Events

The Event system in SmarterMail is an incredibly powerful and flexible tool that allows users to automatically perform actions based on specific criteria and remain up-to-date with what is going on with their mailbox. SmarterMail can detect events as they occur, then act on them — showing a notification, sending an email, and more. For example, you can pop up a notification whenever a message arrives from your manager, automatically add an additional recipient on messages you send, get a warning email when your mailbox approaches its size limit, or receive an extra reminder email when an important task comes due.

Every event follows the same simple formula: when something happens (the event type), if it matches your criteria (the conditions), then do something (the actions).

Managing Your Events

Your events are managed from the Events page of your settings. The page lists every event you've created — if no events have been created, this page will be empty. For each event you can see its Name, its Type (e.g., "New Email is Received"), a summary of its Conditions and Actions, and whether it's currently Enabled. Click any event to edit it, use the New button to create one, or check one or more events and use Delete to remove them.

Creating an Event

When creating an event, the following settings appear on the Options tab:

Event Name - The friendly name of the event, such as "Boss mail alert" or "Mailbox almost full".
Event Status - New events default to a status of Enabled. However, to temporarily stop an event from triggering — say, while you're on vacation — you can change the status to Disabled without losing its configuration.
Event Category - The feature to which the event pertains: Email, User or Collaboration.
Event Type - The occurrence that triggers the event. Each category has one or more specific event types that can trigger the action.
User - The user that the event applies to. For events you create, this is your own account.

Note: The Conditions and Actions tabs are unavailable until the event has been saved for the first time, and the Event Category and Event Type cannot be changed after the event is created. If you need a different type, create a new event instead.

Event Categories and Types

Below is a list of the Event Categories, and the Event Types that are available for each, for user events:

Email

Message Received - Triggers when new email is received in your mailbox.
Message Sent - Triggers when you send an email.

User

User Disk Space Used - Triggers based on how much of your allotted mailbox space is in use.

Collaboration

Calendar Reminder Occurred - Triggers when a reminder fires for one of your appointments.
Task Reminder Occurred - Triggers when a reminder fires for one of your tasks.

Conditions

Conditions narrow an event down so it only triggers when YOU want it to. An event with no conditions triggers every time its event type occurs; each condition you add filters it further, as ALL conditions must match. Conditions are checked in order, from top to bottom, before the action(s) are performed, and they can be reordered using the arrows in the conditions list.

Each condition is built from three parts: the condition itself (e.g., From Address), a comparison operator, and a value. The operators offered depend on the type of condition: text conditions offer Equals, Does Not Equal, Contains, Starts With, and Ends With; numeric conditions offer Equals, Does Not Equal, Between, Less Than, and Greater Than; and Time of Day uses Between or Outside. So, for example, "From Domain - Ends With - acme.com" catches mail from acme.com and any of its subdomains.

Two conditions are available on every event type:

Time of Day - The time frame during which the event occurs. (E.g., only during business hours.)
Day of Week - The day(s) of the week during which the event occurs.

In addition, each event type has its own conditions:

Message Received

From Address - The email address from which the email message was sent.
From Domain - The domain from which the email message was sent.
Subject - Words found within the subject of the message.
Size (KB) - The message size, in KB.
Intra Domain - Whether the email came from within your own domain.
Spam Level - The spam level of the message: None, Low, Medium or High.
Messages an Hour - The total number of messages received in an hour. Useful for spotting a flood of incoming mail.

Message Sent

To Address - The email address the message is being sent to.
To Domain - The domain the message is being sent to.
Subject - Words found within the subject of the message.
Intra Domain - Whether the email is being sent within your own domain.
Size (KB) - The message size, in KB.

User Disk Space Used

Mailbox Usage (%) - The percentage of your allowed mailbox space in use. For example, "Greater Than 90" warns you before the mailbox fills completely.
Mailbox Usage (MB) - Your mailbox space utilization, in MB.

Calendar Reminder Occurred

Subject - Words found within the appointment's subject.
Location - The appointment location.
Description - Words found within the appointment's description.

Task Reminder Occurred

Subject - Words found within the task's subject.
Description - Words found within the task's description.
Priority - The priority level assigned to the task.
Percent Complete - How complete the task is, as a percentage.
Status - The task's status. (E.g., Needs Action, In Process, Completed, Cancelled.)

Note: Because these are personal events, some criteria are set automatically and can't be changed. For example, a Message Received event is always scoped to mail addressed to YOUR mailbox, so there's no editable To Address condition on it — just as Message Sent events are always scoped to mail sent FROM your address.

Actions

Actions are what SmarterMail does when the event triggers and all conditions match. Multiple actions can be added to a single event. The actions available depend on the event type:

Show a Notification - Displays a notification within webmail, with a subject and body you compose. Available on all event types.
Send an Email - Sends an email, either to yourself or to a specified address, with a subject and body you compose. Available on all event types. Note that the From Address is always your own address. As an example, a Task Reminder event with a Send an Email action can forward important task reminders to your personal phone's address.
Add Recipient - Automatically adds another recipient to the message. Available on Message Received and Message Sent events. For instance, you could automatically copy an assistant on every message you send to a particular client's domain.
Add a Trusted Sender - Adds an address to your Trusted Senders list. Available on Message Sent events only — the idea being that anyone you WRITE to is someone whose replies you'll want to receive, so this keeps their responses out of your Junk Email folder.
Send Webhook - Sends an HTTP request (GET or POST) to a URL you specify, with optional headers and a JSON payload. Available on Message Received and Message Sent events. This is for more technical scenarios, such as notifying a chat service or ticketing system when a particular message arrives.

Each action also has a Maximum Frequency setting, which throttles how often the action can fire — from every occurrence up to no more than once per 24 hours. This matters for busy triggers: a notification for every message from a mailing list could fire constantly, but with a maximum frequency of 1 hour, you're nudged at most once an hour.

Using Variables

The subject and body of Show a Notification and Send an Email actions (and the payload of a webhook) can include variables — placeholders wrapped in # signs that are replaced with the actual values from the triggering event. For example, a notification body of "New message from #fromaddress#: #subject#" displays the real sender and subject line of the message that triggered it, and a disk space warning can report the exact usage with #mailboxusagepercent# and #mailboxusagemb#.

You don't need to memorize these: when editing an action, the available variables for that event type are listed right below the body editor, so you can see exactly which placeholders you can use.

Note: The variables available differ per event type, and the list may change as variables are added over time. Always refer to the Variables list shown in the action editor.

A Worked Example

Say you want an unmissable heads-up whenever your manager emails you during the workday. You would create a new event with the Event Category "Email" and the Event Type "Message Received", and name it "Manager alert". After saving, you'd add two conditions: From Address - Equals - manager@example.com, and Time of Day - Between - 8:00 AM and 5:00 PM. Finally, you'd add a Show a Notification action with a subject like "Message from the boss" and a body of "#subject#". From then on, any weekday message from that address pops up a notification showing its subject line — and if it ever gets too noisy, you can simply set the event's status to Disabled.