Business Email Organization
As a network IT consultant and system administrator for small to medium-sized enterprises, I encounter many email issues that arise primarily from ineffective organizational techniques which cause business productivity to suffer. Below, I offer suggestions to some of the most common email and task oriented problems that I come across. Then we dive into more detail on Outlook email support. Outlook is the number one desktop email application used around the world. We help optimize it for your specific needs.
Problem 1 – Use of business accounts for personal email
Employee Bob signs up for marketing emails (Groupon, Starbucks, Target, et al.) using his company email address. He also uses his company email address as his personal Facebook account and as the primary communication method for keeping in touch with family and friends.
Answer 1
Counsel employees to use their corporate accounts for business purposes only. Assist them with unsubscribing from all marketing emails and to setup a Google or Hotmail accounts for those personal needs. Personally, I use a separate Hotmail (junk) account in addition to personal (family and friends correspondence) account for subscribing to email or organizations I’m unsure of their plans for my information.
Problem 2 – Email accounts are slow to open when utilizing desktop email applications
Bob loves using Outlook but access to his email is getting increasingly slow to load and really unstable.
Answer 2
For web-based email (my favorite is Gmail), a good rule of thumb is to maintain email storage under 2 gigabytes. Deleting email permanently (especially when connecting to it in a few different ways) takes some effort. I would suggest buying a copy of Microsoft Outlook (which comes with Microsoft Office but can be purchased separately), and set it up using the IMAP (instead of POP) protocol. IMAP forces synchronization of email and actually removes it from the cloud storage location as it’s pulled down into Outlook. That way, employees can take action on an email once and be done with it.
Problem 3 – What are my IMAP settings?
Answer 3
As discussed before, these settings will allow you to sync your email with all computers and devices. I will build this list out for the San Diego region as I see fit.
IMAP settings:
Account Type: IMAP – Time Warner Cable
Incoming Mail Server: mail.twc.com
Incoming Server –IMAP port: 143
Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP): mail.twc.com
Outgoing Server – SMTP port: 587 TLS
Inbound & Outbound User Name: Enter full email address, for example:
johndoe@[division].rr.com
johndoe@roadrunner.com
johndoe@twc.com
Inbound & Outbound Password: Email Password (same as Web Mail)
SMTP Server Requires Authentication: Checked
IMAP settings:
Account Type: IMAP – Google Apps
Incoming Mail Server: imap.gmail.com
Incoming Server –IMAP port: 993 – SSL
Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP): smtp.gmail.com
Outgoing Server – SMTP port: 587 -TLS
Inbound & Outbound User Name: Enter full email address, for example:
johndoe@domainname.com
johndoe@gmail.com
Inbound & Outbound Password: Email Password (same as Web Mail)
SMTP Server Requires Authentication: Checked
Problem 4 – Too many Outlook folders
User Bob LOVES Outlook folders and has hundreds of nested folders to “make filing email easier and more organized.”
Answer 4
I counsel my clients to not get into the habit of organizing email into folders because even the most organized employees don’t maintain the folders properly (removing them when no longer needed). If you are using hundreds of nested folders in Outlook, the size of the local email database (called a PST) will get enormous. Outlook has a very good built-in search functionality. Use it.
Problem 5 – You need to maintain a record of email for a certain number of years
If you have a legal or archival need to maintain a certain number of years of email, the 2 gigabyte limit is not realistic.
Answer 5
If you have a legal or archival reason for maintaining email beyond a year, I would suggest maintaining one PST per year. That way, retrieval of archived emails can be performed by other people if necessary and there is some assurance that corruption of a single PST wouldn’t affect other years.
Problem 6 – You would like to use your smartphone for personal and business email
Answer 6
Android devices and Apple iOS have generic email apps installed by default. Use these apps and configure them for your personal/junk email accounts (marketing emails, Facebook, Groupon, etc) and then turn off notifications. Use the separate Gmail app or Microsoft Outlook app (formerly known as Acompli) to organize your business email and perhaps an additional friends/family account.
Problem 7 – Why can’t I see my Outlook calendar on all my devices
Answer 7
Forget Outlook calendar. It only works well if you have Microsoft Exchange or Office 365. Find a cross-platform (computer web browser, phone, and tablet) calendar like Sunrise.AM (http://www.sunrise.am) and bask in all its agnostic-feature glory. (Note: Microsoft bought this app, too, and the developers of Sunrise have since stopped implementing new features and have been reassigned to the new Microsoft Outlook app. With that said, I still love it!)
Problem 8 – But… I REALLY like Outlook calendar
Answer 8
Fine. Get Exchange or Office 365. Too involved? Get Companionlink (http://www.companionlink.com) or Google Apps Sync. (Warning: both services are a bit quirky.)
Problem 9 – What about managing tasks?
Answer 9
Wunderlist app… see next Blog. Now go focus on your email or contact our team for further Outlook email support.
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