Simple version of "Setting up an email-driven workflow with attachments (2.x)" [#1439238]

Hi,
there is a nice write-up advertised on the module page,
Setting up an email-driven workflow with attachments (2.x)

Two problems:
a) This is quite a lot on one page, and a lot one can do wrong.
b) Not all of the modules are ready for D7 yet.

Not all of the steps are necessary for a basic workflow. E.g., attachments and Driven API are super-nice, but they are not absolutely necessary afaik.

Input formats are quite essential, but they are not necessary to make something happen. It will look ugly without them, but hey, you do get a flow of messages in two directions, and that's the important thing.

Having a simple version with the basic essential modules would help a lot. Especially, when trying to adapt that to Drupal 7. This would also make it easier to understand what each of the modules' purpose is.
Maybe the basic article could even be further split up into one part about sending, and another about receiving..

So, that would be:
- one overview page with a list of requirements and links.
-- one article about a basic setup.
--- optionally, a sub-page only about notifications + messaging + send methods (*)
--- optionally, a sub-page only about mailhandler + mailcomment (*)
--- optionally, a sub-page only about the feeds importer (*)
-- one doc page about input formats.
-- one doc page about files / attachments.
-- one doc page about throwing comment-driven into the mix.
-- one doc page talking about limitations, things not implemented yet, and alternatives. for instance, when it should be considered to use og_mailinglist instead.

Each of the articles should end with some kind of measurable success, a testable mechanic.

(*) Yes, these modules all have their own documentation, but that is not exactly targeted to this work flow.

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I would help out with this myself, but I still feel totally clueless. I hope this request is somewhat useful at improving the documentation.

Comments

Comment #1

donquixote commented 13 February 2012 at 22:28

Some things I don't get from the documentation:

For the feeds importer, I am currently clueless why it wants to create nodes of type "Mailhandler source". What are these good for?
Do I need separate mailboxes, even separate email accounts, for posts and replies? (If I want to create nodes with mailhandler, and replies with mailcomment)
How do I automate the importing? How do I even import at all? I see the "/import" page, but then i can only visit the page where a new "Mailhandler source" node would be created.

All that using the D7 version of things.

Comment #2

danepowell commented 11 July 2012 at 23:53

Sorry for the delayed response. I agree that more work should go into make things simpler for the most basic use cases. What do you think of the quick-start module as a step in this direction?

Sources (just nodes attached to a special content type) link a specific mailbox to a specific importer, allowing new messages to be imported from the mailbox on cron runs.

Theoretically, you can accomplish everything with just one inbox and two importers - in the importer fetcher configs, use the filter setting to make each importer only fetch comments or nodes. However, the filter is known to fail in certain circumstances (e.g. with messages that have been forwarded). There are existing issues regarding this if you search the Mailhandler / Mail Comment queues.

Hope that helps.

Comment #3

donquixote commented 12 July 2012 at 01:35

Damn, now the mailcomment thing is so long ago and out of my brain :(

I hope my comment was somewhat useful. I just can't follow up with anything meaningful right now. Maybe next time when I play with mailcomment.. But thanks for the response!