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Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Savvy Support: "You have a new message from..."


                                     A guest message, sent by a MerusCase user to an outside email recipient


The day-to-day operations of a law firm usually include staff exchanging plenty of written correspondence with each other. This intra-firm messaging can be as simple as memos and other paper messages, but in this day and age, email (along with attached documents, pictures, and scans) is the de facto standard. MerusCase includes built-in messaging that allows you to send messages to staff, attach files, and link sent and received messages to cases so they show up in a case's Activities for future reference.

In addition to internal staff messaging, MerusCase's messaging system can also function as an email client for external messages. Like Microsoft Outlook or the email app on your smartphone, MerusCase can  receive emails sent to/ send emails as your email. Also like Outlook, this kind of email account integration has to be configured before use, to allow MerusCase send and receive access to your email account via industry-standard POP3/IMAP and SMTP protocols.
If you  don't set up this email account integration but want to send messages anyway, we ensure your messages still get delivered to outside recipients by sending them as secure guest messages: we send the message from a system email account @ meruscase.net, the recipient clicks the Login link in the message, and they complete a one-page signup that gives them a MerusCase "lite" account with only messaging enabled, allowing them to receive and reply to any future messages you send them. 
As a positive side effect, having email recipients log in to MerusCase to view messages and download attachments has added benefits for HIPAA compliance. Any attached medical records or other PHI are now secure behind a unique, password-protected login and are downloaded through a connection with the same kind of 128-bit TLS encryption major banks use for online account services.

Earlier this week, we received a support call from a user who mentioned clients having to log in to MerusCase to view messages they were receiving, and this user wondered if there was a way to turn that off. I began explaining the need to set MerusCase up with an email account before Merus can send messages as that email, and after I asked the user if they ever remembered setting up email in their Outlook on a new computer, they understood what was going on. 

I provided this user with detailed instructions and links to our help articles, and they forwarded it to their staff to get all users at the firm set up with sending messages. Their familiarity with an existing program, Outlook, greatly aided their understanding of corresponding functionality in MerusCase, and they thanked me both for my assistance and my detailed explanation.
Posted by MerusCase on Wednesday December 11, 2013 0 Comments

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