FAQ

iGroupEmail FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

** General questions **

What does iGroupEmail actually DO?
It enables you to open the Mail application, with all the people in the TO (or BCC) field already filled in. You just select a group from your iPhone, that you have in your Contacts application* and configure what email labels you want to use for that group. After this quick setup, just open the app and tap a group to send them all emails…

*:Under the hood, it copies the Contact data that resides in the Contacts database on your iPhone. This is the same data as is used in the Contacts app. This info is synced on-the-fly. Changes to the group(creating new one, renaming a group and removing/adding contacts to a group will be synced with the Contacts database. Other settings are saved within iGroupEmail.

Can i forward emails with iGroupEmail?
Users with iPhone OS versions < 3.0 CAN do it.
If you use OS 3.0, you can copy text from another mail, use iGroupEmail to setup a mail with the recipients filled in, and then paste the text into that mail’s body.

This is how OS 2.x users can forward mails with iGroupEmail and Mail:

1) open the standard Mail app (that Apple provided)
2) Select the mail you want to forward
3) Select the forward functionality that Mail provides.

At this point, you have the mail added to the new screen on which you’d normally select the person(s) you’d want to forward the mail towards.

4) press the Home button
5) Open iGroupEmail
6) Select the group you want to forward the email towards

Now, iGroupEmail gives the group’s email addresses back to the Mail app and fills out the TO: (or BCC:) field of the mail that was opened in steps 1 to 3.

Why is forwarding not simpler?
iGroupEmail has the logic to select the desired email addresses from the people in a group, but after that it’s up the Apple’s Mail application to enable you to send the mail. You could see iGroupEmail as a layer on top of iGroupEmail, a plugin if you will. Unfortunately, the SDK doesn’t enable developers to take over the features of Apple apps.

If the forwarding works it’s a plus but not a feature that iGroupEmail can take into account.

** In depth questions **

What are email labels???
Apple uses Labels in MacOS and on the iPhone, typically, in the Contacts application. Basically, Labels are “tags” that give you an indication what the property of the contactperson stands for. ie: the “mobile” label indicates that the phonenumber behind this label is the contact’s mobile number. This princible also is used for emailaddresses; the Labels “Home”, “Private” and “Other” are already present on the iPhone. But you can also add your own (email)labels like “Sports buddy’s” or “College friends”.

What’s the use of these labels?
In short: they allow you to give one contactperson multiple values for a certain property (like Email address) that have different purposes.

Why do i have to setup my groups with labels and such?
iGroupEmail is setup to take advantage of the labels- and contactgroups. If you have divided your contacts in a certain category (ie: your colleagues in the group “Work”, your friends in the group “Private” or “Buddies”) you only need to tell iGroupEmail what email value it has to look for, when you want to send all the people in that group a mail.

ie: you have divided the people in the two groups that I suggested above: “Work” and “Private”. Then you only have to tell iGroupEmail what email address needs to be primarily used as the mailaddress for the people that reside in the group.

How do i setup these mail label thingies?
Initial setup of labels can be done on the Maillabel tab, and using “Edit” to manually add labels or the “Scan” button to scan what maillabels you have used so far for Contacts.

(Assuming the groups from the previous question are used again..)

You press the arrow behind the group’s name (or Edit, and then the group row) and navigate to “Mail labels” in the screen that appears. There you can select up to three labels that you associate with the people in that group.

ie: by selecting the mail label “Private”(it’s already present on the iPhone)as the primair label and the label “Bar buddies” (a label you created for a subgroup that you drink Buds with) as the second label you let iGroupEmail know that:

* the group “Private” is configured, making it show the number of emailaddresses that match the label selection and enabling it to be pressed for instant mailgeneration (it has a blue arrow behind it, indicating it is configured)
* when you press it (for Quickmail) iGroupEmail will walk through all the contacts in that group, and first look for an emailaddress with the label “Private”. If the person has an emailaddress with that label it will use that address, else it will look for the second label you defined (“Bar Buddies”), etc.
* When all contacts in the group (in this example, “Private”) have been looked at, it will open the Mail app with the TO: field (or BCC, depending on what you setup for the group) filled with the email addresses matching your criteria.

Why all the fuzz?
You can add multiple mails and phonenumbers and label them to indicate to yourself what role that property has for a given contactperson. You call someone using their private or mobile number to invite them for a beer, but the work number to network.