Email Management û An Overwhelming Amount of Emails. 2

[jafowevn]

I work at a consulting firm for midstream oil and gas as a project engineer.

Basically, I'm having trouble finding an effective way in keeping my Outlook emails organized. I'm a victim of a "CC" feature for emails, thus I feel like I'm receiving as many emails as my project manager. I took the first step in creating separate PST files within outlook for each of the projects I'm in and then sub-folders similar to what you'd see in a project file with the Dewey Decimal System (1.0 Admin, 2.0 Scoping, 3.0 Right-of-Way / Permitting, 4.0 Engineering, etc.).

For some reason, I'm still having trouble finding this when I need to search for something. I also keep just about all my project-related emails as well (which I thought would be a good thing, just in case I need to find small details. But I'm starting to see the horrors of this practice), while at the same time, me and my project team save email dialogues that relates to the project (scope changes, acknowledgements, client comments, clarifications, etc.). Any insight on what you see to improve my organization? What should I consider when deciding to delete project-related emails?

 

[MikeHalloran]

A long time ago, I used Outlook, that was connected to an Exchange server somewhere. It worked fairly well, but the company lost a couple years worth of, well, _everything_, when the Exchange server crashed. It didn't have a RAID backup, wasn't backed up locally, ever, and when we inquired of our ISP about recovering from their backup of our email stream, we found out that we could have had one for a small montly fee, but we had never asked for it, so they weren't backing up anything either.

Then I started keeping everything in a local .PST file, and ... lost it all thanks to the 2Gb file limit bug in Outlook. Outlook provided a 'full file' warning well after it was too late to save anything. MS' special recovery tools recovered a huge file that was full of nothing.

Later, at another outfit, my friend Kevin devoted way too much of his time to copying stuff out of Outlook and organizing it by project, sort of like you have done, on the Engineering server. ... which, knowing that outfit, was likely not backed up.
I don't think like Kevin does, so I could never just 'figure out' where he might have put any given piece of information. I relied very heavily on Agent Ransack to search the server and find stuff for me.

At least if you delegate one person to maintain one copy of everything on one server, you delay the problem of everyone's hard drives filling with duplicated dreck, and if you delegate a second person to back up that server every day, you shouldn't lose too much information in a crash, whether it's Outlook's fault or not.

As for deleting project emails, I wouldn't delete even one unless I could find a duplicate somewhere nearby. People who deal with 'Big Data' have recently coined a buzzword for 'De-Duplication' as a means of conserving storage resources, but I think that specific effort may be misguided in some respects, because the cost of storage is dwarfed by the cost of acquiring the stored information in the first place, and dwarfed again by the cost of resynthesizing information that was erroneously deleted, or misplaced. It's sort of analogous to treating paper drawings as mere sheets of paper, completely ignoring the investment made in applying markings to the paper.








Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[DRWeig]

I gave up on organizing. The search feature works well enough that I can find what I want in the bloated inbox.

Best to you,

Goober Dave

Haven't see the forum policies? Do so now: Forum Policies

 

[fel3]

Email management? I don't think emails can be managed. It's like catching a tiger by the tail.

From about 2005 to 2011 I led the site civil/site electrical design for a multi-project multi-site prison expansion program led by an architectural firm. When I closed down my end of it, I discovered that I had more than 12,000 emails for the program. And that doesn't include an uncounted number of emails generated by the other projects I worked on during that time, nor the flood of intra-company emails.

My general practice is to set up separate .pst files for each project and move emails from my inbox and outbox as soon as I have dealt with them. In practice, though, "as soon as" is often not very soon.

For long-term archiving, the best method I have found so far is MsgSave (

http://www.msgsave.com/).

After I am done with a project, I use MsgSave to bulk archive individual emails, which includes prefixing the files names with date+time for sorting and finding purposes. When Outlook archives, the file date+time stamp is when the email is archived and emails with the same subject aren't easily distinguished.

==========
"Is it the only lesson of history that mankind is unteachable?"
--Winston S. Churchill

 

[MikeHalloran]

>>>When Outlook archives, the file date+time stamp is when the email is archived and emails with the same subject aren't easily distinguished. <<<

Yet another reason to not use Outlook, or anything else from its authors.

Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[SomptingGuy]

I used to have Netscape download emails from our exchange server so that I could manage the messages myself and not be bullied by IT when big mails filled my inbox. I still have all those mails and it is possible, if difficult, to search through stuff from 10+ years ago.

- Steve

 

[btrueblood]

Wow, trying to categorize emails by subject? What do you do when the email covers both engineering and admin, and may or may not affect scope, etc. etc.? In my world, emails often cover multiple projects. Like DR, I let the search feature help me "organize" my emails.

 

[1gibson]

28,000 inbox, 10,000 outbox, outlook search works just fine.

Archive to specific project folder when traffic for that project dies down.

Periodically sort by biggest file size and delete all emails with 10+mb attachments that you don't really need to keep (or if you do, save that file somewhere other than in email.)

 

[MadMango]

I use the colored categories offered in Outlook to tag important emails I do not want to delete, so far so good. In my Inbox I'll create different sub-folders for various projects and drag emails to their proper homes after the project is done. I try to do this on a weekly basis, but this usually happens monthly or quarterly. Like others have said, the Search actually works well.

"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."

Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of these Forums?

 

[debodine]

I prefer the 90/10 rule. I delete everything and 90% never shows up again and only the really important 10% ever reappears. Just kidding! Our company does a nightly backup of the Exchange server where our PST files are stored. Generally we are only at risk for a one day loss of emails.

 

[TenPenny]

I use Thunderbird, and I have separate folders for clients which can be subdivided as needed. I generally get 100-200 emails per day, probably 75% are simply cc to keep people in the loop type things, each couple of hours I quickly shuffle those off to the appropriate folder. Takes maybe 1 minute each morning and the same in the afternoon. A task I usually perform when I've made a fresh cup of coffee.

 

[ConstantEffort]

1. "Getting Things Done" by David Allen.
2. [URL unfurl="true"]http://www.manager-tools.com/2005/09/got-email[/url]
3. [URL unfurl="true"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_law[/url]

When email volume picks up, I enable a rule that segregates all CC'd email. That only gets reviewed by me once a day.

I don't bother sorting non-actionable email beyond major categories like "Jobs", "HR", "IT". Using broad categories like this allow me to use a few keyboard shortcuts to file email. Keyboard is faster than the mouse. Also, Outlook's search has not let me down.

 

[NegativeZero]

I just archive them by month. Inbox and sent get separated by month. At the end of each month I move them and start with a clean Outlook. depending on how much I have, I will move the oldest to a back up hard drive. I tried everything but this works the best. If I need to find something I use search. I have had 5 projects going at once and had no problems getting track. And I save everything, covered my butt many times

 

[MrHershey]

We 'file' e-mails by project company-wide. So every engineer who receives or sends an external e-mail files that e-mail to whatever project it corresponds with (or multiple if it corresponds to multiple projects). Works pretty well to archive your own e-mails, but you also have access to e-mails from the whole company for each project. Useful when people leave or personnel gets shifted around.

Used to use Newforma, but IT infrastructure costs and other upkeep were much higher than we were looking for for just an e-mail management solution. Newforma has capability to track submittals, RFIs, delegate tasks, act as an FTP site, etc. but we weren't using it for that so we weren't getting enough value out of it.

Now we use Oasys Mail Manager which is a much lighter, sleeker program that *only* does e-mail management. And is thus a bit better at it, in my opinion. Search is a little faster, and built right into Outlook. No need for an additional server or two like Newforma needed.

I also keep local copies of e-mails I've sent and received, just in case. We're on Exchange Online instead of a hosted mail server now, so should never be an issue. All of our e-mail is stored in the cloud and thus should never be lost since it's backed up to multiple Microsoft data centers.

 

[MikeHalloran]

>> ... should never be lost since it's backed up to multiple Microsoft data centers. <<

Is that in a contract, or are you making an assumption?


Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[OHIOMatt]

I am relying on the NSA.

 

[MikeHalloran]

The NSA probably does have a copy of everything; the trick is getting them to produce one for you.

... which brings up a point.
A while after our Outlook backup disaster, I asked my IT guy for a backup copy of a single file.
He couldn't produce it.
He was religious about backing up every day, to a set of nine tapes that were years old.
He had never bought any more tapes after installing the tape drive.
The tapes and/or the drive had pretty much worn out, so he couldn't really retrieve my file,
or probably any other file.
He didn't see that as a problem. I did.








Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[MrHershey]

>>Is that in a contract, or are you making an assumption?<<

Multiple data centers is in the contract. That's the whole point of cloud-based storage, everything's redundant so unless you have a crazy act of god (or company shuts down), nothing should be lost.

Now if I were to accidentally delete an e-mail and then not notice it for 15 days, then it'd be gone forever (not counting NSA methods of getting it back). But as far as data loss due to servers breaking down, power surges, etc., there should be none and our contract says as much.

The tape drive issue would be a primary reason why storing online might be more beneficial. Most tape has a stated lifespan of 30 years, but that's under totally ideal conditions (rarely back up, stored in dry place at ideal temperature). Even backing up just once a month can decrease the tape's life expectancy by ~50%. Back up once a week and you're down to just a few years.

 

[carlharr]

Avoid email! For conversations / asking a group a question, it doesn't work.

On the phone you can cover 10 times as much in a few minutes as you can with a single email, with the added bonus that phonecalls include "tone of voice", which makes up a great part of human communication and is missed in the written word.

I try to only use email to send information to a group of people (no response required), or to communicate with a single person who I can't reach by phone. In that case, keep it short and sweet, and on a single subject.

Received emails - set a single time per day to read them, to avoid being distracted. Take time to deal with each one and file it before you move onto the next. If its a "group conversation email", does it really need a response - probably not.
Filing: I only keep emails with useful information, organised by folders with the subject name. Opinions get binned, system related ccs (some 500+ per week) go straight to junk.

That's how I manage emails. I know of a manager who doesn't bother reading any, at all. His inbox became more than he could manage during a day, so now he works on the basis that if it's really important, they'll phone.

http://www.jcb.com

NX 7.5 with TC 8.3

 

[Mechomatic]

Avoid email! For conversations / asking a group a question, it doesn't work.

On the phone you can cover 10 times as much in a few minutes as you can with a single email, with the added bonus that phonecalls include "tone of voice", which makes up a great part of human communication and is missed in the written word.

...

I know of a manager who doesn't bother reading any, at all. His inbox became more than he could manage during a day, so now he works on the basis that if it's really important, they'll phone.

I agree that you can cover a lot of information on the phone in a few minutes, but I find that having things in writing solves endless miscommunication issues. Not to mention it covers your bum when two people disagree on what they said in a conversation.

And that manager, while understandably trying to stay focused, should at least have an auto-reply to let people know that if they require a timely response that they should call. People who don't respond to written communication in a timely manner (even to say they'll be a while before getting back to you) are just plain rude. There is no excuse for ignoring communication when you are the primary intended recipient.