I bought the DMI plug-in because I thought it would help me sort through my mail. But I almsot never use it now. The big problem is that once you so much as glance at an email, you lose the ability to enter categories and link it to other elements.

I also don't see it as having any advantage over OS X's built-in search enginers (especially Spotlight) and since I have a gmail account, all my mail gets archived automaticcally anyway. If I wanted to find all email associated with a contact I could very easily search in Spotlight or Mail itself for the contact and that's much faster than Daylite's search.

So I guess I am wondering what exactly DMI is good for?

Thanks.

Personally, I often use it so I can remember that I have had some correspondence with someone in the past. I may learn of a contact in an organization who is cc'd in an email that I've never met with, and should I later have a meeting or a call with them I can do a quick DL search and see in what manner I've corresponded with them in the past.

A bit of a crutch, but 3 or 4 times in the past few months I've found it quite useful. Given that DL can store info related to calls, meetings, and emails in one place, that's quite useful.

Where I find DMI most useful is in a multi-user environment, because it enables other Daylite users in your database to review communication history with the Contact. Another place I really like it is for linking emails to Projects and Opps. For instance, if I'm going out of town, I create a travel project and link my hotel/car/hotel reservation emails. That way I can look at the Project or Opp and see exactly what I've got.

You mentioned that once you glance at an email, you lose linking/category ability. This is because the emails are set to automatically go to Daylite. May I also recommend that you turn off the preference that automatically pushes all emails so that you may instead hand-select the emails that are important enough to be stored in Daylite. Hand-selecting will keep those worthless emails like "ok, thanks!" from bloating your Daylite database.

Take care,
Cynthia

As Cynthia mentions, I have DMI set to only link the emails I select - not everything.

I use it to record and track customer orders. Many of my commercial clients will order via email so this is a way of keeping track of what they've ordered. That way if there's any discrepencies later, I can refer back to it. It's saved my a** many times!

This way too, you can work within DL without having to go to Mail to see or find the information... just a little quicker.