m-Power Can Now Extract Emails to Database

June 18, 2013 Alex Woodie

Developers who use mrc‘s m-Power tool can now use email to pull data into applications, the company announced. This can provide advantages in certain types of applications, such as help desk apps, CRM systems, or any other application that depends on workflow.

Chicago, Illinois-based mrc laid the groundwork for email enablement with a recent update to m-Power that gives developers the capability to generate event-triggered messages from an m-Power app. This feature could be used to automatically send an email or a SMS message when a certain event occurs on the system, such as completion of a form on a customer website, or the cancellation of a customer account.

The new email enhancement released in May (mrc doesn’t use version or release numbers but instead trickles out new features and fixes on a nearly constant basis) delivers the opposite functionality: the capability to monitor specified email accounts for new messages, and then extract all or part of the messages’ data into an m-Power application’s database.

The company says the new features can be used with all sorts of applications. For example, in a help desk application, an m-Power application could be used to streamline the workload by automatically monitoring the help desk’s email account for incoming messages. When a new email arrives, the m-Power application can extract the pertinent information, use it to generate a help ticket, and then notify the help desk staff.

It could also be used in CRM systems to track all interaction with customers or prospects, or used in a purchasing application to streamline the approval process. The software company says the email extraction capability combined with the workflow functionality previously released can eliminate the need to check email as part of the process of accepting or rejecting requests.

“This new enhancement opens up a whole new world of possibilities,” mrc’s manager of software development Tyler Wassell says in a press release. “m-Power users can now use email data in any application, or even as triggers for application events. I can’t even begin to imagine all of the ways our customers will utilize this new feature.”

In other news, mrc recently informed IT Jungle that the new user-defined dashboard functionality that we covered in April has not yet been delivered. The new feature apparently drew so many enhancements into the tool that it had to be pushed back, and will likely debut in the next release, which is scheduled for July.