Ensembling Help – Public dead letterbox dead letterbox

Public dead letterbox

dead letterbox

Use

dead letterbox

on the

menu for a folder to make a URL and email address where people from outside the project can submit files to that folder. Only editors can do this.

Submitted files behave in the same way as

add document

, so any watches on the dead letterbox folder or any of its parents are honoured. Also, an email is specifically sent to managers and project leaders to let them know the file has arrived.

Adding a dead letterbox is very similar to

publish

and they make an almost identical URL. However, dead letterboxes are folders for uploading to, but published items are documents for downloading.

Documents can also be emailed to a dead letterbox using the address provided in the form. There are a few conventions that it can be useful to be aware of about how an email is interpreted.

What on earth is a 'dead letterbox'?

Wikipedia may be of help.

What's the name and information box for?

These appear at the top of the public submission form when the visitor follows the URL you provide to them. Remember they will not be familiar with what the URL is for so may need some more inforamtion about why they are being asked to submit a file.

About security

The three kinds of security allow you to control who is able to submit files.

add random code to url	Anyone who knows the complete URL or email address can access the dead letterbox. However, a random code in the URL and email prevents someone guessing them. While a stranger is unlikely to guess the URL without the code, someone familiar with Ensembling would know what the URL pattern is like and could make a better stab at it, and URLs can, in principle, be examined by anone who has access to the networks over which they are sent (packet sniffing).
prompt user for pass code to get access	Like a password, you can supply the (randomly generated) pass code separately from the URL and the visitor must supply it to submit a file. Of course, it is still only as secure as the distribution of the pass code, and it doesn't apply to email addresses.
open access	Anyone who knows the URL or email address can submit files. The URL is not linked from anywhere (unless you do this explicitly) so it won't end up in Google available to the general public. But if someone unintended does submit a file, all you need do is delete it again.

Email addresses

The public email address of the dead letterbox folder is cryptic by design. You won't normally get spam from people guessing addresses. However, sometimes you want the address to be public; and often you want that address to be both memorable and in your own domain. That's fine. You just need to set up your address to forward or copy to the Ensembling address and everything will all still work.

Organizing emails

When you set up a dead letterbox which receives email, you can opt to have the emails sorted into folders within the dead letterbox folder to aid dealing with them. In effect, this provides an email ticket tracking system. You can:

arrange incoming emails in folders by year and month. Instead of putting messages (either by thread – see below – or individually in the dead letterbox folder, they can be moved to automatically created folders by year and month within year. This avoids a busy dead leterbox getting over-full.
group related incoming emails by thread/conversation. When someone outside the project sends you an email which is copied to your dead letterbox address, it is simply put into the dead letterbox awaiting attention. If you (or indeed the original author, or anyone else copied in) then replies to the email which includes the Ensembling address as recipient, a folder will be created for the 'thread' or 'conversation' and both the original email (which may be a folder if it had attachments) and the reply are put into the thread folder.
cross reference by person dealing with the email. If you, a project team member, reply to an email from someone outside the project then you are in effect taking responsibility for the job of replying. This can be reflected automatically in the folder structure by making a cross reference to the email thread into a folder with your name on it (which will be in a folder called Assigned To in the dead letterbox folder:
```
Letterbox
   Assigned To
      Person1
         -> Thread folder
            Message
               Attachments
            Message
            ...
         -> Another thread folder
         ...
   2011
      June 2011
        Thread folder
        ...
```
This means colleagues can see you are dealing with the matter, and also that any emails that have not received a response remain in the dead letterbox (or the current month folder if organised by date) clearly awaiting attention.

What happens if messages end up in the wrong thread?

Sometimes people reply to any old email message they have lying around just to get the right email address. That means messages arranged by thread are joined by an irrelevant reply. Simply move the message to the correct folder.

Likewise, if the wrong person is atributed for working on an issue (because they jumped in first with a reply), or you want to reassign the message, just move the cross reference to the other person's folder.

I forgot the URL/email address

Click on the dead letterbox button

. You can copy and paste the URL form the form provided. Also, have the URL emailed to you.

Why would I want the URL/email address emailed to me?

So you can forward it to the people you want to invite to submit files.

How do I turn it off?

Click on the dead letterbox button

and choose Make Private Again.

What if two documents with the same name are uploaded?

It names the document with a '(2)', '(3)' and so on at the end so there is no ambiguity. The file will download with the same name it originally had.