Inbox

by Glenn Delahoy
(C) Copyright 2004-2005. All rights reserved.

SECTION DESCRIPTIONS

The Outlook style control on the left divides the program into two main sections: Mail and Tools. The Mail section contains your downloaded email for each account, the Tools section contains various tools, logging and other bits and pieces, the Options section contains account configuration, filters and application preferences.

The first thing you need to do is enter your uplink accounts. Open the Tools section and select Accounts.

Accounts

This is a list of all of your email accounts. To enter an account, click the Add button, enter the account details and switch on the Active box. You can temporarily disable an account by switching off the Active box, either on the list or on the details section. Don't forget to click the Apply button after making changes to each account.

Filters

This is a list of filters used to control your incoming email. To enter a filter, click the Add button, enter the filter details and switch on the Active box. You can temporarily disable a filter by switching off the Active box, either on the list or on the details section.

Each email is first run through every Accept filter then through every Reject filter and stops after the first match.

While connected to an uplink account, messages that match an Accept filter are downloaded and stored in the inbox folder, messages that match a Reject filter are deleted from the server, messages that don't match any filter are downloaded and stored in the quarantine folder.

If the filters are run while not connected to an uplink account, messages may be moved between the three folders depending on the outcome of filter matching. Messages that match an Accept filter are moved to the inbox folder, messages that match a Reject filter are sent to the trash folder, messages that don't match any filter are sent to the quarantine folder.

If you set the No Download account option, emails that get a positive match on a Reject filter are always deleted from the server, other emails are untouched.

When you're browsing your email in Inbox, there are a number of options to quickly create filters from the selected email. These will also appear in this list.

The filter list also displays the number of times each filter has been used. Use this to help you decide which filters are no longer required.

Filter Options

You can share your filters with other users of Inbox by using the export and import tools. The filters are exported to a standard comma delimited text file.

The Sort tool sorts the list in ascending order on the description column.

The Merge tool looks for similar filters in all sections, merges the two and deletes the old one. For example, it may find two filters which reject an IP in the Received header. The first has a search string of "10.124.224.66", the second has a search string of "10.124.224.". The first is obviously redundant so its count is added to the second and then deleted. Another example is two filters with subject search strings of "mortgage" and "mortgage application". The second is already covered by the first and so can be merged and removed.

The IP lookup tool will do a reverse DNS lookup on the selected filter in which the search string contains a valid IP address. This is useful for discovering the host name and geographical location of an IP which can in turn be used for additional filters or adding to the Unwanted Top Level Domains filter. Note that this does not always return useful information, it depends on the age of the IP and whether it still exists in a DNS server somewhere.

Mail Folders

The Inbox, Quarantine, Trash and Queue folders all contain email messages. See below for a description of each. When you select an email on the list, the entire message, including headers, is displayed in the Message Text area. All of these folders contain the following three buttons:

There is also a button above the message text which will strip all html like tags from the message text. This makes it easy to spot suspicious text in the message, highlight it and create a filter. To see the original message again just reselect the message in the list.

The Accept and Reject buttons pop up a menu allowing you to select the message section and search string. Some of these options automatically select the appropriate text from the message, others require you to select a portion of text for the search string, some work either way. The Move button pops up a menu to select the target folder. The top three options refer to folders in the currently selected account, the remaining options allow you to select a folder in another account. In the Trash folder, you can delete messages.

Keep in mind that Inbox never deletes messages stored in its own folders. Messages that meet a Reject filter are moved to the Trash folder. You can then delete messages from the Trash folder. This allows you to catch false positives.

Inbox Folder

This folder contains all messages waiting to be collected by your email client program. If you have filtering enabled, all messages that get a positive match on an Accept filter are placed here. If filtering is disabled, all messages will be placed here. If you are not downloading messages, this folder is not used.

Quarantine Folder

This folder contains all messages that do not match any filters and require you to create a filter that will either accept or reject them. If you are not downloading messages, this folder is not used.

Trash Folder

This folder contains all messages that get a positive match from a Reject filter. You can create an Accept filter for any messages in this folder. For example, it may have been trashed because it came from a rejected domain, however you may wish to received emails from a particular person in that domain so you can create an "allow address" filter that makes an exception to the rejected domain rule. If you are not downloading messages, this folder is not used. Messages deleted from this folder are gone forever.

Queue Folder

This folder contains all messages waiting to be sent out including away messages, mailing list messages and redirected messages.

Peek

This tool allows you to peek at messages on a server before downloading them. Select an account and click the Connect button. Any waiting messages are then displayed. Select any message on the list to see the message headers. The Peek tool will initially only download the message headers. To see the entire contents of the message click the Get Message Body button. The entire message is then downloaded and displayed. The Accept and Reject buttons perform the same functions as in the Inbox message folders noted earlier. The Delete button will actually delete the message from the server. Click the Disconn button to disconnect from the server.

Note that when you're connected to a server using the Peek tool, that mailbox is 'locked' and the Regular Fetch or Proxy fetch may produce errors if it attempts to connect to the same account while the Peek tool is connected.

Outlook

This tool allows you to peek at messages in your Outlook message store. Click the Folder button to select an Outlook folder, the message list will then be filled with the messages from that folder. The Accept and Reject buttons each perform the same functions as noted earlier. The Move button provides the same tools as the Move button in the regular Inbox message folders. The Delete option will actually delete the selected messages from Outlook. Once you're connected to Outlook, the Filter service may also filter messages for the currently selected folder (if enabled in the Preferences). Any messages that match a Reject filter will be deleted from Outlook, all other messages remain.

You need to have Outlook set as your default email program in Windows for this to work properly. On my Win2k box this is set in Control Panel -> Internet Options -> Programs. This has only been tested on Outlook 2000, I don't know if it works on other versions. Note also that Inbox displays the Internet headers for the mail rather than the Outlook (or Exchange) headers.

Log

The Log page has several views:

Charts

Displays various charts derived from the activity log. The pie chart shows the filter totals, the line chart shows the filter daily summary and the area chart shows the relative hit rate of rejected versus trashed messages. This gives an idea of the efficiency of the filters where the ideal is 100% rejected and 0% trashed. The efficiency line is an aggregate average over the time of the activity log. The pie chart and line chart have buttons on the right hand side for switching on and off the various series. Double click a chart to enlarge it and double click again to reduce it.

Preferences

Using the preferences you can configure Inbox to work in a variety of ways. Don't forget to click the Apply button when you're finished making changes. Only when the changes are applied are they saved and take effect.