
Show HN: Screenr – Automated Workflow for Your Email - charles_f
https://www.feval.ca/posts/screenr/
======
bachmeier
Sort of related, this type of thing isn't difficult if you use Thunderbird.
All your email is stored in a big sqlite file. You can query with all the
power of SQL.

A few things I've done: use it to ignore my email except for a small number of
senders while I'm working, viewing only starred messages the majority of the
day, and copying email threads as html documents inside a project folder.
There's something nice about being able to look at an "email inbox" that's a
plain html page with six messages.

~~~
roomey
Oh I've been looking for something like this forever. I'm ok with SQL.

My idea is to be able to manage my mail through thunderbird but also have the
ability to hook in with python (and SQL is the way)

Do you have a write up or some examples anywhere (I'm trying to learn Godot at
the moment so any shortcuts would be so useful!) ?

~~~
bachmeier
I haven't written anything up (maybe I should) but it's easy enough.

In Thunderbird, go to Help -> Troubleshooting Information -> Profile
Directory.

That opens your profile directory. In there is a file global-messages-
db.sqlite that holds all your messages. Treat that as read-only. If it does
get messed up for some reason, you can delete it. It's an index that will get
rebuilt.

If you close Thunderbird, you can open the db in sqlitebrowser to view the
tables. Some tables I've used for queries:

folderLocations - tells you the id of each email folder

messages - metadata for each message

messagesText_content - subject, recipients, body of each email message

conversations - info about your email threads that can be matched with data in
messages to retrieve full email threads

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Syzygies
I use sanebox.com for approximately this behavior, and I'm happy with their
service.

Sanebox works by logging into my mail server, not replacing it. I have three
"send" addresses, and I've learned the hard way that I must authenticate
through the SMTP server that goes with the address I'm claiming, or risk being
classified as spam by my recipients' email servers. Of course, various email
programs allow one to assert any return address one likes. It is a mistake to
use this feature. Particularly if one is more tech savvy than one's
recipients, it is all too easy to blame them when your mail goes to spam. No,
it's your fault. I was that idiot.

Similarly, Qualtrics will send out surveys for colleges and businesses, but
won't use the business domain without extra steps. Those surveys don't get
read. My college was making this mistake, till I pointed it out. Qualtrics has
clear instructions on fixing this.

So Hey is clearly not ready for market, if it can't support its users
correctly using business domains for business matters. This isn't a matter of
waiting till one's employer signs on with Hey; anyone using Hey who is
employed is going to hit this issue.

~~~
charles_f
Thanks for sharing, didn't know it, seems interesting.

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hutch120
I have been looking into this type of system with a colleague for a few years
now. We have been working on a concept of an attention based email network
which is essentially a way to map our natural limited attention to the digital
world.

This type of system requires a mindset that involves multiple parties, not
just the receiver, so it becomes a non-trival exercise when considering the
attention of multiple parties using multiple email systems.

In a practical sense, we looked at adding a multi party reputation system to
the email standard which would involve adding meta data to emails to indicate
the "trust" level between the recipients. There are clearly quite a number of
technical challenges for this type of system. Fastmail seems to be doing some
interesting work in this space.

[https://fastmail.blog/2015/12/17/the-endless-battle-
against-...](https://fastmail.blog/2015/12/17/the-endless-battle-against-
spam/)
[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5322#section-2.1.1](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5322#section-2.1.1)

------
samtuke
I'd love to see this functionality implemented by mailserver tech like
dovecot.

~~~
teddyh
Couldn’t this be done by Sieve filters already?

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rojoca
I recently looked around to see if this was possible in gmail and found the
following:
[https://github.com/garyholeman/CreateGmailFilters](https://github.com/garyholeman/CreateGmailFilters)

It has some limitations but mostly it was useful to learn that google app
scripts are a thing.

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nmstoker
This looks interesting. How does it handle spoofed email addresses?

A feature I'd like along with this (although I realise this breaks the
paradigm of only accepting email you actively want) would be to let unwanted
people email me provided they completed a certain amount of mechanical Turk
effort up to a suitable standard (ie you'd have a handful of known good values
interspersed and see that they gave the expected scores). For some it could be
a direct earner of a very modest but for me it would be directly useful for
various ML projects. If you had a really inflated self image, you could have
those you really didn't like get a higher target (whether that was
communicated would be a interesting point)

~~~
charles_f
It doesn't, however it's less of a security related thing than a sorting
filter. I haven't received a spoofed email in a while so the need is not as
high.

Re: your mechanical turk idea, my email provider actually has something like
that:
[https://documentation.cpanel.net/display/1144Docs/BoxTrapper](https://documentation.cpanel.net/display/1144Docs/BoxTrapper)
\- however there are so many use-cases where I think this would block some
email I actually want (like my kid's school, my MD, ...) that I never dared
doing it.

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daitangio
Nice. Can you add a small example to better understand how it works?

~~~
charles_f
Thanks for the feedback, I added some

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pacifika
Looks interesting does it reclassify previously received email or only
incoming once I classify a sender?

~~~
charles_f
It reclassifies email afterwards, you just have to move it the same way you
would for the original classification.

It also moves all email from that sender that has been classified previously
as well ; although it will not move the mail in folders for which you use a
"screening folder" (i.e. if you use an intermediary folder used only to tell
Screenr where to classify email) by design. The reason is that I wanted to be
able to allow a behavior where mail gets classified as a best guess, but you
can move email manually if need be. The best example is the "papertrail"
folder I'm using: it receives all the order confirmation, invoices and such
automatically, but sometimes I'm also putting similar emails my wife is
forwarding me ; but I don't want screenr to classify her as papertrail - so I
use a "Classify in papertrail" folder which is only used for me to tell the
tool where it should land.

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ashishb
Shameless plug: I built [https://autosnoozer.com](https://autosnoozer.com) to
bring batch processing to my Inbox handling

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Nick_vh
Would there by any easy way to make this work in Gmail with filters?

~~~
charles_f
As in replicate the behaviour? I think you can get close but setting the
filters is cumbersome. Gmail exposes imap i believe, so it should work right
out

