You can reply to discussions directly from an email or through OnRent Events if you’re a user. Discussions come with a range of tools to help see who has received a message and control who’s involved in a discussion.
See unread discussions
The “Unread discussions” tile on the dashboard is a count of any discussions that you’re a participant of that you’ve not yet read across your system. Click it to see a list.
When you’re a participant in a discussion, you’ll also receive an email notification of new replies.
Reply to a discussion by email
The fastest way to reply to a discussion is to reply to the email notification. This is the primary way that your customers and any other people who aren’t users in your system will reply to discussions.
Any replies should come back into the discussion thread in the system, so everyone is kept in the loop.
Reply through OnRent Events
As a user, you can reply to a discussion through the system, too. Just click into a discussion and use the editor to send your reply.
See who’s read a message
One of the benefits of using discussions is that the system records when a user has opened an email. This is a good indicator that your customer has seen or read a message.
You can see how many people have read a message by clicking into a discussion – the read count is listed underneath your message in gray.
Click for more details.
How does read tracking work?
The system embeds a tiny image in emails that are sent as a discussion. Images in emails are generally downloaded when someone opens an email, so as soon as that image is downloaded, our servers know that it’s been opened.
While this works most of the time, keep in mind that some people might use email clients that don’t download images automatically. In this case, the system can’t tell if they’ve opened a message.
Add participants to a discussion
From the system, add new participants to a discussion by clicking the plus tile next to the last participant at the top of a discussion page.
Participants added will receive new messages, but won’t receive messages that have previously been sent.
Mute participants
Stop participants from receiving new messages by muting them, handy for times when you need to discuss what a customer has said with your colleagues before you get back to them.
Participants who have opted out of receiving updates to a discussion will be shown as muted.
Undeliverable messages
When an email to a participant is bounced or otherwise rejected, a comment is added to the discussion to let you know.
This is very helpful in spotting misspelled email addresses or invalid email accounts.
For security reasons, it is not possible to add participants to a discussion whilst you’re in a trial account. Once you move into a paid subscription, you will have full access to this functionality.