Dealing With Email
Thunderbird 2 is in alpha release at the moment. Coming with it is the new user-definable "tag" feature to replace message labels. This can only mean one thing — it's time I change the way I use email. It takes me far too long to reply to some email under my current system.
At the moment all my emails accounts (3) are downloaded from in to separate accounts in Thunderbird. I read all the new messages and mark those that need attention or a reply as unread (press M on keyboard). My inbox fills up with bold "unread" messages awaiting my attention. As the inbox continues to fill these message get pushed down out of sight (and hence, out of mind). Every now and then I scroll down and pick out those most needing a reply (obviously work-based emails take priority).
Sometimes emails can go for a month or more without a reply! Although I always make sure they do get a reply. Even if lots start with "Sorry about the delay". Please keep the email coming, just don't always expect an immediate response!
What I need to do is stop using unread marks to manage my email. They are unreliable sometimes, as it's all to easy to mark a whole folder as read or inadvertently mark a single email read without realising it. My intention is to start using the other features of Thunderbird.
Thunderbird allows us to easily flag and label messages using single keystrokes. Pressing I will toggle flags for a message. Pressing 1-5 will label the message as important/work/to-do etc. You can then filter the inbox to only show flagged emails, for example.
Some experimentation is needed I think before I reach my perfect solution. How do you guys manage emails that you don't have the time to deal with there and then?
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I use the follow up flags and the follow up mini view in the Notes client. They work well for me.
Well, funnily enough. I use Notes Mail. And it has this little ability to flag emails for "Follow Up" at the click of a button. Things which need a response get flagged. Things which don't get filed.
You have to be really strict at times. I'm one of these people who hardly ever deletes emails. I have about 17,000 mails in my mail file. But it only takes up around 250 meg anyway so it's no biggie.
I also get emails from other accounts which are brought into Note via a connection doc in my local names.nsf. Those get exactly the same treatment.
There are lots of articles out there which say things like "only have mails in your inbox which need your attention, file or delete the rest". Probably the best bet, but everbody works differently.
Notes Client and Follow up.
I move mails that have been flagged or that I don't need to do more about away from my inbox and into folders.
My folders are generally ordered by customer name (I do consulting).
One of the handy features they added to Notes mail in 7 is the "Quick Flag" option: Alt+6 - Q (it's also an action button for those who prefer using the mouse) sets a follow-up flag using whatever the defaults are set to in your preferences. As Curt mentioned, once they're flagged they show up in the mini-view, so I follow up a flagging with Alt+7 - R (remove from folder); less clutter in the Inbox in the meantime, since I can see in the corner all the pending follow-ups, and any that I want back in the Inbox I can drag there later (or any other folder).
I just have a folder called Followup. I drag any email into that folder that I need to answer. As soon as I answer it I drag it to it's final resting place in some other appropriate folder.
I do the same as Rob, I have a FollowUp folder as well for each account and I drop stuff in there.
Might work better with the flags as well!
Gmail currently. I use the Star flag if it needs attention later. I do pull it to Thunderbird every so often for backup where the read / unread and star flags are all lost, but presently the Gmail client is client enough for me.
When I was using pegasus mail, I had folders for everything, even one for you Jake. It was easy to categorize email after dload into folders which showed an unread count in () after the folder name. Made it easy to see who needed attention.
Some folders were topical, some were priority based. It wasn't terribly organized but I was able to keep on top of it.
Hi Jake,
One thing I learnt recently about email was from a customer whose inbox got corrupted. They, like you, were in the habit of leaving all messages in the inbox (this is Outlook Express by the way, but the moral is the same), and using the unread marks to indicate things needing attention.
However, they ended up with something like 5000 messages in their inbox, with may a couple of hundred with unread marks, often just stuff that needed reading at some time for background, not requiring response.
Anyway, something blipped and caused the inbox to corrupt. Although it would still open, about a years worth of messages weren't showing in the index. I tried several of the commercial recovery tools, but none could get more than a handful of the messages back out. There were no backups.
Corruption like this can come for a number of reasons, such as disk failure, but with large indexes its easy to corrupt as well, if your unlucky.
I admit, I also did this, but tried to keep my inbox size down below 1000 messages, just because it keeps Outlook more spritely if you do.
I've now changed my ways (as has the customer). I know have a subfolder called 'action required'. As mail arrives in the Inbox, I read/delete what I can, and things that require a response/action get chucked into the subfolder. Mail for archiving goes into an annually named archive folder, which can grow to several thousand messages but as its infrequently accessed, stands less chance of corruption other than for disk failure reasons. The whole machine is backed up regularly.
That above is a great way to manage mail. Your inbox is quickly emptied, and the actionable stuff always looks managable! Its great for motivation, as you don't end up thinking your drowning in actionable mail!
Hope that helps
Cheers
Dave
Throughout my "consulting career", I've only met one manager who had solved all email problems permanantly. Every morning after opening his inbox, he hit [Ctrl]-a and [Del]. Notes 4.6 showed that little wastebasket icon next to each mail. He then worked through all new mails top to bottom, printed out (yes, on paper) what was important and hit [F9] when he was done. Not a single mail in his mailbox (an admin's dream).
What did we do, to improve his user experience and boost his efficiency? We upgraded him to Notes 6.5, so his daily routine didn't work any more because of the new "real" wastebasket. ;-)
Back to topic: Are folders the key to successful email management? Maybe, to some extend. Is there one ideal, universal organisation concept for folders? I would definitely disagree. Is the concept of folders flexible enough to find a perfect fit for everybody? Again, I would disagree.
Of course, I do use folders myself in a style similar to what Jerry did. It works well enough to get away with it. But still I find the Notes Follow Up flags much more usefull, especially when combined with the mini-view mentioned before.
What is still missing, is a way to relate certain emails (or even email threads) directly to projects, to integrate them with project plans, specifications and whatever might be related. Is Workplace Activity Explorer able to do all that?
(This is not meant as an advert, as I won't include any links to any particular products of mention...)
For my Notes-accessible mail, I use a combination of features that are both found as native functionality within the Lotus Notes client (mail template design, that is) as well as an integrated CRM solution.
Internal email messages from HR, et al are filed into folders appropriately. Both internal and external email messages regarding a business contact (either a customer, vendor, etc.), a given project, a given consulting engagement, etc. are categorized by my CRM's integrated featureset. I can categorize my email messages with the business contact via a "email caller ID" feature, and can link a group of emails, calendar entries, tasks to a given project, et al. with the simple click of the mouse. One of the functions of this categorization engine is that, once a particular item is categorized, you can elect (at the user level or the admin level) to create a copy of that email in a correspondence tracking solution. This way, I can now delete all email messages that don't require that I address an item in said email message. This allows me to not only keep my inbox as a task list per se, but keeps my mail database tidy (not too many folders for categorization, and I don't have to maintain volumes of messages). I don't have to worry about losing anything either, as it's now stored in a central location on the server.
The biggest benefit, of course, is often an oversight by shops not running a CRM solution and a "can't live without" funciton of those who do -- you can now instantly lookup a history of all correspondence for a particular business contact, by a particular project, consulting engagement... whatever it's been categorized with - you can now see the common voice of your business.
There are plently of products out there that can accomodate these functionalities, but there are seldom few that give you quick-categorization options... and I think herein lies the problem. Even in my own CRM solution, even though you can mass-categorize messages, it still requires that you perform several mouseclicks. While that's fine for most, your quick-to-scoff users (mostly the sales people to be honest) need that two mouseclick/keyboard combo shortcut when they're going through 100 email messages in their stuffed inboxes.
Looks like us "vendors" need to go back to the drawing board and come up with those solutions. Are there any *standards* already out there in the wild for such a thing?!
I use Notes 7 and the follow-up feature. Mind you, I'm ruthlessly efficient with e-mail - I receive it and deal with it, file it or delete it. Today was my first day back after 3 weeks holiday and now I have only 16 e-mails left in my Inbox. Scroll bars make me feel depressed. How these people who have hundreds of unread e-mails in their Inbox can work is beyond me.
One final thought... having Sametime seriously reduces the amount of e-mail traffic. Version 7.5 will ship during August ;o)