managing emails when the IT muppets stop you using folders

Wow.. Lot of tension boiling over here.. Good thread 🙂

*popcorn eating gif*

You need the banana eating gif.

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).

Missed this one earlier.

I would really be surprised if this is the case. I don’t even know if this is possible (assuming Outlook and Exchange). Personal Folders/Public Folders sure, but within your mailbox proper? Hopefully the OP will enlighten us.

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!!!
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And yet IT seem to never provide any specific training on this matter for new starters, or when something changes, or when users find issues.

Saving an email (or setting up rules like the cc example above) should actually be quicker than you finding the right folder and dragging and dropping the email you are never likely to ever need again GrahamS.

Embrace change, move with the times 😉

I’ve heard of companies which do no email days. You know so you actually have to talk to each other. Wish mine did.

Btw, when I was a junior pm I used to save almost every email to well organised project folders. Probably used to take an hour a day. realised what a waste of effort and time it really was compared to the times I actually really needed to access it. Like I said before if it is important, like instructions for some thing or other save it to your document system (this should be one click….)

whats EV?

Symantec Enterprise Vault.

Basically it puts all the stuff that no-one looks at on cheaper storage.

What’s a document system, is that an area on your network drive where e-mails go to die?

I’ve heard of companies which do no email days. You know so you actually have to talk to each other.

Might work for you IT bods who actually sit next to each other, not so great for places where people actually go out to clients and attend meetings and stuff.

Might work for you IT bods who actually sit next to each other, not so great for places where people actually go out to clients and attend meetings and stuff.

Get with the programme grandad

Saving an email (or setting up rules like the cc example above) should actually be quicker than you finding the right folder and dragging and dropping the email you are never likely to ever need again GrahamS.

Maybe our IT isn’t up to much (we are a software company after all – our own IT lags behind!) but you’ll have to explain to me how saving the content of an email to a new file/document/entry in “your doc mgmt or record mgmt system” is ever quicker than me going click-drag-drop in Outlook (or indeed doing nothing and leaving it in my Inbox for later).

I think there is some interesting sociology at play here too by the way:

Most internet-aware people these days are getting very used to “instant search based knowledge” where powerful search engines take care of the grunt work.

Instead of memorising facts they often just remember how/where to find them quickly.

For example if someone mentioned this thread in two months time then chances are you wouldn’t have it bookmarked and filed away with appropriate keywords – you’d likely just use the site search (or Google) to find it.

And that philosophy seems to be spilling over into email: Why would anyone want to fire up a separate document management system to look for those carefully filed notes that Terry wrote about restarting the blue widget on ProjectX when instead they can just select the “ProjectX” folder in Outlook and search for “terry blue widget”?

but you’ll have to explain to me how saving the content of an email to a new file/document/entry in “your doc mgmt or record mgmt system” is ever quicker than me going click-drag-drop in Outlook

Drag and drop into your record system? do you have to paste content of word files into it or just add the file? emails are files too.

This is my Out of Office message on holidays:

“I am currently out of the office on holiday and will return on (date). All emails to this account will be automatically deleted. If you require a response before my return, please contact Minion One. Otherwise, get in touch with me on my return.”

It makes the first day back from holiday very relaxing. I refuse to be bullied by the tyranny of emails from the beyond.

You call it “instant search based knowledge” I call it “instant search based heaving file of irrelevant dross that costs to store, back up, and we have to produce if required to by a court”. You say tomato, I say tomato, etc.

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.

Imagine an employee who insisted on keeping every piece of paper that passed their desks, from the morning newspaper, every bit of supplier junk mail, every printed report they needed to read. Their desk is overflowing with bits of paper. Their cabinets are full, they keep filling up archive boxes and leaving them everywhere, encroaching on space for other desks.

Any time they’re challenged on this, they say they need every single thing and it’s very important that they have it all accessible in the future.

The business would (rightly) have a problem with this. They can either spend a lot of money on providing space for this person, either in the building or some sort of off-site archive in a warehouse somewhere – or they can tell them to shred/recycle it like everyone else.

The customer is always right, unless they’re wanting something too expensive (in resources or exposure to litigation) to be worthwhile.

if our it bods did that, my boss would have a meltdown.

We have a central email box where all our incoming requests for pricing come in to, a team of 12 people work from that box, sending out pricing. here is where is gets ridiculous.

within that box, every email that is sent or recieved is stored in a customers own pst folder. We have 1200 customers. We send around 200 quotes a day. So, keen maths students will note that that is at least 400 emails A DAY, stored in pst files. In reality there are much more, what with followup questions and responses. these are then archived after 6 months.

The reason for all this nonsense? Boss is worried that she wont be able to get access to someones emails if they are off sick, or ‘win gthe lottery tomorrow’.

🙄

Your boss should pay for a CRM system, and not be running their business on a wing and a prayer.

Thats the hilarious thing. we do have (a very good) CRM system, she just likes us to use her way. (i use the CRM but am constantly getting bollockings for not saving my emails ‘where she looks for them’

Also, if it is important enough to save, often it is important to more than one person and needs to be shared or accessed by multiple people. Therefore should be saved in your record system. Because guess what the other 30 people on the email have also saved the email…..

Most record systmes have the ability to have personal space too for private stuff and access control if you want to share with a subset (like a project team)

The idea of saving emails in your own folder structure in outlook is pretty dated….there are plenty of really cool tools out there which if you give them a chance will be much much better for you and your companies budget. ( no I don’t sell any of them)

That’s the even MORE hilarious thing.

We are an IT distributor.

Drag and drop into your record system?

What is this “record system” though??
I don’t think we have one of those. Give me an example: what do you use?

And does it really store and index emails in a significantly better way than Exchange (which primarily exists to store and index emails)?

do you have to paste content of word files into it or just add the file? emails are files too.

Word documents, PDFs, diagrams, schematics etc etc from customers all go in the document storage area for the respective project. (i.e. we have network drives with a folder for every active project with appropriate sub-folders for the various documents and files related to the project)

The Word documents that we create for a project are stored in the same way, but are version controlled via our in-house plug-in for Word that handles versioning, review etc.

I see this sort of thing a lot at my place. The company decide on something based on cost/retention policies/some other reason, it is then up to the IT guys to implement it. Therefore the “IT genius'” are the bad guys when they are just doing as the moaners bosses have told them to do…

And as has been said above, the people who do the most moaning are always pretty low down the pecking order.

Therefore the “IT genius'” are the bad guys when they are just doing as the moaners bosses have told them to do…

Some it monkeys revel in this power though – usually the ones low down the food chain.

I seem to have 19gb of data in my Mail folder – perhaps it’s time for a clearout!

Therefore the “IT genius'” are the bad guys when they are just doing as the moaners bosses have told them to do…

It is my experience that the low level IT ‘hurdles’ are imagined up as policy by the IT guys which seek approval for them at director level from folk who are IT illiterate so have little clue either away and go along with the expert. When the mid level riff raff like myself then moan the stock response is ‘well, we’re just messengers carrying out what is director approved policy’. If you go back to the top and explain in layman’s terms the causal effect of their approved policies reversals often happen (once you get through the bluster – no one likes to have been shown up to be a clueless arse).

You could of course make a case for that being the director level types fault for being clueless arses. As I said in my earlier post though a new head monkey ( 😉 ) can make all the difference – in our case it took a vote of no confidence from the minion middle manager types and a folder of evidence to the governor board to get shot of the plonker.

Have to say though, I’m not sure this case sounds quite like that – I’d love someone to come into our place and introduce and demonstrate a better way of managing emails. Managing mine and determining what to ditch/keep/action in a time efficient manner and what to do with the inevitable trail that leaves behind would take more time than I have so the email mountain continues to grow.

ooo oo oo (and ee), can we do a photo storage rant now? How to persuade communications folks that 1TB of photos is actually a hindrance rather than a resource

The really proper big cheeses I have dealt with keep as little as they can get away with.

Now, why would that be, I wonder…?

ooo oo oo (and ee), can we do a photo storage rant now? How to persuade communications folks that 1TB of photos is actually a hindrance rather than a resource

Well, properly arranged in albums/projects/date/whatever, there’s no reason why it should be a hindrance, after all Flickr are happy to offer 1Tb of photo storage.
Place I used to work at backed all hi-res scans onto DAT tape via Retrospect, and there were tens of thousands of photos on dozens of tapes. This is back when a 1Gb HDD was something you could only dream about.
Those tapes are still in existence despite the company folding around a decade ago, and the bloke who has the tapes still gets requests for photos even now. To my knowledge, there have only been two instances of a photo being impossible to retrieve.

Well, properly arranged in albums/projects/date/whateve

they are now. Once I realised that it was impossible to get people do delete even the out of focus/dark/crap pics I opted instead to try and minimise the damage. It just went up by 200gb last week though so the pace is hotting up 🙁

It is my experience that the low level IT ‘hurdles’ are imagined up as policy by the IT guys which seek approval for them at director level from folk who are IT illiterate so have little clue either away and go along with the expert. When the mid level riff raff like myself then moan the stock response is ‘well, we’re just messengers carrying out what is director approved policy’. If you go back to the top and explain in layman’s terms the causal effect of their approved policies reversals often happen (once you get through the bluster – no one likes to have been shown up to be a clueless arse).

You could of course make a case for that being the director level types fault for being clueless arses. As I said in my earlier post though a new head monkey ( ) can make all the difference – in our case it took a vote of no confidence from the minion middle manager types and a folder of evidence to the governor board to get shot of the plonker.

Have to say though, I’m not sure this case sounds quite like that – I’d love someone to come into our place and introduce and demonstrate a better way of managing emails. Managing mine and determining what to ditch/keep/action in a time efficient manner and what to do with the inevitable trail that leaves behind would take more time than I have so the email mountain continues to grow.

I guess it depends on the sector, I work in the pharma sector so retention policies (and a lot of other things) are tightly controlled. No amount of IT pressure can change that.