Inbox

The emails available in your MerusCase Inbox commonly referred to as ‘messages’ in MerusCase, have the potential to originate from several sources. These include any email addresses linked to your MerusCase account or your HIPAA-compliant MerusCase email address. Your inbox is designed to make viewing, replying, and managing your messages as easy as possible.

Fetch Mail

If incoming and outbound email accounts are set up for your MerusCase account, then the Fetch Mail button will be your best friend, as clicking Fetch Mail will tell MerusCase to retrieve any new emails.

For context, it is important to understand that MerusCase is not an email provider, but instead, gives you the ability to view and send emails from within MerusCase. Your email provider (such as Gmail, Office365, or Exchange) still stores all of your emails.

When a new email is sent to your private email address, your email provider stores that email on their own server, and you can see the email using your email provider’s interface on your computer. The server and the interface are always talking so that your emails will always be up-to-date. This means that any email received by the server will automatically be pushed to your email provider.

MerusCase, however, is not inherently connected to your email provider, so the server never tells MerusCase when there are new emails. Rather, MerusCase has to actively look for those new emails itself. To accommodate this, MerusCase will run a Fetch every few minutes automatically, then show any new emails to you. If you ever see an email in your email provider’s interface that you do not yet see in MerusCase, it will likely appear in just a few minutes as the result of a fetch.

Even though MerusCase checks for new emails automatically, the Fetch Mail button is available for you to force MerusCase to check for new emails at your discretion.

To see how long it has been since a fetch has been run on your email accounts, click the dropdown menu to the right of the Fetch Mail button. This will show the history of mail fetches on your account.

Compose a New Message

The Inbox tab contains a Compose button, which will allow you to compose a new message in the right panel when clicked. For additional information on composing messages, see the documentation entitled Messaging - Compose.

Select Everything or Select None

To make it easy to perform tasks in bulk, MerusCase has a dropdown menu available that allows the user to select all of the items in the table or deselect all of the items in the table simultaneously. Simply click the checkbox-like icon above the column of checkboxes to see the options Select None and Select Everything.

Note that this will only apply to items in the table which you’ve currently filtered for (i.e. which are displayed on your screen at this moment).

Note that this will only apply to messages which you’ve currently filtered for (i.e. which are displayed on your screen at this moment).

Mark Unread or Read

Next to each email listed in your inbox, there is a checkbox that allows you to select a message. By checking the box next to a message, you have the ability to utilize the buttons below the Search/Filter bar. To mark a message Unread in MerusCase, you’ll simply check the box next to the message, then click Mark Unread (click the filled-in envelope icon on mobile devices).

In MerusCase, unread messages will have bolded text, whereas messages marked as read will have normal text.

You’ll also notice that some emails will have red text rather than black; this indicates a high-priority message. For example, any emails sent from the MerusCase Document Handler will be marked as high priority.

By selecting multiple checkboxes at once, the same action can be performed on many messages simultaneously.

Linking a Message to a Case

The most unique and helpful feature related to messaging in MerusCase is the ability to link messages to a case, which means you can easily access messages later within the context of the case. Once a message has been linked to a case, then all messages in that thread will be linked to the same case. This applies both to previous emails and future emails in the thread.

To link a single message to a case, follow the steps below.

1. From your inbox, click on a message that has not yet been linked to a case.

2. In the upper right-hand corner of the message, click Link to Case.

3. Enter a description for the message activity. Once a message is linked to a case, it becomes an activity. The activity description will automatically contain the sender and subject line of a message, but this description can be altered as well.

4. Type the name of the case in the Case field and select from the suggestions. By default, only non-archived cases will be shown in the list of suggestions when typing the name of a case into this field. If you would like to link a message to an archived case instead, select the folder icon to the right of the Case field and select the Archived Cases option that appears.

5. If desired, click the dropdown menu to select an additional activity tag to be associated with the activity. Any message that is linked to a case will automatically have an activity tag of Message by default.

6. If there are any attachments on the message, these will be linked to the case as well. Click the pencil icon to the left of the document name to rename any attachments. You may also click the cloud icon to download the document and hover over the file type icon to see a preview.

7. To delete the message from your inbox at the same time as you link the message to the case, leave the Simultaneously Delete Message checkbox as checked. If you’d like to keep the message in your inbox, you can uncheck this option.

8. Click Save.

Multiple messages can also be linked to a case simultaneously. Follow the steps below to link messages to a case in bulk.

1. Select the messages you’d like to link to a case using the checkboxes to the left of the email and click the Link to Case button.

2. Type the name of the case in the Case field and select from the suggestions. By default, only non-archived cases will be shown in the list of suggestions when typing the name of a case into this field. If you would like to link a message to an archived case instead, select the folder icon to the right of the Case field and select the Archived Cases option that appears.

3. To delete the messages from your inbox at the same time as you link the messages to the case, leave the Simultaneously Remove Message checkbox as checked. If you’d like to keep the message in your inbox, you can uncheck this option.

Filtering Messages

Any table in MerusCase allows for filtering across any of the columns on your screen to provide the user a tailored list within the system. In other words, use the filter to quickly find a specific line item within the table.

Additionally, MerusCase supports the use of multiple filters at once. For instance, a user can search for all open (by the Case Status column) cases within Browse Cases and then apply a second filter to then search for Assigned to Me (by the Staff column) within those open cases.

To apply multiple filters, enter the first filter then click on the magnifying glass. On click, a drop-down window will appear. Click Add Filter and toggle what to filter by.

Select Always use this column if you wish to always use the same filter type. Many firms find it particularly useful to select this option when filtering for cases, forms, or templates.

To remove a filter, click on the added filter button (each applied filter appears as a button underneath the Search/Filter bar). For example, to remove the filter for open cases, click on the button Status: Open underneath the Search/Filter bar.

The Search/Filter bar in the inbox can be used to filter the messages by Sender, Subject, Date, Case, and New/Read. To adjust which category to filter by, simply click on the magnifying glass to the right of the Search/Filter bar. You can then click on the Filter By dropdown menu to select another category. For a quick way to filter for read/unread messages or messages with attachments, take a look at the Quick Filters section below.

Quick Filters

Several Quick Filters are available above the Search/Filter bar in the inbox. These can be clicked to quickly limit your inbox to only read messages (Read), unread messages (Unread), or messages containing attachments (With Attachments). 

Deleting a Message

In MerusCase, there is no Trash folder or email archive. Rather, the location of deleted emails is based on a couple of different factors. If an email has been linked to a case, then the message can be deleted from the Inbox because the email can be accessed from the Activity Tab in the case.

For emails that are in your inbox as a result of IMAP/POP synchronization, you can adjust where deleted emails are sent by navigating to the Email Setup section of MerusCase. For additional information, review our article on setting up your email.

To delete a single email, follow the instructions below.

1. Click on an email in the inbox.

2. Click the Delete button in the upper right-hand corner of the open email.

3. If there is just one message in the conversation, then you will click Delete to confirm this deletion.

4. If there are multiple messages in the conversation, then you will have the option to delete only the open message by clicking Just This One. Alternatively, you can also delete every message in that particular thread by clicking Entire Conversation.

To delete multiple messages directly from your inbox, follow the instructions below.

1. Select the messages you’d like to delete using the checkboxes to the left of the email.

2. Click Delete or - if on a mobile device - the trash can icon.

3. In the window that pops up, click Delete to confirm.