July 2009

 

Greetings from “Your IT Department”!

 

How can I save and organize my email more effectively and manage email overload?

 

Increasingly, companies are becoming more dependent on email than ever to conduct business, stay in contact with their customers, and solicit new business. So we have devoted this month's Network Update articles towards helping our customers manage email overload, organizing your inbox to be more effective in storing messages that won’t be deleted automatically and some helpful Tips and Tricks to set up an email signature and automatically save our newsletters (or other less important files) to a specific inbox folder.

 

We hope you appreciate our upgraded look. Click on any link below to visit our new site.
 

  

 

 

Tips and Tricks
Focus Your Outlook
 Cindy Troyer, Vice President, OurTech Solutions™

 

Outlook is a very powerful application, but it can also be very confusing.  In this month's Tips & Tricks, we're going to be looking at ways you can get more out of Outlook.

 

Create An Email Signature
For many people e-mail is a regular part of the workday. You send mail to business associates, customers, friends, and family. Over the course of a day, adding your signature to each email can add up to a lot of repetitive typing. Lessen your workload with Outlook's automatic e-mail signatures. To set up an email signature in Outlook:

 

  • Select Options from the Tools menu in Outlook.
  • Go to the Mail Format tab.
  • Click the Signatures... button, then click New.
  • Give the new signature a name.
  • Click OK.
  • Type the desired text of your email signature.
  • You can use the Font... and Paragraph... buttons to format your text.
  • If this is your first signature, Outlook will make it the default for new messages.
  • To use it for replies as well, select it from the drop-down menu for replies and forwards.
  • Click OK.

 

Filter A Sender's Mail to a Certain Folder Automatically in Outlook
Whether it's mail from your clients, friends, relatives or must-read newsletter, wouldn't it be great if it automatically went to the right folder? Outlook can send incoming messages to any folder automatically using a filter, and it's easy to set up!  To have Outlook file a sender's messages automatically:

 

  • Click with the right mouse button on a message from the sender whose messages you want to filter.
  • Select Create Rule... from the menu that comes up.
  • Make sure From {Sender} is checked.
  • Also check Move the item to folder:.
  • Click Select Folder....
  • Highlight the desired target folder.
  • Click OK.
  • Click OK again.
  • To move all existing messages from the sender (albeit only in the current folder) to the filter's target folder right away, check Run this rule now on messages already in the current folder.
  • Either way, the rule will automatically file the sender's all newly incoming messages in the future, of course.
  • Click OK once more.

 


 Managing Email Overload1

Four D's For Decision Making
 Robert Troyer, CEO, OurTech Solutions™

 

Have you heard yourself saying, "There’s too much information coming at me too fast! There's not enough time in the day to review all the messages in my inbox." You are more likely to miss something important if you don’t organize your inbox. I rarely have more the 5 items in my inbox at on any given day. Productively managing your email requires you use the 4 D’s of content management.

 

Delete it – in two minutes or less decide if you should just delete it. Many of you are keeping a lot more than you use. Here are some questions to ask yourself to help you decide what to delete:

  • Does the message relate to a meaningful objective you're currently working on? If not, you can probably delete it. Does the message contain information you can find elsewhere? If so, delete it.
  • Does the message contain information that you will refer to within the next six months? If not, delete it.
  • Does the message contain information that you're required to keep? If not, delete it.

 

Do it – if it can be done in two minutes or less just do it.  If you can’t delete the message right away, but it can be done quickly, then just do it! You can probably handle about one third of your e-mail messages in less than two minutes.

 

Delegate it – in two minutes or less decide who’s best to respond.  If you can delegate it, do it right away. You should be able to compose and send the delegating message in about two minutes. Once you delegate the action, delete the original message or move it into your e-mail reference system.
 

Defer it – add the email to your Task List to prioritize your work. You’ll probably find that about 10 percent of your e-mail messages have to be deferred. You may be required to add something to your calendar to deal with it later, or you may need to add the item to your Task list to ensure you address it later and don’t forget. Using your Outlook task manager will also help with prioritizing your workload.

 

1Sally McGhee, Microsoft At Work

 

Organizing Your Outlook Inbox
 A Place for Everything and Everything in Its Place
 Robert Troyer, CEO, OurTech Solutions™


Are you one of those persons who feels they need to keep every sent or received email, in case you might need it later? If so, there are simple ways to create subfolders to organize your emails into useful reference files for email retrieval. If you're worried that they might get deleted, don’t be, subfolders are exempt from Exchange Server delete policies.

 

Creating Sub-Folders to Store Important Emails Message in your Outlook Inbox You Don’t Want Automatically Deleted
If an email is deemed critical and needs to be saved within Outlook, create a separate folder under your primary Inbox folder to store it. This will allow you to store critical emails that won’t be deleted automatically. To create a new folder in your Outlook Inbox area, right click on Inbox function tab and select “New Folder”. Then title the folder consistently with what will be stored inside the folder. For instance, if a folder will contain correspondence with an outside company called “Acme”, entitle the folder “Acme Business”. Additionally, subfolders can also be created within a new folder for further organization of emails. The illustration below is representative of the way an Accounting company employee might want to save their client information.

 

Example: + = a sub-folder, right click on Inbox icon, click on New Folder, type in name of new folder and hit enter


Outlook Inbox
        + Tax Returns (New Sub-Folder Title)
                + 1st Client Name
                        + 2009 Tax Return Info
                        + 2008 Tax Return Info
                        + Client Invoices
                +2nd Client Name
                        +2009 Tax Return Info
                        +2008 Tax Return Info
                        + Client Invoices
        +Client Communications
                + Disputes
                + Resolutions
        +Vendor Correspondents
                +Software CSA Application
                        +Agreement
                        +How To’s

 

You can drag any message you have sent or received from your inbox to your stored subfolder. If you want to save a copy of an email you plan to send to someone, “bcc” yourself on the email before you send it. This will send a blind courtesy copy to your inbox which you can drag over to the folder you wish to store it in.

 

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