Re: query for functionality: keeping track of follow-up emails?

[Erik Hetzner <egh@e6h.org>]

Hi John,

There are probably a million ways to do this. I guess you could
probably do it in WL itself, but I am not sure how. I use imapfilter
to do something similar (refile from “pending” folders). Here is an
imapfilter config I hacked together to do this. This will refile from
a folder named pending/d22 (or whatever the day of the month is)
either to INBOX (if the message does not have a reply in your archive
folder) or to archive (if there is a reply).

best, Erik

  refile_server = IMAP {
    server   = 'localhost',
    username = 'egh',
    password = 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX'
    port     = 993,
    ssl      = 'ssl3',
  }
  
  function pending_refile_conditional(boxname)
    replied = Set {}
    not_replied = Set {}
    results = refile_server[boxname]:select_all()
    for _, message in ipairs(results) do
       mailbox, uid = table.unpack(message)
       id = mailbox[uid]:fetch_field('Message-ID')
       replies = refile_server.archive:send_query(string.format("HEADER references \"%s\"", id:sub(13)))
       if (#replies > 0) then
          table.insert(replied, message)
       else
          table.insert(not_replied, message)
       end
    end
    replied:move_messages(refile_server.archive)
    not_replied:move_messages(refile_server.INBOX)
  end
  
  pending_refile_conditional(os.date("pending/d%d"))

At Tue, 22 Apr 2014 10:24:50 -0500,
John Owens wrote:
> 
> Greetings, I would like the following functionality for my email client, and welcome ideas and suggestions!
> 
> I send a lot of email that I hope will be answered. Occasionally I don’t get an answer, and I’d like to follow up if that’s the case. What I could do is keep track of every email that I send as a todo item, and then check off that todo item when I get a reply. But the common case is that I do get a reply, and I’d like to optimize for that case; I’d be doing a lot of bookkeeping otherwise. I’d only like reminders when I don’t get a reply.
> 
> My ideal system would allow me to send an email and set some sort of reminder (perhaps cc: another address?) that reminds me in a designated amount of time *only if I don’t get a reply*. Currently there are services like followup.cc that partially fit the bill: I can cc: a message to 1w@followup.cc and in a week, I’ll get an email reminder. But, followup.cc has no access to my mail stream and can’t watch for replies; what I’d *like* instead is something that watches my mail stream for Message-IDs and *only* reminds me at the designated time if it hasn’t seen the initiating Message-ID.
> 
> Any pointers to anything like this, whether it be in Wanderlust or elsewhere? I use Wanderlust primarily, but Mail.app runs in the background, so my backup plan is writing it in AppleScript and running it in Mail.app, I suppose. I don’t have access to procmail, which might have fit the bill as well.
> 
> JDO

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