.

[HSCommunity]

Hi @LarryI 

We have a public forum. We have set up the reply by email function, but now it seems very often this is pulling the signature from the users which has private credentials in there. It either goes live on Community or directly into the spam folder.

This is not good for us because on the one hand users can have private details online, and on the other hand, when it gets into the spam folder, it's not scalable for Community Managers to edit the post to remove the signature before publishing the post. 

What can be done to avoid that? 

Thank you!

[LarryI]

Hi @HSCommunity,

I have a signature set up in my email inbox and I am replying to you via
email (this post) to test this out. The intended functionality is that
when you click "Reply" on the email, it will open up with a blank email
with instructions to type your reply above a specific line.

For more information, there is the link to the workflow for Reply by Email:
https://community.khoros.com/t5/Reply-by-email/The-Reply-by-Email-workflow/ta-p/108771

Signatures should not auto-populate in any email client but if you are
finding that they do, I would recommend submitting a case with attached
examples to Khoros Support.