Extension to Podio for email communications with non-Podio users...

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Patrick Steil

I am planning on building this project:

 

**Podio is a great tool, but it lacks one very important feature - the ability to communicate with external clients about a particular Podio app item without inviting them into the Podio workspace thus giving them access to all items in the Podio workspace.  Podio is supposedly working on the ability to share a Podio item with a single user, which will be great, but we still may not want the user to see all of the data/discussions going on internally on that Podio item.

This tool will allow us to basically to have an email only conversation with an external client/contact and have that entire discussion recorded in the Podio item.  The user would have no access to view anything in the Podio item.  This will be easy to use for the Podio user and the external user.**

 

If you are interested in helping build this or would like to give input into the design and possibly use it for your business, let me know and I will add you to a workspace I created for this discussion... thanks!

You can email me: patrick@infranet.com

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32 comments

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  • Sam Katz

    They are working on this feature. You can already send messages inside Podio, it appears this is coming. I would contact the podio support team. what e-mail platform do you need it to support? google apps?

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  • Sam Katz

    because you could build the app on top of the google apps engine to use podio. it might be easier going in reverse.

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  • Patrick Steil

    I think they have it on a list somewhere to work on, but have not been able to get anyone to tell me they are actively working on it... their answer to my problem was to use ZenDesk... and that was six months ago probably... I can't wait on them any longer... :)

    I don't really want all my email coming into Podio, just want to be able to do emails for a particular Podio item directly from Podio... 

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  • Heather Cailaoife

    Any answers on this?

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  • Patrick Steil

    Hello Heather... :)  Yes we are building this tool and have an internal Alpha version that we are beginning to test this week... hopefully will be ready for beta testing in a few weeks... :)  I'll keep you updated!  :)

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  • Heather Cailaoife

    Rockstar ... thanks for your help on and off line!

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  • Tom Murphy

    I would be interested in testing the beta version of this add-on.

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  • Jon Moss

    Let me know how we can be a part of testing this too.

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  • Iaan van Niekerk

    Also interested in this.

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  • John Neil

    Yes, interested also. This would certainly enhance Podio's CRM capabilities.

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  • Eric Hubbel

    Is this Beta the sharing with an outside contact option? Because I really want to get in on that. That's the key feature I'm missing in order to get approval from my VP.

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  • Paul Shepherd

    I would be keen to check out that plugin feature too.

    For interests sake, there is another tool I trialed a few months ago that does the Google Apps email integration seamlessly:  http://www.affinitylive.com/. Maybe take some of the features from this and plug it into Podio....

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  • João Neto

    This would help a lot!

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  • Patrick Steil

    Hello All!

    We have opened our application up for public beta testing!  Would love to have you all check it out... it is pretty slick... 

    You can check it out at http://www.podiotools.com

    Thanks!

    patrick

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  • Eric Hubbel

    Patrick, 

    Would your app allow us to send these to clients not in our contact list for Podio?

    Eric

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  • Octavia Hirst

    Would this behave as an alternative to mailchimp, so that I can email signups from my webform without having to do messy exports? Need it quite desperately, I'm tying myself in knots here!

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  • Patrick Steil

    @Eric, sorry I missed your question... PodioTools only supports sending to folks that are added as Workspace Contacts... 

     

    @Octavia - no our tool is not meant for mass emails... only the one-off communications one user at a time... 

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  • Peter

    Any news on this projects status?

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  • Axel Janssen

    Where does this stand?

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  • Patrick Steil

    Hello Axel and Peter... 

    PodioTools is now out of Beta!

    You can check it out here:

    http://www.podiotools.com

    Thanks!

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  • Axel Janssen

    Ho Patrick, while I appreciate your effort, the pricing for very small teams (1-5) is too high.compared to the overall price tag of Podio. It looks better for bigger teams though.

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  • Patrick Steil

    Sorry to hear that Axel... we appreciate the feedback... I would encourage you to try it out... if you are using Podio to manage any type of customer service, sales leads, tech support (or especially all three), you will find PodioTools an invaluable piece to make Podio really be EVERYTHING it can be... :)

    And it will help you grow your company because you will be able to standardize your email responses and then grow your staff to take over those jobs!  :)

    We are a pretty small company (6-10) and we have PodioTools configured with 24 different apps!  :)

    Patrick

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  • Axel Janssen

    Hi Patrick

    • you 're most certainly right: This price tag is perfect and fair for the several use cases you mentioned, even for very small teams.

    However, if you're just starting something up and have a distributed team working on Business Models and reaching out to external parties for research and getting feedback - then it seems to be costly and makes one question if email is not okish for the meantime . 

    I will keep an eye on this, it looks promising. Wishing you success with this.

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  • Daniel Schulz-Jackson

    Axel - an insight: Wordpress is free, and it's one of the most robust tools around. 1 plugin - a certain contact form plugin - is $199 for a year. Obviously Wordpress is the "better deal", and would make the contact form plugin look "outrageously expensive by comparison".

    But the comparison's not the point.

    The point is that when I want something that's out in the niche-fringe, I can expect to pay.

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  • Andreas Huttenrauch

    There's another tool for integrating Email with Podio - http://www.podiomail.com

    It's a little more complex to set up than Podio Tools, but once set up, allows you to keep an email thread going from within email, without needing to even touch Podio. We're getting rave reviews from this tool, and pricing is very affordable.

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  • Norah Shannon

    Patrick - I would suggest that a Basic (Free) plan would make your product more successful! :)  It works well for Podio! ;)

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  • Norah Shannon

    Andreas - Thank you for your comments on Podiomail, I am looking into that service now

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  • Patrick Steil

    Hello Norah... duly noted... we are actually working on it... :)

    Thanks!

    Patrick

    http://www.podiotools.com

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  • Tyler Agan

    My company is already stretching to use Podio for our team of 7 employees. We aren't able to tack on an additional $50 per month on top of that. Looks like some great tools, though. Nice work.

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  • Patrick Steil

    Hello All... just wanted to let you know that we have added a FREE offering - you can now use PodioTools on ONE app for FREE!

    And we modified our pricing so that it will be much more economical for everyone!

    Details on pricing can be found here:
    http://www.podiotools.com/HelpDesk/pricing.html

    Sign up for a FREE account here:
    http://www.podiotools.com/helpdesk/signup.html

    Thanks!
    Patrick Steil
    http://www.PodioTools.com

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