Hi all,

A great feature to implement would be to be able to comment on a message by replying to the notification email. Simply replying to the email to add another comment to the thread would be fantastic. For ease of processing and parsing, an “ADD COMMENT TEXT HERE” section could be added to the notification email.

Thanks :)

That would be so useful – we are suffering from “I only use a Blackeberry …....” at the monet and this would fix that little problem.

Endless posts have been made on this. I could not agree more. I brought up my inability to get people to participate because of Blackeberry’s in the last one. IMHO no other single feature would so dramatically improve the utility of BC as adding this. For one thing it would increase participation with outsiders who don’t want to use the system about 1000% in a single day. People who wanted to work within BC could and people who want to stick with Email could and it would all be stored in BC.

For one thing it would increase participation with outsiders who don’t want to use the system about 1000% in a single day.

I fully agree

Absolutely +1 on this. For me the issue is my iPhone: I could probably reply to a comment/message using MobileSafari, but even over Wi-Fi that’s a cumbersome process. Over EDGE, forget it. If I could just reply to the e-mail notification, I’d be able to address things more quickly without having to always queue things until I’m back in the office. Heck, it would probably even improve my in-office workflow by removing a step; I could respond to the e-mail with an e-mail, without the added click labor of logging onto Basecamp just to post some text.

I would like add my voice to having emails and replies to emails automatically posting to messages. Here are my reasons.
1. Make it easier for my clients to to see benefits of Basecamp and reduce the need for them log into to reply to new messages. Most of my clients are very busy and use cellphone based e-mail for the majority of project interactions.
2. Facilitate my use when on the road using ATT’s Edge Network.
3. Have email communication automatically logged/archived in Basecamp for improved project communications and accountability.

Pete

Agreed!! Yes, I would LOVE to have this feature. Most of my clients live and die by e-mail. To have them login, takes too many steps, so they don’t want to do it. Basecamp is HUGELY more efficient when my clients are involved. This is the feature that keeps them out.

Create a great day!
Kristen

We just started using Basecamp and the most cumbersome thing about the whole setup is the having to go to the web app to post. It’s counterproductive for offices that use a lot of email to go back and forth.

David_H said that endless post have been made on this topic. Has anyone ever gotten a response?

Endless doesn’t even begin to cover it. I think when the 37signals guys were born, their brains were carefully programmed to ignore certain phrases and sentences for the rest of their lives. Sentences like “hey guys, clients really like email but they don’t like logging in to send a message” and “can we please reply to messages through email?”

In other words…I hope someday they hear their users whining about this. The chorus of requests is deafening, and maybe that has caused permanent hearing loss.

As a new user that recently converted to paid, this is the single biggest obstacle to successfully integrating Basecamp into our small business.

Some people get and enjoy webapps, and will login for all of the lovely collaboration features Backpack has to offer. Some won’t. Several key users have never logged in, as is painfully clear from the Dashboard.

They would, however, participate via email responses, and look at attached files if they were included in Basecamp emails.

But as it stands, they don’t log in to look at new uploaded content, and they don’t join the online discussion.

Since Highrise has some email parsing capability, maybe Basecamp can be next? Other folks are doing this, and doing it well (stikkit, etc …). I have no doubt the 37S could make this work too.

Thanks for reconsidering this issue. I don’t think this is feature bloat. I think this is “getting real” about how groups of people with varying degrees of tech savvy/interest actually work together.

It certainly would be useful.

About 10% of our active clients refuse to log on to Basecamp to post messages or upload files.

I have the same issue. Some of our team members are very resistant to using Basecamp purely because they have to maintain the whole mental effort of having to log into a system online. These people can be more effectively integrated into the project by allowing basecamp to pick up replied-to emails. It’s not hard, guys! Numerous online systems can do it, including one of your competitors over at www.fogbugz.com. It picks up the reply-to and identifies the email via a small ID number in the message. If it can’t figure out what message to add the comment to, it makes a new message. Works great.

Please please please implement this! :)

I would like this feature for a different reason: many of my clients just reply to e-mails they get from Basecamp. I’m not sure how they miss that the e-mail comes from “donotreply@...” or that the message begins and ends with “DO NOT REPLY TO THIS E-MAIL” but they do. Days later, they say, “You didn’t get my e-mail?” No, of course not. I didn’t send it. It wasn’t from me. Basecamp sent it to you and you can’t reply to Basecamp. Help me, 37signals, you’re my only hope.

I wanted to chime in a say this feature would be extremely useful. We love Basecamp, and have been loyal users for 2+ years.

NST is right, many of our clients just ignore “DO NOT REPLY TO THIS E-MAIL”. We’ve had many clients call asking why we haven’t responded to their emails (since they just replied to the message).

A simple fix would be an automated reply saying something to the effect: Please add your message here

+1 wanting this feature. This would be hugely helpful for us since we are using basecamp in a blackberry-centric organization

Agreed here as well. This feature would be great. It’s used often in support ticketing systems where replying to an email automatically posts to the web application. And, I believe the 37 signal guys are doing something similar with Highrise where you can reply to an email message and it automatically posts to your highrise panel.

+1. This would be the one feature that would be the most important for us.

I would love to see this feature. Many of our users are not near computers all day and would love to be able to just reply to a comment on their cell phone and have it post to basecamp and to the users on the list.

Some other features I have seen on another similar system are the ability to send an email that will create a new project, a milestone or even upload a file.

Lots of our clients don’t want to login beyond their email (so they never use basecamp) ability to email in is a feature that’s really a must have since most of our projects now are mixed up with private emails and phone calls! Sort of deleting the purpose of basecamp.

I agree and it sounds great in theory, but how would you stop spam? Say someone forwarded one of the messages, then anyone could comment or post. Would need some sort of limitation somehow.

Deaf ears folks. I’ve been making requests for this from the gate. Like since a few months after the product launched initially. My clients have always complained about the same stuff. I think we’re just going to have to build it…

I cannot tell you how many times we hear about this from clients. And now, with more and more people using mobile devices (iPhone, Blackberries) to manage on the go, this makes even more sense than it did a few years ago when many of us starting asking for this feature.

The biggest source of frustration for us long-time Basecamp users is to watch conversations come out of Message threads and into email. It’s simply easier for many people to communicate that way.

The biggest source of frustration for us long-time Basecamp users is to watch conversations come out of Message threads and into email. It’s simply easier for many people to communicate that way.

+1

I totally agree that having email piping to project messages would be awesome. It’s the single biggest reason that our users have trouble using Basecamp. It’s just another thing for them to login to and remember. If they can deal in email, like everyone does, it would be a godsend. Without this feature, I’ve considered scrapping Basecamp and using a combo of Highrise and Backpack.

I can’t say how many times users reply to the donotreply address and then wonder why we haven’t responded.

DEFINATELY +1 !!!