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Effective email workflow
Or, strategies to do more with email in less time so you can play more conga drums on the plaza!
Why is efficient email workflow important?
The growth in popularity of email has come because of its many advantages. Email:
Despite its importance and ubiquity, most people employ only basic strategies to manage their email. A typical approach to email might be to read unread messages as they appear in the inbox, and if they need to be kept for future reference, to simply leave them in the inbox until it is filled with hundreds of old messages. If this same strategy was employed to manage regular paper mail, one's desk would become an unusable mountain of trash.
Creating an effective workflow involves a combination of technical solutions and reading and sorting strategies. First, choose your software or webmail solution, then use the features of that software, such as rule-based sorting, as part of a workflow strategy.
Choosing and setting up the best tools
Software client or webmail?
Email clients are programs a user runs on their own computer. Since they are "stand-alone" programs, it means it is unnecessary to launch a web-browser to check email. The main advantage of a using a mail client is that email is downloaded to your computer, and with the large capacity of hard drives in modern computers, you will probably never be forced to delete an emails. Storing email messages "locally," on one's own computer, also means that email can be searched, filed, browsed, and displayed far more quickly.
The main advantage of a software email client, the ability to download email to your personal computer, is also its main disadvantage. With most setups, after email is downloaded to your personal computer, it is deleted from the server and doesn't show up in webmail. However, when you are away from your personal computer, you can still use webmail to read new messages that haven't been downloaded. It is possible, however, to have the best of both worlds by configuring your mail client to use a standard called IMAP. IMAP is not available from many email providers; but if you are an HSU student, know that HSU does offer IMAP access. If you are interested, check out HSU's comparison of POP and IMAP. If you are not offered IMAP access, but must use POP3, you can still configure your email client to remove messages from the server only when they are moved from the inbox.
Since laptop users don't depend on public terminals as much as desktop users to access their email when away from home, they may find it is easier to switch to a mail client, especially as they will benefit tremendously from being able to download their email to read and even reply to it when they are "on the road" without an internet connection. When the laptop user next goes back online and runs their email client, all the email in their outbox will be sent.
Desktop users may prefer to continue using webmail. But with the significant advantages offered by a software mail client, including super-fast display, browsing and searching, immediate notification of new email, practically unlimited archiving capability, and very easy and fast attachments, they will also be tempted by a software email client. For them, it is possible to use a combination of webmail and mail client solutions. Both HSU's email system and Google's free offering, Gmail, will facilitate this.
Which software client?
For Windows
For Macintosh
Configuring a software email client to check "@humboldt.edu" email
Consult HSU's guide to configuring software email clients.
Webmail options
ISP-supplied
Almost all Humboldt County internet service providers offer some sort of webmail service for their customers in addition to access through a standards-based email client. National and broadband internet service providers such as Cox Communications and AT&T (formerly SBC) also provide these services.
Most recommended: Gmail
If you're not using an internet service provider's email services, there are many other options available, including well-known services such as Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, and Google's Gmail. Gmail is strongly recommended over other services. It offers far more storage space than any other free email service, currently over 2GB, and a robust menu of free features, including some other services charge for, such as software email client access using POP3 (a mildly technical description of POP3 is available from Wikipedia). If you wish to choose a free service you'll want to keep, we recommend GMail. For more on the advantages of GMail, check out What's new on Gmail? and the Unofficial Gmail FAQ. One item of note is that if you choose to download messages to your software client from Gmail, they will not be deleted from the gmail server, and will remain available by logging into mail.google.com from any internet-connected computer.
you@arcatacommunity.org
You can get a free 2GB gmail-hosted accounts with an "@arcatacommunity.org" address.
HSU Webmail
If you're an HSU student, like almost half the population of Arcata, you already have a university webmail account. You can also forward your HSU email to an off-campus address. As HSU email is sometimes unreliable, and as students are given a very small disk quota, this is highly recommended. Even if you don't use HSU webmail, you can still send email from your @humboldt.edu address; with many email services, such as gmail, outgoing can be addressed from a another address one owns. Some people opt not to forward their HSU email because they like keeping separate personal and university email accounts, but this results in wasted time and effort, as it requires the user to learn two different email systems and to login to two different services. It is unnecessary to maintain different email accounts to keep email separated. Rule-based sorting can be used instead. With almost any email solution, for example, it is very easy to have all the email forwarded from you "@humboldt.edu" address moved to a folder for just them. Thus, when you login, you will see a list of folders showing the number of unread messages in each of them. If you don't have any new messages sent to your "@humboldt.edu" address, you know this instantly. If you do, you can opt to read them immediately, or leave them until later. In the meantime they will wait for you without cluttering up your main inbox.
Rule-based sorting and labeling
What is rule-based sorting? Why is it important?
Setting up "rules" to instruct your email solution how to automatically sort or, if you're using Gmail, "label" your email, is an essential part of an effective email workflow. This helps you prioritize your time for different projects, and allows you to read your emails by topic instead of chonologically. Rule-based sorting is particularly important if you subscribe to email lists and want a way to separate the sometimes heavy load of incoming messages from the rest of your inbox traffic. Here are the whys, strategies, and technical how-tos for rule-based sorting.
Sorting strategies
Email lists
Rule-based sorting is particularly important if you subscribe to email lists. With lists, usually message traffic is quite managemable; occasionally it becomes excessive, as in this joke "How many mail list stubscribers does it take to change a light bulb?. Whatever the traffic level of the email list, it makes sense to have all the messages sorted into a single folder (or label, if you're using Gmail). That way email list messages never interfere with the rest of your email.
The way email list messages are addressed and delivered, whether the list hosted by Google, Yahoo!, HSU, or another service is usually the same: messages are sent to a single address, say, list@redwood.humboldt.edu, or group@googlegroups.com, and the mailing list server automatically rebroadcasts it out to everyone on that list without changing the "To:" address. Therefore, when subscribers receive the message, the list's address, not their email address appears in the "To:" field. The best way to sort these emails is to set up a rule that processes incoming messages based on the "To:" field. A typical rule might be to move every email addressed to sunnybrae@googlegroups.com to a folder named "Sunnybrae."
Projects and senders
Many times you won't be using email lists, but will still be working with another individual or group of people on a specific project. Rules can still be used to sort messages based on who they are from in this case. For example, a rule could be setup to move everything from your math professor and colleagues you are working on a group project with into a folder named "Calculus."
Other options
Most email solutions will allow you to setup rules that operate based on message and subject contents, priorities, time sent, and many other criteria.
Implementation
To implement these strategies, you'll have to learn a little bit about how to user your email client or webmail service. Fortunately, this is usually very easy to do using a manual, online help files, or a google search and a few websites. Below are some guides for setting up rule-based sorting with various solutions. Many of these guides describe how to set up filters for SPAM, but they are can also easily be used to learn how to filter based on other rules.