Email attachment ingress

To email a document into the database, several conditions must be met.

1. The email must be multipart MIME-encoded. Most common email clients meet this condition.


2. The email must be sent to augcidb@atdot.dotat.org.


3. The email address of the sender must match the email address of your Instructor object. You can check your registered email address here, and update it to match your mail client's configured sender address if required. An exact match is required, otherwise your mail input will be silently rejected as spam.
4. The email message's Subject: line must, among other things, contain a valid database object ID enclosed in [square brackets].

If those conditions are met, sending your email will cause the creation of a new database object. The new object's parent will be the object you specified in the Subject: line. The object's Name attribute will be set to a modified version of the email's Subject: line, which will serve as a one-line descriptive summary. The editable text in the object's Comment field will be whatever body text you typed in the email message. And any files attached to the email message will be stored in the database and made available as hyperlinks on the new object.

By way of an example:

This object was created when Mark Newton sent email to augcidb@atdot.dotat.org with a subject: line which said [100132T] 2013/2014 CASA Medical certificate exp 4 Apr 2015, with text which said, "My CASA medical certificate exp end Apr 2015 is attached", and a PDF file attachment containing a scan of a CASA medical certificate.

The resulting new database object was attached to object ID 100132T, Mark Newton's pilot record. It will appear alongside the list of comments attached to that object.

Email messages can be attached to any existing database object, including other email attachment objects. Once created, their text fields can be edited at will.

Text fields are searchable, and should therefore be as descriptive as reasonably possible to maximise the utility of the database search tool.

Usage

If you wish to attach documents to a pilot record, the process is pretty straightforward:

1. Ensure your email address in your Instructor object is correct. You should only need to do this once.
2. Navigate to the Pilot record you wish to update, using the usual query tools provided by the database.
3. Read off the pilot's object ID from the top left corner of their record.
4. In your mail client, compose a new message to augcidb@atdot.dotat.org with a subject line which mentions the object ID retrieved above in [square brackets] and a one-line descriptive summary. Type some more expansive descriptive text into the body of the email. Attach whatever documents you need to attach, and click "Send."