The Big Act by Sproutit.com

Mailroom Online

2008-07-25T16:48:00Z

Mailroom is back online.

We are very sorry for the disruption in service last night (especially to our overseas friends).

It appears there were some issues with file system on the server that receives the email for Mailroom. The team at Liquid Web was able to rebuild the file system and resort everything back to 100%. The work they did will also help a few of the accounts that have been experiencing slow email delivery.

For the next few hours email delivery will be delayed as we are working to deliver all the email that was received though the night.

Again we are sorry for the disruption and thank you all for being patient with us.

Your Friends from Sproutit.

Mailroom Offline

2008-07-25T04:54:00Z

Update Mailroom is back online. The system rescue team over at Liquid Web worked through the night to get everything working properly again. Your accounts are 100% accessible but the email will be slow for the next few hours as we are working to deliver all of the email received through the night.

Mailroom is went offline around 8:15 PST. We have been communicating with the data center and it appears we may have some faulty hardware on the server that receives the email causing the load spike.

All of the data is safe.

I will post any additional information as it comes in.

Thank you for your patience as we let the experts get Mailroom back online.

SproutCore Gets Its 15-Minutes

2008-06-16T06:56:00Z

About 18 months ago, I posted the then-new Mailroom 2.0 and the new approach we had taken to building it called the JavaScript Application. In a post called JavaScript Applications vs Ajax I wrote:

Mailroom is certainly not the only JavaScript Application out there. ... But we do hope that Mailroom will be a shining example of what JSApps are capable of, and why we think they are the future of web apps for business in general.

For the last 18-months we’ve been developing on these ideas internally along with some other folks who thought our ideas were interesting too. The result is a new open-source framework that we announced a few months ago and that will go 1.0 in a few weeks called SproutCore. And boy it is getting some attention.

I can’t really tell you much more about who is using SproutCore or what they are doing with it, but I can point you to some great articles. This one is my favorite so far: Cocoa for Windows + Flash Killer = SproutCore.

We started Sproutit in part because we believe that bringing desktop-like business applications to the web would open them up to a whole new audience of small and medium-size businesses. It turned out that the technology we needed to do this didn’t exist yet.

Now with SproutCore it does.

Connectivity Trouble Over

2008-05-21T23:17:00Z

We have been informed that the problems have been corrected and we are back to normal. Please let us know if you experience anymore slowness.

Thank you again for your patience through this.

Trouble With Conectitivity

2008-05-21T18:22:00Z

We are very sorry for all those having to put up with a very slow Mailroom today. Some of the connections upstream from our data center are having problems. Only people from certain regions are experiencing the slowdown.

We have not been given any time estimates yet as the malfunctioning equipment is not under our data center’s control. We will be sure to update here with any information we receive.

Thank you for your patience as we give the experts time to work.

Your Friends from Sproutit

The Return of the Client

2008-04-27T03:42:00Z

I’ve written about the return of the client-server model over on the SproutCore blog. When the web started to get big, the Great Enemy was the client-server model. This was the model that dominated in 80’s when every software vendor your purchased from required you to install some special software (the client) to talk to their server.

In many ways, client-server computing was superior to the central-server approach of the web. Software running on your PC is faster, often more friendly, and easier to use. Despite these strengths, the web has largely won out over the last decade because client-server models required you to download and install software while web-sites do not. Only a few client-server apps still make it today, such as Skype.

That is all about to change however. Client-server is poised to make a comeback, surprisingly, perhaps, because of advancements on the web itself. The truth is, web browsers are now powerful enough that we can realistically write entire applications in JavaScript and run them there. This means we can create true “thick” clients with the rich, speedy interfaces of the desktop, but in the browser where they can be run without having to install them first.

Sproutit Gets the Ocho

2008-04-14T07:04:00Z

Mailroom is alive again!

You may experience some periodic slowness over the next few hours as we are adding all of the day’s email and finishing testing.

The heart of Mailroom is now running on the new duel quad-core processors (we call it the Ocho) with double the RAM. This will help tremendously during hours of heavy usage and big searches.

Thank you again for bearing with us as we work to create a better Mailroom everyday.

As always don’t hesitate to send any questions or comments. We love to hear from you!

Your Friends at Sproutit

Server Upgrades On Sunday!

2008-04-11T04:35:00Z

Mailroom with be offline Sunday April 13th for upgrades to the servers.

There have been a number issues you all have been writing in about and we want you to know we are listening!

We have already tracked down several things that have cause Mailroom to become a little unstable during the middle of day and we are still on the case. The next step is beefing up the servers which will happen this Sunday during most of the day.

Mailroom will still pool all of the email and deliver it to your accounts as soon as we come back up Sunday night.

Thank for your understanding and we hope you enjoy the increased performance after this weekend.

Your Friends at Sproutit

Integrated PayPal Support Now Live

2008-02-27T00:02:00Z

Starting today, Mailroom is available with PayPal support.

Nope, I am not talking about us accepting credit cards via PayPal. What I am talking about is the ability for Mailroom to provide you with a summary of your user’s PayPal transactions with you, while you are answering their support email questions.

This is very useful for anyone who currently does use, or is thinking of using, PayPal to process their credit cards on their site. Since this is more geared towards business use, we have designated it to be available on our $19 plans and up. So, if you have a Basic, Plus, Premium, or Enterprise plan, you know have PayPal support built right in.

Now, to get it to work, you will need to login to your PayPal account and change some settings, but it shouldn’t take you more than 2 minutes to do it. You can see what needs to be done here – http://sproutit.com/support/paypal This is a set of step by step instructions on how to set it up.

So, what is in this summary? You are going to be able to see how many times someone has purchased from you in the last year, and what the total of all of their purchases amount to. This should help you know if your support email needs to just answer a quick first time purchase question, or might include some ‘upsell’ ideas as well.

So, go ahead and give it a try. The way we see it, the more you know your customers, the better.

2008 Webware 100 Finalist

2008-02-25T20:00:00Z

Vote to make Mailroom one of the top 100 web apps of 2008! How? Click here to vote

Wednesday morning I awoke to an email from the editor of Webware.com congratulating us to being selected as a finalist for this year’s 2008 Webware 100.

Over 4,600 Web 2.0 services were nominated by Webware readers over the last couple of months and Sproutit Mailroom was selected as one of 300 finalists.

While we are going against some big names in the ‘Communications’ category, I think that you’ll agree that Mailroom is one of a kind one that list. Voting starts today at noon, and will continue until March 31.

So go ahead! Vote for Mailroom and tell everyone you know. In fact, send them this link – http://www.webware.com/html/ww/100/2008/vote_comm.html?compid=103374 so that they can help put Mailroom into the top 100 web apps of 2008!

Email for Campaigns - Part 1

2008-02-12T18:05:00Z

Just a week after Super Tuesday, our country still seems to be undecided as to who will compete in the fall for POTUS (President Of The United States). Seems this country is very focused right now on that single election. But, what about all of the other positions that will be up for re-election? Most people think, “there can’t be that many seats opening up this year….” Try this one on for size. It is from Vote-USA.org.

For the 2006 General Elections there were slightly over 13,000 candidates competing for 7,724 U.S. Senate, U.S. House, State Senates, State Houses, and other State-wide offices.

Nearly 8,000 seats that were up for re-election. Many of them that will have a far greater impact on our daily lives. Take the numerous city council, school board, and state assembly positions that there are in your state alone. These are the people that can fix your children’s school, your roads that you drive to work on, or create that public transit service that your city needs.

Email has become used more and more for these most recent campaigns, but it seems that they are focus on just sending you emails that tell you what a candidate wants you to hear. That’s politics. And many of the candidate websites will have a place to enter your email address to ‘join the list.’ But, what happens if those candidates never speak to your concerns? Will they ever respond to you?

Over the next few weeks and months, I will be bringing facts to the table as to why email is going to be the number one way to increase participation in our elections and the people’s way of getting their candidate into office.

How about you take a stab at this question and answer int he comments. I will tell the answer next time.

How many emails does a state assemblymember receive during their campaign?

Coming Soon - PayPal Support

2008-02-12T18:04:00Z

Does this mean you are taking credit cards via PayPal? NO IT DOES NOT.

For years, enterprise systems have been able to provide integrated support that ties into their billing and sales system, allowing their support staff to know what their customers had purchased before they respond to their customer emails. But, the price tag was huge! We thought, “Why not bring it to life with the number one credit card payment processing system in the world?” Thus, the idea of bringing PayPal support tied into Mailroom was born.

In a few days, Mailroom will be the first, web-based email help desk that integrates PayPal support.

How useful is this? When a customer sends you an email, Mailroom is able to reference your customer’s order history and show of summary of how many transactions, how long they have been a customer, and how much they have purchased from you.

For example:

Imagine that you sell running shoes online, and one of your customers emails you and asks about your shoe return policy. When the PayPal summary shows you that this customer purchased a new pair of sneakers about 6 months ago at about $50. As any good show pro knows, running shoes should be replaced every 6 months or 500 miles to keep your legs healthy. As you answer their question about your return policy, you also remind them about the 6 month, 500 mile idea, and that easily segues into your current promotions for 10% off for the month of March. You’ve just turned your support response into an upsell.

So, if you are looking forward to providing yet another level of support to your customers, get ready…. It will be released before you know it.

Interview with a Client: Uloop

2008-02-11T17:14:00Z

From time to time I get a chance to actually meet in person, some of our clients. When that happens I am very eager to hear what they have to say about Sproutit, Mailroom and how they tackle the inevitable job of support. So, I sat down for a bit of fish ‘n chips with Ryan MacCarthy, co-founder of Uloop, and picked his brain.

What is Uloop?

Uloop is an online classifieds platform for colleges.

Classifieds? But, what makes you different than every city’s newspaper online classifieds?

We have created a college specific classified site that thousands of students are using to sell textbooks, find roommates, events, housing, full-time and part-time jobs, internships and even rides home. Take textbooks, for example. Not too many people using the local Herald, or Times will be needing the same biology text book.

So, what are the audiences and customers that you deal with

99% of our support comes from students. It is a mixture of feedback, suggestions, comments, and problems. We also work with employers to provide college specific job postings and housing management to provide housing listings for students.

Do the responses that you provide take on a certain tone and feel?

Absolutely. We make it a point to respond to every single email that we get. We try to be very straight up with students and respond with a casual, and youthful tone. Many of the ideas we build in, come straight from the student feedback. But, if we don’t think an idea is beneficial to more than one person, we’ll let them know what we think.

What do you think is the best feature of Mailroom? Why?

By far it is the multiple user support. This way, we don’t have to have a specific support person, but we can share the load. And, this also closes the gap between the students making requests and the team that creates new features. Less is lost in the middle and keeps our whole team more connected with our users.

Got a favorite company for support?

I like Apple. It fits they way I live.

Firefox 3 beta working just fine

2008-01-18T00:09:00Z

I tend to work in a mixed software environment of old reliables, and the latest and greatest. The same applies to my web browsers. But, usually I find myself sticking to the tried and tested versions of browsers because so much of my work is done online. I can’t afford to have hiccups.

But, today we received a bug report from a client regarding Firefox 3 beta 2 (latest and greatest…not for the faint of heart). Well, to sum it up, there were some changes made to Firefox 3 that threw off Mailroom. But, without fail, Charles was able to spot the change in no time and applied a fix, and voila! Mailroom is compatible even with the cutting edge.

So for all of you that were thinking about making the switch to Firefox 3 and worried about all of your web apps working… rest assured that Mailroom will keep on truckin’.

Mailroom for Politics in 2008

2008-01-08T18:40:00Z

While most of our audience knows how Mailroom can help you answer sales and support email from customers, few know of its political life. About 1 year ago, we had a client that represented a new segment of users. It was the Obama 2008 Campaign (Sproutit was an initial vendor). As they continued to grow in popularity, so did the sheer number of emails that were receiving from curious , individuals, voters, and supporters. Gray Brooks, the head of their email correspondence said:

This is my third major campaign and I have to say that I am very excited using Sproutit. It’s simply a big step forward from 4 years ago.

Here at Sproutit, we enjoy celebrating in the success that all of our clients, current and former, experience. As you already know, the Obama 2008 campaign faired rather well in the Iowa caucus last week. We hope in some small way, Sproutit Mailroom was able to lend a helping hand. And, we wish them well for today in New Hampshire. Good Luck!

If you know anyone running for public office, local, state or national, or already in office, let them know about Mailroom’s ability to help them connect better with their potential voters (even if they are Republicans, Democrats, or Independents).