A Tracker Message is a special type of Message that you can use to track the TMail as a whole rather than keeping a track of a specific Changeset in a TMail.

Every response added to a TMail generates a new Changeset, with a new change number in the serial order. In the example TMail that you can see below, a total of 19 responses have been added so far by all the Writers combined, and so you can see C#19 immediately below the Writer name.

Since the TMail has 19 Changesets, each associated Writer receives 19 different Messages. A Tracker Message allows Users to deal with the TMail as a whole than dealing with specific Changesets.

In this sense Tracker Messages are similar to TMail Pins. They differ in two ways

• They can be created and deleted
• They can participate in the Message Flow (Inbox|Backlog|On Deck|Waiting)

Tracker Messages can only be found in the Inbox, Backlog, On Deck and Waiting Message Folders. They cannot appear in any other Message Folder such as Archive or Sent.

You can see different operations related to the Tracker Message.

• Bulk Operations
  • Archive All + Add Tracker
  • Archive All + Keep Tracker
  • Archive All
  • Delete All + Add Tracker
  • Delete All + Keep Tracker
  • Delete All
• Non-Bulk Operations
  • Add Tracker
  • Delete Tracker

Add Tracker: You can use this option to add a Tracker while keeping all the other Messages. In the example above, you will now see 20 Messages (19 normal + 1 tracker). (Please see Add Tracker for more details.)

Delete Tracker: You can use this option to delete the Tracker as the TMail reference. In this case, all the Messages remain in their respective folders. In the above example, you would see 19 normal Messages.

Note: Both these operations should be used sparingly since the real power of Trackers lies in using Archive-specific operations.

The more useful operations are the bulk operations such as Archive All + Add Tracker, Archive All + Keep Tracker and Archive All because these help you deal with TMails as a unit and thus are much more efficient.

In the above example, if you use Archive All + Add Tracker, all 19 (normal) Messages are archived and a Tracker Message is added. So, you now have only 1 (Tracker) message. (Please see Archive All and Add Tracker for more details.)

Now, if two new Messages arrive, there are 2 new (normal) messages and 1 Tracker. If you use ‘Archive All + Keep Tracker‘, the 2 normal Messages are archived, and the Tracker is retained as it is. (Please see Archive All and Keep Tracker for more details.)

The key advantage of using the Tracker Message is to have just one Message for the entire TMail rather than deal with multiple Messages for a single TMail. You can use the folders in Navigation | Message Flow, to organize your Tracker Messages. (Please see About Messages for more details on these folders.)