AfterMail RSS Enables Email

AfterMail, a global leader in enterprise email intelligence, today announced that its award-winning Email software now features really simple syndication (RSS), providing organizations with greater message alerting capabilities. RSS enables a user or administrator to be alerted when messages matching pre-defined criteria are transacted by the system.

Were great believers in the subscribe model which is becoming predominant on the web, said Rod Drury, Chief Executive Officer. Users no longer need to constantly watch their email or their organizations email for particular messages; they can now be proactively alerted when these messages appear, using a protocol which is now becoming mainstream. The world is moving from browse and search to a subscribe model as customers desire access to the information they need, whenever they need it and the computer does the heavy lifting.

Any search performed within AfterMail is allocated a unique identifier. This is typically used for auditing purposes, but can also be used to derive an RSS feed. Any standard RSS aggregator can be used to access and effectively re-run this search, in effect creating a way of monitoring the email store on an ongoing basis. The flexible AfterMail security model can be used to not only search individual mailboxes, but also across the entire organization.

Enterprise adoption of RSS has increased significantly in recent months, and the technology has been given additional exposure through Microsofts announcements relating to RSS support being provided in Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer 7 and Microsoft Windows Vista. RSS evolves information gathering from browse, to search, to subscribe. The flexible, open platform provided by AfterMail allows customers to receive the benefits of RSS today.

By incorporating this into AfterMail, which captures a copy of all messages across the organization, in effect we have RSS-enabled email, delivering on our goal of transforming email into enterprise information, added Drury.

Enterprises are drowning in a mountain of email, said Andy Lark, an expert in participatory communications technologies and founder of The Lark Group. By enabling users to be alerted not just to the presence of email, but also to more intelligent criteria such as its content, AfterMail is transforming the value of this critical communications tool. The days of the dumb email client are numbered.

AfterMail users have used this feature to monitor communications between particular customers, watch for email messages containing specific words, or even attachments of particular types. These capabilities are available now, with all versions of AfterMail. AfterMail has supported the protocol in previous versions, however has enhanced this capability in its next release.

In addition to providing RSS capabilities within its application, AfterMail also uses RSS throughout the organization. AfterMail uses RSS in three main ways: in its products, on the public company website, and to update our channels. By RSS-enabling these resources, the company provides a way of proactively notifying customers and resellers that any information has been updated; in the past, such communications have typically been made using email. As soon as any of AfterMails information is updated, its customers and partners know almost instantly, enabling the company to scale communications globally.