Hot on the heels of some recent improvements to the Receipt Emails feature, here are four more!

Unique forwarding addresses

Every user now has a unique email address to which they can forward their receipt emails. You can find yours on the Receipt Emails pages when you are logged in to DoubleAgent. They look like abc123@attachments.doubleagent.io, where abc123 is different (and longer) for everyone.

Previously everyone forwarded their receipt emails to the same address, attachments@doubleagent.io, and DoubleAgent would figure out whom the email was for. I thought it would be simpler for users this way, and I rather liked the "magic" aspect of it. But it relied on people creating verified senders in FreeAgent which was a little tedious. The new system is simpler all round.

Both systems are running side-by-side for now. Whenever DoubleAgent receives a receipt email at the old address, attachments@doubleagent.io, it will process the receipt as normal and then send an email to the user explaining how to update their forwarding address.

Ideally everyone will switch to their unique forwarding address sooner rather than later, but to give anyone with a once-a-year email a chance to receive the change notification, the old address will keep running until 1 December 2023.

From polling to webhooks

Receipt emails sent to the new forwarding addresses will show up immediately in DoubleAgent. This is a nice contrast to the old address where emails can take up to 1 minute to appear.

This doesn't make any difference once your rules are set up the way you want, but when you are trying to get them right in the first place, it is very nice to have instant feedback.

Live updates to the list of received emails

The list of received receipt emails now updates itself automatically as new emails arrive. No need to keep refreshing the page while you wait for your email to reach DoubleAgent.

Gmail forwarding confirmation

When a Gmail user sets up a rule to forward emails somewhere, Google sends a confirmation email to the destination. The confirmation email contains a code and a link which you can click to confirm the forwarding.

Previously, DoubleAgent confirmed the forwarding for you behind the scenes. However that confused people about whether the confirmation email had been received or acted on.

Now, the confirmation email appears in the list of received receipt emails where you can view the confirmation code and/or click the confirmation link yourself. It's much clearer and avoids any confusion.