UserManual

What is MIST?

MIST stands for eMail Import System for TntConnect. TntConnect, designed by Troy Wolbrink, is a wonderful tool for doing personal fundraising. However, it does not have a means of automatically associating email with contacts (unless you use Outlook.) You can associate email manually, but this is time-consuming and error-prone... which means most of us eventually stop doing it! MIST was designed to greatly simplify the email importing task.

Please note that MIST is not directly affiliated with TntConnect or TntWare, but we hope it will be useful to the TntConnect community! Please do not seek help for MIST on the TntConnect forums.

MIST Features

• Easily imports email into TntConnect history from your SSL-enabled IMAP server
• Works with TntConnect 3.1+
• Works with Gmail (but see GmailIsNotIMAP)
• Open-source code, so it is both free and customizable it to meet your needs

Setting up your email account

Before you use MIST, you'll need to set up your email account.

First, in your email client (Thunderbird, Outlook, Mail, etc.), create a folder that MIST will connect to to download email. This folder should be named tnt or something similar. (Gmail users, you'll create a "label" instead of a folder, but it works the same way.)

Now as you write to donors and donors write to you, any email that you want MIST to import into TntConnect should go into this folder/label. (Remember to include "Sent" items from you to the donor so that these get recorded too.) If using Gmail, just label the conversation with the new label you've created. (Though see GmailIsNotIMAP.)

Setting up MIST

You can have MIST up and running in just minutes! From the menu bar, click "Settings" on Windows or "Preferences" on Mac. See the description of each field below:

TntConnect

• My name: This field will be used when creating history items of email that you have sent. For example, if you put "Tom" in this box and sent a donor an email with subject line "Thanks!", the TntConnect history item subject would say, "Tom wrote: Thanks!"
• Select database...: Select your TntConnect database.
• User: You may associate a TntConnect User with each imported email. Select your User here.

Email

• Server: Your SSL-enabled IMAP server (use imap.gmail.com for Gmail)
• Port: The port for your SSL-enabled IMAP server (usually 993)
• Username: Your IMAP server username (usually the part before the @ symbol).
• Connect...: Use this button to test your email connection. You will be prompted to enter your password.
• Select...: Use this button to select the folder where you store your email that should be imported into TntConnect. You should have set this up in the section Setting up your email account above. MIST connects to this folder and processes each message it finds.

If you have trouble setting up your email, see Troubleshooting.

My Email Addresses

Enter a list of your personal email addresses, one per line. If MIST finds one of these email addresses in the "From" field of an email, it knows the message is from you to a contact (rather than from a contact to you.)

Email Addresses To Ignore

Enter a list of email addresses to ignore, one per line. If MIST finds one of these email addresses in the "From" field of an email, it ignores the message and moves on. If MIST finds one of these email addresses in the "To" or "Cc" field of an email, it ignores that recipient and moves onto the next recipient.

This feature is particularly useful if a husband and wife both want to use MIST. The husband tells MIST to "ignore" his wife's email addresses and she does the same for his. This ensures that their "husband and wife" contact in TntConnect doesn't get filled up with messages to/from each other. As each then runs MIST, you will see "the right thing" in the subject line of the history items based on what they put in the My name field.

For example:

• Tom writes to Jane Donor, CCing in his wife Ali, with subject "Thank you!"
• Jane replies to both Tom and Ali
• Ali replies again (CCing Tom)

MIST would record the following messages in Jane Donor's TntConnect history:

• Tom wrote: Thank you!
• Jane wrote: Re: Thank you!
• Ali wrote: Re: Thank you!

Also, in the example above, Tom and Ali's contact record would not be changed.

Where does my configuration get stored?

MIST stores your configuration in the registry (on Windows) or in your Preferences folder (on Mac).

Using MIST

Once you have at least one email in that folder, you can tell MIST to import your email! You'll see something like this:

After MIST connects to your email server, it will process through each message, examining both your TntConnect database and the lists of email addresses you specified in the MIST Settings.

MIST shows you what it is doing with each non-ignored message as it processes the folder. You can verify this afterwards by taking a look at your TntConnect "History" view.

MIST will note problems using yellow icons. These are usually email addresses that aren't found in the TntConnect database. You can double-click these and see the details, copy the email address, and then easily add it to a contact in TntConnect. See below:

Once you've added the missing addresses from the yellow icons, you can re-run the import and it will import those messages properly.

Note: MIST will never import the same message twice! This means you can safely run MIST on your folder multiple times; it will just ignore emails that it has already imported. (Technically, MIST looks for the combination of contact and time; this means that you are free to modify the TntConnect history subject line and contents if you like - MIST will not import that email again if you do.)

MIST will also note "errors" using red icons. Theoretically, errors shouldn't happen... but it's a fallen world! See Troubleshooting for things to try.

Once you have successfully imported the email in your folder, you can either leave that email in the folder or empty it out. In either case, MIST will never import a message a second time. It will just take less time if MIST doesn't have to re-check all the already-added messages.

Problems?

See Troubleshooting.