Email communication forms a huge percentage of our daily workload, no matter what role we have in the community management industry. Consequently, the email system we use is required to be robust. At the very least, we must index each email so we can find it again when needed. This means attributing it to the property and/or community it relates to. But beyond that, many of our emails launch us into some other piece of work: an architectural request, a bill to be paid, an ongoing violation dispute, or a document to upload, to name just a few examples. CiraMail meets these needs by being fully integrated with the property and owner database, architectural module, document archive, and many other facets of the platform. The CiraNet Management Portal brings CiraMail to the next level with faster all-around speed, a new “unread” formatting marker, a much faster attribution system, and other enhancements. This user guide will focus on the updates between the classic portal and the new Management Portal. For a complete CiraMail tutorial, please refer to the help documentation in CiraHelp.

Table of Contents

• Access
• “Unread” Emails, Completed / Transferred Emails, and Manual Refresh
• Attribution
• Spell Check
• Preferences
• 1. Auto Show Unread Email Notes
• 2. Email Browser Pop-Up Window Size
• Actions Menu
• 1. Start Menu
• 2. Links Menu
• 3. Attachments Menu
• Additional Features
• Tools
• Recommended Practice / Follow-Up
• 1. Use CiraMail for Daily Email
• 2. Customize

Access

Access CiraMail by clicking the mail icon in the footer menu of the Navigation Panel:

“Unread” Emails, Completed / Transferred Emails, and Manual Refresh

There are three separate visual statuses to allow a user to track what they have done to that email or case.

1. Read versus Unread. When you first open your inbox, all the emails will show in a bold font. This indicates they are “unread” in your current work session. When you click on an email and stay on it for more than a few seconds, it will switch from bold to normal font. This way you can easily track which emails you have already looked at.

2. Attribution strikethrough. After you attribute an email, the record in the header grid will turn into a strikethrough formatting. This indicates that the email has been processed and usually that it is no longer in the inbox. However, you are perfectly free to go on and work the next email, and the next, and the next. The system will not waste time refreshing the inbox until you tell it to.

3. Shading of a Transferred or Completed Email. In the illustration above, note that the line is shaded. This subtle yellow shading tells the user that the email was moved out of the Inbox via a reply and completion or a transfer.

Often these three visual prompts are seen simultaneously because all three actions are taken in sequence as a user attributes, reads, and actions an email, but they are indeed unique statuses. Whenever you are ready, simply click Refresh Inbox to remove all the completed emails from the list and bring in any new ones. It is extremely important to note that this is a manual process in the Management Portal, whereas it happened automatically in the classic CiraMail. The reason, of course, is to improve speed and conserve system resources. But if you have become accustomed to the previous behavior, allow some time to become accustomed to this alternate behavior.

Be sure to notice the bell icon at the top right. Whenever you have new emails that arrived in your box since the last time you refreshed, this bell will light up with a red badge and the number of new emails that are waiting for you.

Attribution

The attribution bar looks basically the same in the Management Portal as it does in its classic counterpart.

The big difference is the way you go about setting the attributions. Each field is independent of the other but can still be set quickly.

To select a property in the Management Portal:

1. Click in the box beside Property.
2. Type in your search text. This can be any part of the address, owner name, or account number.
3. Hit Enter on your keyboard. The system will search and display the results in a pop-up box.

If you need to narrow down the results, use any of the standard grid features such as the auto-filter row. For instance, a search for “Kiran” gets 229 results. But if the user knows the owner lives in Lago Vista, they can type in "Lago" under the "Community" column header, and the list is filtered down to only eight results.

From there, click Select. TIP: When you select a Property the system will automatically attribute the community as well so if the property is applicable, set that value first. If the email pertains to the community but not a specific owner, you will set the property attribution as "N/A" (Not Applicable). There are two ways to do this:

1. Fastest method: Click in the box, type "NA" (or "na") and press Enter. No need for the slash; the system will add this.
2. From the search results pop-up box, click the button Set as Not Applicable.

Then follow the same procedure described above to select a community. Remember to hit Enter after typing your search text! For veteran users of CiraNet Classic, you will note the attribution process differs between the two portals. But once you acclimate to the Management Portal process, we believe you will note the uptick in efficiency and speed. Here are some other useful tips and tricks.

• To remove an attribution, click the red "x" symbol
• To change an attribution, you do not need to remove the old one first. Just click in the box and start typing just like you do for the initial search.
• Required attributions are indicated by a red asterisk (*) next to the title. If the asterisk is there, the system will not allow you to reply to or complete the email until that attribution is set.
• To search for a prior owner (one who has sold their property), change the drop-down filter in the search results pop-up box from Current Owners to All Owners.

The last attribution box on the right is the Domain – Category – Issue selector. This works as a cascading drop-down menu, just as it does in the Classic counterpart .

Spell Check

CiraMail in the Management Portal co-opts your browser's built-in spell checker to check your spelling constantly as you type. If you type a misspelled word, it will be underlined in red on your screen. This allows you the opportunity to fix it as you go, rather than waiting till the end to check everything at once, as is the process in CiraMail Classic.

Tip: The spell checker even works in the Subject line!

To fix a misspelled word, right click on it, and a list of suggestions will pop up. Simply click on your choice to replace the misspelled word.

This menu also gives you the option to add the word to your dictionary. If you do this, it adds the word to your personal dictionary that is attached to your user account for your browser. When you send the email, if there are still spelling errors in the document, the system will prompt you with a warning. If you wish to go ahead and send the email anyway, you can ignore the warning and click Send it Anyway. Or you can click Cancel to return to the document and address the errors.

Preferences

There are two very useful options in the Preferences menu, located in the top toolbar. These are shown in the illustration to the right.

1. Auto Show Unread Email Notes

• When this selection is set to Yes then any time you click on an unread email (as defined above) which has content in its notepad, the notepad contents will automatically pop up so you can read them.
• This is very helpful for emails that have been transferred into your box. Oftentimes others have already worked on the issue and have an update or a specific question in the notes which is really the thing that needs attention. Reading the notepad first can save you from spending unnecessary time digging through the original email and repeating work that someone else has already done.

2. Email Browser Pop-Up Window Size

• This controls the default size of the window that pops up when you reply to an email or compose a new one. A setting between 60% and 80% seems to work for most people. A setting of 100% or above will cause the window to be full screen.

When you are finished, click Save.

Actions Menu

The Actions menu contains seventeen choices for processing an email. Some of them simply set attributes of the email, such as Set Priority and Assign To. Others are familiar actions, such as Reply and Move To another folder within your inbox. But there is one section of this menu that deserves a closer look, because it contains powerful tools for linking emails and attachments to other places in the platform. This is the Start menu, Links and Attachments. These three sub-menus turn a nice email system into a powerful workhorse. Let's look at each of them in turn.

1. Start Menu

The Start Menu contains up to six options. Some options may not be available for all communities and boxes. (For example, Create Architectural Application is only available if the email is attributed to a community where this feature is enabled.) Using this menu, a user can turn the email directly into:

1. A New Work Order to address a maintenance item in the community.
2. A Project/Task to document a project or task that the Board can view and participate in.
3. An Architectural Application for an owner to request permission to modify his/her property.
4. Submit an invoice to the Accounts Payable workflow system to be paid by creating an AAP Workflow.
5. An Internal Task for another CiraConnect department to accomplish.
6. An Accounts Payable Corporate Work Queue Item (a bill to be paid by the management company).

Please see the help documentation for more details regarding any of these processes.

2. Links Menu

In the Links menu, you have the option to link the email to existing items that are already in the CiraConnect platform, including:

1. Internal Tasks for CiraConnect Shared Service departments and those branch locations with that functionality available.
2. Open Project/Tasks.
3. Open Architectural Applications.
4. Pending Closing Requests by title agents for information regarding a property in preparation for a sale.
5. On-Boarding Checklist Item, used during the onboarding phase of a new community to catch all the items needed.
6. Checklist Item in a customized checklist for a particular community.

3. Attachments Menu

The Attachments menu is a powerful shortcut that allows you to upload one or multiple documents that are attached to the email directly to the Document Archive for the community or the property. This shortcut saves having to download the attachment, navigate to the property or community document archive, and launch the upload tool from there.

Further, the upload tool gives you the ability to upload multiple files at the same time. The images below outline the steps for uploading a community document.

1. Select the documents to be uploaded by checking the box next to them on the left.
2. Enter a new filename, if desired (This step is optional).
3. Enter a Category by clicking and selecting from the drop-down menu (This step is required).
4. Fill in the rest of the fields in the same manner with only Category and Effective Date being required.
5. If the user has permission to control visibility on the Resident and Board Portals, those check boxes will be enabled as well. You can set each box as checked, unchecked, or neutral, in which case the default behavior is applied.

When finished, click Save.

Additional Features

CiraMail is loaded with additional features! Many of them are intuitive to use or already familiar to many users from CiraMail Classic. Feel free to explore and discover how they look and work in the Management Portal. Here are a few items to note:

• Board Member Emails. While we sincerely believe all communication is important, we also realize that when deciding whom to respond to first, board members will likely rise to the top of the list. To help identify those specific emails, they show highlighted in bright yellow. Keep in mind the email needs to match the email listed in Board/Committee Management module.

• Community and Property Address Hyperlinks. You will note that the quick link shortcuts users are used to in the classic portal are not present in the Management Portal. The Management Portal can be navigated quickly enough they are not needed, but users can of course launch to either a community or owner record from the Actions menu of an email. However, alternatively users can click on the name of the community or the address in the respective grid columns to be taken to the same locations.

• Lite Mode. By default, this value is set to On. Turning it off enables one additional grid column to populate, which is Dashboard Responsible.
• This column lists all internal users who could be responsible for responding to the email. As an example of how this could be used: if a busy branch tasks someone to triage open items, they could refer to that data to help them know which users they should assign an email or case to.
• That said, leaving the default to On when not needing the column helps CiraMail run more efficiently, in much the same way removing unnecessary columns into the Column Chooser.
• Locked. Note in the illustration above that there is a lock icon in the Locked column. This indicates someone else is currently working on that email. If you click on it a pop-up will open to let you know that it is locked and by whom. Remember to refresh the inbox occasionally to verify if the email remains locked.

Tools

• Pause Notification. This tool is the only option developed at this time, although the others are forthcoming. This stops the system from placing the red badge on the bell icon at the top right when new emails come in.
• The rest of the options are grayed out until development is complete.

Recommended Practice / Follow-Up

1. Use CiraMail for Daily Email

Many have been using The Management Portal as their primary method of working daily emails with fantastic results. Even if you have the classic version up in another window (and separate browser) for other tasks, try keeping CiraMail from The Management Portal.

• Particularly, if your job is attributing emails that come in, you will find this system to be incredibly time-saving!
• Use the Multi-Select tool to process many similar emails at once. See here for more details.

2. Customize

Get comfortable with the layout and tools available to customize your user experience.

• Use the Reading Pane menu to place the window for reading emails on the right, left, or bottom of the screen.
• The CiraMail box list on the left normally hides while you are working on emails; but if you want it to stay expanded, click the pushpin icon at the top of the box.
• Move the columns around by clicking and dragging the column headers into your preferred order. Resize them by clicking on the border between column headings. Once you have it the way you want it, click "Save Layout" in the grid tools menu so it will always stay like that each time you come back.