Mentions in Composer

Hello ! With features like Calendar and Contacts slowly coming, it seems like Mailspring is becoming a full productivity suite, targeted for people who has a lot of e-mails to process every day.

A feature which will be great for those people will be to be able to mention user in the composer.

Does this feature exist in another mail client or tool you use?

This feature exists in Microsoft Outlook desktop and web client. And in the new Gmail web client.

I will take an example of how Outlook does this, as it seems like a pretty standard way of doing mentions. The great news is that Gmail seems to do exactly the same thing, that’s great for compatibility!

The way it works in Outlook

When you are compositing a mail

When you are composing a mail, and writing a “@”, a list shows up with an auto-completion of the contacts you have. Once selected contact is selected

  • The mention will appear as a highlighted text
  • A link will be added on the text like this “mailto:myselectedcontact@example.com”
  • The selected contact will be added in the “To” (or “Copy To”) field

When you receive a mail

If there’s a mention (a text with starting with a @ and a link starting by “mailto:”)

  • The text will be highlighted
  • A mini contact-card will be showing when mouse hover

When you are mentioned (a text starting with a @ and a link starting by “mailto:youremail@example.com”)

  • A “@” badge shows up in the e-mail list

The way it can be implemented in Mailspring

As I find the way that Outlook does this to be pretty complete and useful, all of these features are not necessary. In the first place, just autocomplete contacts in the composer can be enough, and save a lot of time.

Thanks again for all the contributors of Mailspring mail which is really becoming a great and fully featured email client !


(Originally posted by phileastv on GitHub.)

Hey ! Original author here ! Great to see that this issue is still alive, thanks for making Mailspring a great productivity tool :heart:

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