Jump to content

How does everyone file their email?


Recommended Posts

Slightly off topic but I'm curious how all of you (in medium to large businesses) file your email. I'm particularly interested in Mac users but also curious about Microsoft Exchange users too.

What we do is 'Save As' each sent and received email onto our server as an RTF document, within the correspondence folder of each job folder, naming the file with a standard format in the process.

Personally I also file my emails into job folders within my email program, and I move emails to these folders only after I've saved them email to the server.

It's very onerous and doesn't always happen as it should. So what are the alternatives?

Link to comment

A company I used to work for copied every mail message they sent to an archive mail account. That way when they needed the history they could just check that account. If you set it up on IMAP, then it could be accessible to multiple people. You could also forward received mail to the archive.

On the Mac there is a program called MailTags This will let you assign "Tags" or keywords and projects to mails to make it easier to search. These can be copied to the IMAP messages.

It is mostly designed for single user, but I can see how it could work for a group. It all depends on how much control you have over your users. Will they actually do the tagging and forward the received mails to the archive. You could probably do a simple applescript that would go through and forward the the tagged messages to the archive so all the user would have to do is apply the tags. You might even be able to set up rules so that mails from certain people would automatically be tagged with the appropriate project.

Let me know if you have more questions.

Pat

Link to comment

my previous company, i thought, had a pretty good system.

every email would be 'printed' to PDF and stored within the project folder on the network.

The email would then be transferred to a network folder for that project, accessible for viewing through any workstation or user account in the office

Link to comment

Hard copy.

It completely lacks in aesthetic appeal and ain't very green.

But everything gets archived in the same place...a file cabinet.

It doesn't require technical savvey, there's only a minimumal user activity required, and file cabinets don't crash.

Edited by brudgers
Link to comment

There's another way I've toyed with, in my head at least, and that's to create email addresses specifically for each project. At least the big projects any way. However this still doesn't get the emails into our project folders on the server in a standard format.

The other way, which I kind like, would be for some script that basically helped you file each email as it came in. In our case, when you opened a new email, you'd be prompted to save it as an RTF (or ODF) to a specific project folder and give it a file name.

I've found that little things like this can make a huge difference. Three of our staff went from always handing in their time sheets almost a month late to having them in on the dot, when I simply created a little script that opened their time sheet each evening, prompting them to fill it out before they went home.

I really need to learn how to use AppleScript.

Link to comment
It's fairly common to give others share access to email folders, especially when someone is on vacation. That way a co-worker/secretary/assistant can simply consolidate the emails on a project by project basis and file as necessary.

Accept that due to the nature of emails and their lack of structure a lot of the time, it can be quite difficult for someone other than the recipient to file it.

Automator.app = quick and easy ...

I'm going to take a look at this avenue, cheers.

Link to comment
It's fairly common to give others share access to email folders, especially when someone is on vacation. That way a co-worker/secretary/assistant can simply consolidate the emails on a project by project basis and file as necessary.

Accept that due to the nature of emails and their lack of structure a lot of the time, it can be quite difficult for someone other than the recipient to file it.

In which case, the recipient simply files it in a project folder and that folder is shared.

The same still works if you had a project related email. It can either be a proxy that maps internally on to multiple personal emails, or it goes into a project folder that is then shared.

The problem with project related email addresses is, someone needs to set them up and this normally happens after one is needed plus, more importantly, it can be tricky to manage the send process as things must be sent out with the correct return email address otherwise everything just stops working. There are ways of managing the latter, but they are all against human nature and it generally all falls into confusion.

I'm not really sure how you expect an automated app to be any better at filing emails than a human?

Link to comment
In which case, the recipient simply files it in a project folder and that folder is shared.

Yes, but it's not simple, otherwise I wouldn't have posted this thread.

I'm not really sure how you expect an automated app to be any better at filing emails than a human?

See this thread:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1486153

The idea is to be prompted to do it, and to have to do as little as possible in the process.

Agree with you about the problems regarding project-specific emails.

Link to comment
Guest jkelly

You could require that all emails related to a project be tagged in the subject line with [PROJECT], and have some sort of rule to automatically make a copy to a public folder. If you note an email that didn't get tagged, you could always place it in the public folder.

As far as apple script, macs also come with python/ruby/perl, which have larger user communities and are more powerful than apple script. I can't speak to ruby, but python (in my opinion) is easier to use than apple script. And you get the added bonus that you can run python/ruby/perl apps on windows (if you download python to the windows machine). Just throwing that out there as another alternative (to confuse you!).

Link to comment
There's another way I've toyed with, in my head at least, and that's to create email addresses specifically for each project. At least the big projects any way. However this still doesn't get the emails into our project folders on the server in a standard format.

The other way, which I kind like, would be for some script that basically helped you file each email as it came in. In our case, when you opened a new email, you'd be prompted to save it as an RTF (or ODF) to a specific project folder and give it a file name.

I've found that little things like this can make a huge difference. Three of our staff went from always handing in their time sheets almost a month late to having them in on the dot, when I simply created a little script that opened their time sheet each evening, prompting them to fill it out before they went home.

I really need to learn how to use AppleScript.

You might use a project management website, of which there are many (although I don't know which are tailored to the UK market).

They typically include tools to manage directories, files, and users like any server.

They also typically include email functions.

Then it's just a case of having the project team communicate via this web adress for project related matters.

Everything is then stored in a central location...even much of the consultant email.

I was in large organization which was adopting buzzsaw, and I believe this type of approach has legs in the long term.

In the US many contracting and larger architectural firms use this sort of approach already.

ben

Link to comment
In which case, the recipient simply files it in a project folder and that folder is shared.

Yes, but it's not simple, otherwise I wouldn't have posted this thread.

I'm not really sure how you expect an automated app to be any better at filing emails than a human?

See this thread:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1486153

The idea is to be prompted to do it, and to have to do as little as possible in the process.

Agree with you about the problems regarding project-specific emails.

You did mention that you were curious about Exchange... With Exchange/Outlook this is trivial. Exchange folders can be shared and in Outlook (whether or not exchange is the mail transport), its a trivial matter to set up a rule that on receipt of an email, it is parsed and depending on various criteria, it can be automatically moved to a folder, forwarded to a user etc.

That said, my brother is an architect and pretty much runs the IT department for their 160 seat practice, and they use Oasys Mail Manager specifically for their project filing. Mail is sent to an individual email address, then Mail Manager is used to file the email into the relevant areas in the relevant formats using the relevant naming conventions. If the users are away, then the secretary monitors the individual users inbox. If you look at the list of people that use the software, you will see that it is very much architects bases. Its about ?70 per seat - for his size practice and paid for itself within a couple of months. May be PC only though.

Link to comment
Guest jkelly

On the flip side of things, if you *aren't* using exchange right now, this is even easier, because you can set up filtering on the mail server and it isn't dependent on someone having their machine on to do the forwarding. Things can be moved based on various tags or regular expression matches in the email.

Link to comment

To me the simplest way to find the email is recognizing the title after you do a key search and get back a big list of email titles. Many time with replying and forwarding you get crazy email titles that mean nothing. I will often forward an email to myself so I can rename the title just for this purpose.

Link to comment

Totally shooting from the hip here but couldn't you use IMAP (instead of POP) for email and set up filtering on the server? This way, anyone should be able to get to email and an administrator could control the filtering? Then, you should be able to use spotlight to find a specific email when you need it.

Otherwise, brudgers' recommendation for use of a project management website is probably the best solution. In fact, it might be the best solution of all because you can keep everything in one place (email, schedule, documents, contact lists, etc.)

Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...