managing emails when the IT muppets stop you using folders

The IT genius’ in my company have blocked the use of folders to manage emails

so the emails I used to tidily manage for the plethora of projects I have, some that stretch over several years,, are just stacking up and organising everything is getting painful

any suggestions to beat the system designed by idiots who drive Audi’s ?

well, if you’re business-core and they aren’t, …

I’d start by asking WHY??????

Newer versions of outlook let you group emails into “saved searches” that look like folders but aren’t. These have replaced my “mail from [name]” folders. Not so good at subject groups though.

Return to IT with the question how should I organise my emails now you have removed folders.

Can you add flags split into different categories?

why organise them. just leave everything in the inbox and use search for finding stuff – metadata and all that malarky

What darrell says. Miscellaneous chronological filing is what I call it. Then search by name, title, date etc.

Can you explain what you mean by “folders”?

Do you mean Personal Folders aka .pst files?

What was the business case for changing the system?
What might be logical to them, to probably make their life easier, will no doubt make it slightly more difficult for most users. Most people operate within a comfort zone and any change is bad for them. But if you add up all the time it takes users to adapt to the new system them it probably negates any efficiency savings for the IT dept.

Maybe they don’t want you to use the email system as a document store – there are lots of good reasons why this may be the case. BUT the business side needs to define and explain the requirements, and not let the IT monkeys dictate how the business operates. Don’t ask IT why or how, speak to the relevant senior manager / director.

I bet they wanted to stop you storing 600mb of emails on the server 🙂

Can’t you just drag/save the emails out to a folder in My Docs or on a network drive? Thats what I do, folder for the customer, job details in the folder, email correspondence in the folder, all in one place and my pitiful inbox size limit is happy.

Search and sort, what else do you need? Even with folders that’s probably what you’d do anyway.

You can have the folder stored locally as well – only problem then is that they don’t necessarily get backed up.

An ex-Boss (ie the COO) had a problem with their emails, basically it was full. We constantly gave her extra storage.

Once though when I was away she’d had a problem and the IT Managers’ “Boy” had been sent to help.

First thing he did was clear out some space, by removing all the Deleted emails. Turns out that this was a part of her filing system…

6gb of emails

Ftfy

You can have the folder stored locally as well – only problem then is that they don’t necessarily get backed up.

Without knowing the details I suspect what they have done is remove the ability to file email into local “Personal Folders” on your own PC – which is quite sensible because these don’t get backed up.

But it sounds like no one has bothered to show the staff how to create folders on the Exchange server instead.

Can’t you just drag/save the emails out to a folder in My Docs or on a network drive? Thats what I do, folder for the customer, job details in the folder, email correspondence in the folder, all in one place

… with no backup for when your PC dies? 😕

I bet they wanted to stop you storing 600mb of emails on the server

Never understood this mentality. It’s a server. Isn’t storing and serving files pretty much what it is for?

Surely you have somewhere to upload (MOSS?) essential emails. Outlook etc is not for storage.

Never understood this mentality. It’s a server. Isn’t storing and serving files pretty much what it is for?

Given the nature of mail servers, a mailbox is a comparatively expensive way to store emails that you haven’t looked at in 5 years.

and not let the IT monkeys dictate how the business operates

This. I’ve always thought of the ‘IT monkeys’ as jumped up modern day versions of the filing clerk and the bloke with the key to the stationary cupboard, who occasionally need to be reminded of their place in the food chain. It was a happy happy day when our previous head of IT was shown the door (officially he resigned with no job to go to) and a new guy arrived who takes the time to discuss with department heads what their needs are and removed a thousand irrational blocks to organisational productivity devised by a paranoid mind afraid of the modern world. Suddenly we have happy cheery network managers and help deskers keen to help and actually suggest ways to help improve the working environment. It’s brilliant.

If I think about email and our users too much it makes me sad worst example would be one with 30 plus network connected .pst each between 1-2gbs (one for every letter of alphabet plus some yearly ones for emails sent) it’s a hangover from when we had tiny quota’s. User then complains outlook runs slow… We’ve had 4gb including online archive for the past 3 years and EV added and finally implemented last year (held up by members of department not wanting to rock the boat). New starter use EV fine but old one are far too resistant to change tried explaining benefits but it’s like banging head against a brick wall.

Given the nature of mail servers, a mailbox is a comparatively expensive way to store emails that you haven’t looked at in 5 years.

True, but a decent archiving policy sorts that out.

Preventing users from creating folders doesn’t solve it. It just means they end up with a massive Inbox containing all those same emails.

Danny, stop thinking like a monkey.

True, but a decent archiving policy sorts that out

A decent archiving policy will prevent the use of Personal Folders. Sorry.

Monkey you say…

True I can’t claim to be a code monkey bar some powershell scripting.

big_n_daft, you still work for us, yes? email me on samur2@hotmail.com and I’ll explain what’s going on and how to do what you want, although it’s nothing to do with me.

Assuming you do still work for us….for everyone else (and big_n_daft a little), sorry to burst your IT hate bubble but strategic decisions like this start at the board table and pass through about 6 or 7 layers of assurance, approval, interrogation and analysis. It’s not IT idiots or IT monkeys doing stuff because they feel like it, it’s an ingrained vision driven by a massively restrictive and demanding series of legislative and regulatory controls that mandate we keep full control of our data.
People storing data locally in pst files (bearing in mind email is not a document storage solution) means we lose control. We are talking about lawsuits that can (and have) incurred fines of tens and hundreds of millions.

You know, just in case you fancy giving the IT guys a bit more of a kicking.

Back to big_n_daft, did you get some advice for commuting to work? I come a very quiet route which covers most of the route you could take, it avoids all the dangerous places and there’s an offroad and onroad version. I can help you with this as well.

Samurai, “Ee. Ee. Ooh. Ooh. Ah. Ah. Ah.” is all I am hearing.

Would you like a banana?

First thing he did was clear out some space, by removing all the Deleted emails. Turns out that this was a part of her filing system…

A few years ago, to reclaim lost space I ran a utility against our Exchange server to purge everyone’s “Deleted Items” folder. You would not believe the volume of calls I had the next day going “where’s all my email gone?” People had directory structures in there and everything. Madness.

Samurai, “Ee. Ee. Ooh. Ooh. Ah. Ah. Ah.” is all I am hearing.

Well, run some cold in there then.

Email isnt a record management store, and as others have said is costly and has other risks. If the email is important you should be able to save it to your doc mgmt or record mgmt system.

I use the one big inbox, search approach to emails, and save important ones to our records system

You would not believe the volume of calls I had the next day going “where’s all my email gone?” People had directory structures in there and everything. Madness.

I’d like to say you are alone in that but no – people really do store stuff in the bin

Ee. Ee. Ooh. Ooh. Ah. Ah. Ah

I have 3 emails in my inbox and 10000 in my recycle bin – just in case I need to refer to them.

If the recycle bin was emptied I wouldn’t really care.

A decent archiving policy will prevent the use of Personal Folders. Sorry.

Common sense prevents the use of Personal Folders (i.e. locally stored pst files)

But I don’t see any reason to prevent users creating folders within their Exchange account (i.e. actually on the server where they are backed up properly).

That’s how my email works anyway. Inbox is really just a holding area. I have folders for each project and emails that I think I might need to refer to later get squirrelled away there.

We also have a system where any important/official project emails always get CCed to a special project code email address which automatically files them away into a shared archive for future reference.

Since all the folders are on the server (and not on my PC) I see the same thing if I log in via Outlook, or the web, or via the mail app on my phone.

Email isnt a record management store, and as others have said is costly and has other risks. If the email is important you should be able to save it to your doc mgmt or record mgmt system.

If one of the other developers sends me a personal email casually explaining details of some procedure or other then that is something I might want to refer to again in the future.

It already has all the information in it I need to find it again pretty easily, especially if I file it away in a project-specific mail folder.

So why would I want to waste time copying and pasting that information into a formal version-controlled document and then adding suitable meta-data so it can be found again in the document management system?

That takes time and gains me nothing.

Love it when this stuff comes around and us IT bods are the target for disgruntled employees. Use your computer correctly and there is no issue!!!

As someone who has seen .pst files that are 10gb+, it saddens me that people working with a computer on a daily basis are ‘allowed’ to continue to do so without prooving aptitude towards how to correctly use one in a business environment.

Saying this, I do however blame companies for their lack of system training. I mean you wouldn’t let the new employee loose on your all singing, all dancing 4D milling machine without comprehensive training.

Yet computers have become a machine that everyone uses mostly without formal training, let alone comprehensive training to company policy.

This situation is the equivalent in the guy who goes into the bike shop to get his bike fixed and when the shop explains what they need to do get told they’re wrong and that the person knows better without really understanding.

Tbh, it sounds like the change wasn’t well communicated to the users but it’s almost certainly for sound reasons as samuri explained. Or, the OP has ignored multiple emails and other communications explaining what was going to happen and how to deal with it as often happens…

What Samurai said.

It sounds to me more like you are using folders to Not Manage email.

I am constantly amazed at the amount of effort people put into making sure every line they ever wrote is kept. Usually it is in inverse proportion to how important they really are (sorry). The really proper big cheeses I have dealt with keep as little as they can get away with.

Be brave – hit the delete key. Hit it some more.

One of the best mail migration projects I worked on had properly costed everything. Mailbox sizes were limited to 250MB, PSTs were ingested into a vault with a clear retention policy. Basically, if there was no regulatory requirement to keep an email, they didn’t want it.

The nice thing about this is when a captain of industry phoned up some poor kid on the helpdesk to shout about how important they were, and how big a mailbox they needed, they were simply referred back to the process for requesting a larger mailbox. This had the dollar costs clearly described, which would be referred to their management for approval and would be billed to their line of business accordingly.

Turned out quite a lot of people weren’t as important as they thought.

Edit: And on a personal note (I try not to get personal about technologies I have been involved with over the years, sometimes you just have to play the hand you are dealt), .pst files are shit. Always have been shit. Microsoft even thinks they are shit. Getting rid of them is doing everyone a favour.

Love it when this stuff comes around and us IT bods are the target for disgruntled employees. Use your computer correctly and there is no issue!!!

This attitude is brilliant – “I’m right, and if you don’t do things my way, you’re wrong” 😀 . I don’t think anyone would have a problem if things were explained (e.g. what the alternative is to using folders to organise mail), but if you’re supporting a system you can’t just shout down users for “doing it wrong”.

IT is a business support function – you are supplying a service to the company workforce. Just because you have a monopoly on that service, doesn’t mean you are immune to listening to your customers’ needs / requirements.

but if you’re supporting a system you can’t just shout down users for “doing it wrong”

I suspect it’s just a reaction to being shouted at for being a muppet/monkey.

Tbh, it sounds like the change wasn’t well communicated to the users but it’s almost certainly for sound reasons as samuri explained. Or, the OP has ignored multiple emails and other communications explaining what was going to happen and how to deal with it as often happens…

This… now where DID I leave those bananas?