Is atomic MOVING of messages between IMAP folders possible?

[Ed W]

On 05/08/2014 17:29, Greg Sullivan wrote:
> That's promising that it should be doable. (yes, all I want is for the move
> to only occur once - duplicate messages is not a "move" at all)  I'll
> forward your suggestions to the Thunderbird & Postbox teams.
>
> In the meantime I'll continue to evaluate helpdesk systems and
> "collaborative inbox" products.
>
> Greg.
>

I agree with the goal though.  I have extremely simple needs for a 
helpdesk/CMS type system, and some plugins to Thunderbird would be quite 
satisfactory for my needs

Really I need:
- Enhanced addressbook, possibly reading via vcard from my main business 
system (bring in customer details and links to their orders on main system)
- Ability to force breaking and rejoin of specific message threading 
(because customers find an old invoice and hit reply to it to send us a 
support request + other customers who send you 15 emails (without 
hitting reply to trigger threading) to describe a single problem).  Note 
I believe this requires rewriting the message, so it couldn't be atomic 
with current IMAP?
- Enhanced use of flags to mark whether thread needs further input or is 
closed

Nice to have would be:
- Logging these state changes to somewhere else so that you can get 
statistics (can probably be done by polling the state of the IMAP server 
though?)
- Atomic "locking" of threads so that we don't get two people answer 
something. Could be handled through use of flags perhaps?

Thunderbird is helpful in that in theory all one needs to do is write 
the above in javascript and drop appropriate display buttons on the 
email inbox, so even if some external lock manager is needed to 
arbitrate access, then this is no great problem.  In practice I lack the 
time to work on this, but I'm vaguely interested to find out if there is 
a way to hire "plugin developers" for Thunderbird?

Good luck

Ed W