For over 10 years, Arup’s Mail Manager has proved a popular choice for firms wishing to capture and collate their project related email communications. The latest developments give its mobile ability desktop power
For decades the focus of the document management world was on drawings, design documents, revisions, security, and distribution. It was easy to replicate existing workflows for paper documents. As the digital world took over communications with email, it took a very long time before anyone started to log the messages that went along with those design decisions. In construction, with a federated approach to delivery, and a nasty habit of blame culture, email capture on project decisions is a necessity for both traceability and compliance.
Email is both a scourge and a blessing. We get too damn many of the things, but they are a digital thread of essential correspondence concerning key decisions and instructions. In AEC, up to 80% of all project correspondence is done through email. Emails have to be captured and stored consistently against projects, as documents show decision trails and contain client sensitive information.
Mail Manager does what it says on the tin and has been a popular choice for firms using Microsoft Exchange/Outlook over the last 10 years, achieving 92,000 users in 2,500 companies.
The application integrates into Microsoft Sharepoint, Microsoft 365, Procore, Viewpoint for Projects, Synergy, MS Team, Bentley Projectwise, Opentree, MS OneDrive, Dropbox and Box. Mail Manager doesn’t lock you into a particular system; you can file to a network location or to the cloud.
Email is both a scourge and a blessing. We get too damn many of the things but they are a digital thread of essential correspondence concerning key decisions and instructions
The latest release aims to provide features that were available on the desktop, to those on mobile via the Mail Manager 365 Mobile App – namely ‘on the go’ filing of project emails.
Essentially, the key function of Mail Manager, is to remind the user to allocate relevant places to file incoming and outgoing messages and to make this as simple and easy as possible. It does this through prompts and is as simple as checking a box.
Mobile device features include: compose new emails, add attachments, mark emails as read or unread, set reminders to file recently read emails, file multiple emails at once and auto-prompts users to file when sent.
Mail Manager also provides a search tool to locate relevant messages stored with the system. This is a big boost over most email clients we have used. The larger the database of emails, the slower the response and then to that, add filed items too. Mail Manager is like a ‘hot knife through butter’ in this respect, just enter in a key word or a phrase.
Pricing varies, based on the number of users, term lengths and payment options (annually or monthly).
Standard terms are one-year agreements, billed in one off payments. For an organisation of five to 25 people, Mail Manager works out at around £16 per user, per month.
