There aren’t too many businesses that don’t on some level live and breathe email. Passing messages back and forth across the internet has streamlined the way we communicate. It has also lead to inherent problems with security, storage and continuity.

Whilst enhancing productivity on some levels, an Exchange Server without SPAM protection can waste hours of employee’s time. Emails without consistent branding can leave customers and other contacts confused about your company’s image. An Exchange store without proper management can become large and unruly, taking up valuable storage space and causing headaches for administrators attempting to manage the size of their users’ mailboxes.

That’s where a Mail Utilities Program comes into its own. Good management and sanitisation tools can alleviate the problems that revolve around sending, receiving and storing emails.

Call Correct to discuss your concerns, we can help you with:

Utilising:

• Disclaimers and Signatures to help manage corporate branding
• Mail blocking and redirection, for example if an employee has left and their mail needs to be delivered to a different address

Archiving:

• Improved performance of the Exchange Server by reducing the load and increasing efficiency
• Storing emails and documents so that they can’t be tampered with to help with compliance
• Eliminating PST files by automatically archiving email history to a central store
• Storing emails and documents in a way that makes them easy to search and restore
• Identifying legal risks and managing productivity through reports

Sanitisation:

• Anti-SPAM technology to trap the maximum quantity of SPAM and minimise false positives
• Anti-Virus software to help combat Viruses, Trojans, Malware, Spyware and Adware

Business Continuity:

• Assuring message delivery
• Allowing time to perform server or network maintenance without the risk of emails bouncing
• Stopping identity theft and domain blacklisting

We wanted to share a couple of quick tips to help you get the most out of your email system.  The first one comes with a disclaimer; it doesn’t relate to essential reading (for example, the publication you are reading right at this moment!)

Tip number one is unsubscribe from junk.  When you’ve been employed in the same position for a period of time, your early enthusiasm for all things published starts catching up with your inbox!  Re-examine those email alerts and lists you signed up to years ago.  Is the information still relevant?  Go on a reverse subscription rampage and instead of just deleting the next email that comes in, navigate to the unsubscribe page and free yourself for good.

Tip number two, allow your marketing department to use your signature to advertise goods and services.  There are software programs that enable the marketing department to make universal updates to graphics in everyone’s signature – so as new products or services are being promoted, you can push information out via everyone’s signature block!

Ever tried to send a huge file via email?  It’s not typically a great result for anyone, right?

The growth in file sizes means we all from time to time have some pretty big files that need to be sent to someone else.  Most email systems (particularly if you have hosted email) have limits on the size of attachments.  A more practical way to send large files via email is to use third party services like YouSendIt.

YouSendIt is an add on you can use with most current versions of Outlook that allows you to upload the large file to YouSendIt and then send a link in an email to that file so they recipient can download it directly from YouSendIt. The best thing is that YouSendIt provides a Lite plan that is totally free and allows you send files of up to 50MB in size.

There are of course additional paid plans that provide for larger file sizes and storage limits, however for many people the Lite plan is certinaly a great start.

You simply need to sign up for an account and then download the addin for your version of Outlook. This will add a number of additional buttons to the Outlook toolbar with which you can attach documents. Even though it is exactly like the traditional method of attaching files to emails, in the background the attachment is uploaded to the YouSendIt servers and the email message is appended to include a link for the recipient to click on to download the file.  In practice, all very transparent.

If you have the need to overcome the email attachment limitations of your email system then YouSendIt is a great option given how well it integrates with Outlook, not to mention the free option that it provides. There also a number of other capabilities the product offers that are well worth checking out.

A recent article worth reading states that the average user sent and received 110 emails per day and that was expect to rise at a rate of about 13 precent per year.

Here are 5 ways to take back control of your inbox and take back your life

What it highlights is that most people are not the boss of their inbox. They let others flood it with irrelevant and unproductive information. They allow emails to accumulate in the default location (typically the inbox) and they fail to perform any sort of maintenance.

The price of this? Simple. Frustration, because they find actually getting their job done harder and harder amongst the flood of email. Interestingly, employees are rewarded for reading and storing emails, they are rewarded on actually processing emails and getting work done. Sadly, many employees spend a large part of their days dealing with emails.

There is no doubt that email is an essential business communications tool but it can also be a major source of distraction. For example, the first thing people do when they arrive at work is open their emails and read the most recent items. Typically, they then start working on these latest items rather than what they may have had already planning period to opening their inbox.

Such habits result in a very fragmented work day and this usually translates to reduced productivity which really doesn’t help getting things done. If you feel you are not being as productive as you could be because of your emails take control of your index by:

- Creating rules to route non urgent emails away from your inbox

- Each time you touch an email either deal with it, delete it or archive. Don’t simply leave it un-actioned.

- Try and keep your inbox empty. This means moving emails you need to other locations but away from the main point of entry. You’ll be surprised how much less stressful an empty inbox can be.The more productive you are the fewer emails you should have in your inbox, not the converse.

- Shut off emails for a period of time everyday. Pick a time and during that time shut down you email program so you can concentrate on getting things done. As you find this being more successful, extend this time and only process emails during certain period of the day.

There are plenty of strategies for dealing with the flood of emails. The most important of these is simply to take action to deal with information overload.

Although email is an essential business tool for today we all get too much. At some point many people become overwhelmed by the amount of email received and need to deal with. At this point email actually becomes an impediment to doing business. It actually makes getting things done harder.

So what can you do? Here a few suggestions that may assist you getting back in control of your inbox.

First and foremost place a much higher value on your inbox. Determine whether what appears in there should really appear there. Does it make the inbox more or less valuable? Mostly it will be less valuable. Things such as email newsletters should either be unsubscribed from or routed to a sub folder using rules. Unsubscribing to all that stuff you once thought would be of interest but in fact you have never looked at really has no value being in your inbox, so either route it away or unsubscribe.

If there are really things in your inbox that you want to save, don’t leave them to fester in your inbox, create a subfolder called archive and move those emails there. Getting email away from your inbox makes it much easier to focus on the tasks at hand rather than being distract by older emails that you know you really should do something with.

If there are emails from which you are waiting for replies on or need to reference in the short term, create another folder called follow up and move these there. Again, moving these ‘waiting on’ emails to another location removes from your direct sight and again allows you to focus on what is most current.

Finally, be pragmatic and go through your emails and delete emails that provide little value. if you need to keep that one snippet of information then maybe copy and paste just that component into something like OneNote. Don’t simply keep an email because there is one small part that has value. Be ruthless with your pruning efforts and ask yourself whether you really, really, really need that email.

Your inbox should be much cleaner now. Consider creating standard email rules to route non critical emails to subfolders where you can deal with them when you have less priorities. Everything you receive in your inbox is not important the second it arrives there. You may also want to consider a rule that automatically moves CC’ed mail out of your inbox. If the email wasn’t addressed to you directly it will probably have a lower priority and may not need addressing at all. Having a good understanding of how your email programs works and of the features it includes is a very factor in becoming more productive. Spend some time sharpening your axe, you won’t regret it.

For many of emails sent between you and your colleagues consider whether email is really the best mechanism for collaboration. Tools like OneNote and SharePoint provide a central location for a wide range of information that can easily be shared with others. Utilizing these tools also makes it very easy to bring new members into the team rather than forwarding a raft of previous correspondence that they need to become familiar with. Another option to consider maybe social media tools whether public like Twitter and Facebook or private ones like Yammer.

However, the key is to place a higher value on your inbox and effectively your time. Utilizing the features that come with programs like Outlook can help you keep your emails under control but that makes little difference if you don’t place a value on your inbox.

What do you do with old emails? What does a business do with emails from ex-employees? Emails are a very important part of the communications of a business and may need to be retained for compliance reasons. However, does your business have a policy and procedure for what to do?

When it comes to managing your own personal emails, how do you handle that? Do you have a process or do you simply allow them to accumulate? Like any data, best practice is that it requires cultivation to maintain efficiency. This means that best practice would be to create some archiving facility.

What you may not be aware of is that Outlook already has a built in archiving process that you can take advantage. In most cases it is disabled but it is simple enough. Just right mouse click on your inbox for example and select Properties from the menu that appears. In the dialog box that now appears you will see an AutoArchive tab.

By default, the option will be set to not archive items. You can change that to either take settings from the default settings (normally set on the Exchange server) or you can configure your own settings. If you elect to use your own settings then, by default, items that are older than 6 months will be moved to an archive folder.

You can select from a number of different options when it comes to archiving and importantly you can enforce these settings from the server for all users. It is very important that your organization does have an archiving policy to handle the growth of emails over time. Working with mailboxes full of emails can be extremely hard and expends the amount of time required to do any sort of maintenance.

The issues around size of email is normally related to attachments. Restrictions can also be applied here if required to keep this in check. You can for example limit how large user attachments are as well as limiting the amount of space a users mailbox can consume.

It is important that you don’t allow your email systems to grow out of control to the point where they become to difficult and cumbersome to maintain. This means that you need to put policies in place to provide this control and this is certainly something Correct Solutions can assist with so contact us for more information. 

How many times have you pressed the send button on an email only to realize a microsecond later that you really didn’t want to do that? Problem is that once you press send the email goes to the outbox and then gets delivered immediately by the efficient email serve. There is however a way that you can provide a delay so that messages will remain in the outbox for a pre-determined amount of time before being send.

You accomplish this using rules in Outlook. Locate the Manage Rules and Alert button in the backstage area of Outlook to start the rule creation wizard..

Select the option under the Start from a blank rule called Apply rule on messages I send. Then press the Next button to proceed.

Don’t select any condition, simply press the Next button.

You’ll be prompted with a warning, press Yes to continue as we want this rule to apply to all sent messages.

In the next screen select the option, defer delivery by a number of seconds. Click the a number of hyperlink and enter the number of minutes to delay messages. 2 minutes is normally a good number.

Press Next to continue

Click Next on the exceptions page.

Give the rule a name and press the Finish button.

Now any email you send will wait in the Outbox for 2 minutes. This allows you to delete or edit something you may need to.

Most businesses understand the concept of having a unique mailbox for every user but some don’t appreciate that it is also possible to configure something known as a shared mailbox so that multiple people can access information that is sent there.

Many businesses use a shared mailbox for generic email address such as sales@ or info@. They then allow a subset of users to access this email box to view and potentially respond to its contents.This prevents generic email information from ending up in users mailboxes as well as keeping such information in a single location. It also means that over time, with staff changes, it is easy to allocate and de-allocate users from the shared mailbox. This allows new users to the mailbox complete access to all the email history.

If you need a shared mailbox configured on your system don;t hesitate to contact us here at Correct Solutions and we can set it up quick and easily for you.

We often get calls from clients wanting to restore emails and files from years gone past. Sadly these calls often finish with a “No we can’t do that” response. The client then asks “but don’t we have backups??” And the answer to that is “yes we do, but the key purpose of a backup is to assist in a disaster recovery, unless that client has clearly identified that they want to keep data for a longer term”.

The issue here is two fold. Issue one is that most companies don’t have a clearly defined data retention and recovery policy. Such a policy defines what data is backed up, how often it’s backed up, how long the backups are retained for and what granularity is contained within those backups. In the majority of cases, business owners are quite happy to backup a system daily, and then keep the last 7 or 14 days of end of day backups. The key thing they are trying to protect in that scenario is a major catastrophic event such as malicious employee deleting data before leaving, or fire or such things. In those cases this is all they need.

Issue two, is that if they have a data retention policy, it’s not clearly communicated to staff. This results in some staff taking matters into their own hands and making backups of “important stuff” to the server just in case their PC fails. Such backups often include that users entire music which is fine if the company is a music production company but more often than not this just consumes valuable space on the servers that impact the storage of real company data.

Another complication to this is that clients often don’t understand the difference between email data, file data such as word/excel documents and application data such as their accounting system. Each of these types of data in itself is backed up in different ways and needs to be defined in the policy mentioned above.

Once a clear Data Retention and Recovery Policy is created, and approved by management to meet the business requirement, then we can design the backup and recovery systems to ensure that the policy is properly supported by the technology.

If you need help with this… call us

Email is a major part of how businesses communicate these days. Many of the emails that we deal with also come with attachments. The problem is that these attachments tend to fill up our mail servers very quickly. Another issue with sending attachments via email is that you are giving the other party a copy of that file, now and into the future. For most attachments that isn’t a problem but there maybe times when you wish you had greater control over the files that you are sharing.

Another issue when working with attachments amongst a large team is where is the most current version? This happens because there is not a single point of truth that all parties are working against. This can lead to errors and delays simply because not everybody is dealing with the most current information.

A better way to handle file sharing with external parties is to upload the files to a central location and then simply send a link to the other parties and allow them all to work on the one version. One of the best places to share files is OneDrive or OneDrive for Business.

OneDrive is the free consumer version of Microsoft’ cloud based web storage. There is no cost to create an account and you can share files quickly and easily. OneDrive for Business is part of SharePoint Online that comes with Office 365 and providers a greater level of security and manageability than the consumer version of OneDrive does.

To use use OneDrive for Business you’ll need a business Office 365 account but you’ll now get 1TB of file storage which will certainly allows for many large attachments. You simply need to upload your file to OneDrive and then select the option to share it and nominate the email address of those with whom you wish to share it. They in turn will receive an email with a link which will allow them access to the document.

The best thing is that you are in control of how long that attachment is available for others to work with. OneDrive also supports the ability of multiple people working on the file at the same time if you choose. Importantly, once the project has been completed you can remove access to that file for external parties.

if you have the need to share lots of files with lots of people outside your organization then you should be looking at a cloud based hosting service to provide better control and manageability of your files. Two options we’d recommend you consider are OneDrive and OneDrive for Business because of their tight integration with Microsoft technologies.

If you have any questions about how to work smarter with attachment please contact us for more information.

Many people fail to use email for what it is designed for – that is as a business tool to facilitate improved communications. All too often email becomes an engrossing monster that steals time away from what really needs to be done every day. The mere act of dealing with emails takes away from the tasks that those emails are requesting.

The reason for this failure typically lies with the way that individuals work with their email. Although email readers, like Outlook, are packed with sophisticated features to allow people to better manage the flow of information, few if any take advantage of these.

Options that email provides, such as disclaimers and signatures, should be investigated and utilised fully. Another handy feature that most users fail to take advantage of is archiving, as large inboxes become very cumbersome to work with.

One of the most overlooked features is to implement email rules to automatically route inbound emails to locations other than the main inbox. This is especially handy for regular, non-urgent items such a newsletters. Implementing emails rules is the smart way to let programs like Outlook control what appears in your inbox and allows you to remain focused.

Given how important emails are to a business, we regularly see clients not having a mechanism or process for dealing with inboxes when employees leave the organisation. In many cases these contain valuable information that the business needs to continue to use, but struggles to make it available to those who need it.

Whatever your email challenges Correct Solutions can assist. Whether it is the implementation of systems like spam and malware filtering to end user training on how to be more effective with email, we are able to help. All you need to do is contact us to discuss your needs and let us know how we can help.

Is part of your marketing strategy to blast out email newsletters? If so how are you doing this? Hopefully you are not using your own inbox but a dedicated emailing service such as MailChimp.

A while back we detailed how this was a far smarter way of sending bulk emails. You can review that article here:

http://correctitblog.com.au/an-smarter-way-to-send-email-newsletters/

What you may not also realise about these services is the fact that they provider some very comprehensive analytics of the results from your campaigns. Such statistics are never fool proof but they give a good indication on which you can base decisions.

Reviewing the campaign metrics is important because you need to determine whether your strategy and tactics are working. If they aren’t, then you need to adjust and re-test. Many mailing tools actually allow you to perform what is known as ‘split testing’. This allows you to send a similar message to two audiences and see what impact small changes makes. This allows you then to implement that change, based on the evidence to future campaigns.

The other benefit these tools provide is the ability to automate this type of marketing. The major secret of success for this type of marketing is consistency. You need to contact you list on a regular predictable basis. Being erratic will not produce results generally.

Most of these email newsletter services are either free for a limited set of functionality or only a few dollars a month. This means that there really shouldn’t be a reason why your business is not using tool like this. Having them as a web service means that they can be accesses anywhere and by anyone. Thus, you can easily outsource this process if desired.

Part of any successful marketing effort will be to engage your prospects by email. It shouldn’t be the only method that you utilise but it should be something that you do use and do so regularly. However, always remember that whatever you elect to send your prospects has to provide value for them to read it. Don’t just talk about yourself, think about what you can provide the recipient to help them get their job done. That will win you fans, referrals and more business.

Generally sending large email attachments these days is a no no. Many email systems do not support sending or receiving of attachments over a certain size. So what do you do if you REALLY need to send a very large file to someone who really only understands email?

You could of course use something like OneDrive which we have talked about here before. That however, requires you to create a Microsoft account, which isn’t hard but for a once off transfer may not be worthwhile. If you just want to send a single large file to someone via email have a look at:

https://www.wetransfer.com/

Basically, you wish the web site, upload your file and then enter the recipients emails address and press send. The recipient will receive an email with a download link to retrieve the file, no logins required.

There is no cost for this service up to a certain file size limit (2GB). You can subscribe to a premium service that allows larger files if needed but keep in mind that if you are not paying for the product then you ARE the product (a la Facebook). This means your file is not sent securely and you may be targeted for advertising.

However, as a free occasional, non-secure, easy file option We Transfer works well.

Most users inside a business have a unique mailbox that is dedicated to their messages. However, one advantage email servers provide is the ability to configure and also use what is known as shared mailboxes.

Shared mailboxes are typically used for generic accounts like accounts@, sales@, info@, etc. Email for those accounts is then delivered to the Shared Mailbox as with any other mailbox, however a Shared Mailbox is then accessible by a number of different users.

These users can have a range of permissions on that mailbox as determined by the network administrator. They may be able to simply read the emails that are delivered there or they may have the ability to make any changes in the mailbox as well as send from that mailbox.

This allows the load of managing a generic mailbox to be handled by a group of people. It also allows such emails to stored and managed in a central location that is independent of individual users. This can be very handy if there is a large turnover of staff, as rights can be easily added and removed to the Shared Mailbox without the need to change its identity.

If you are redirecting generic email accounts to individual users inboxes then you should be perhaps considering using Shared Mailboxes to provide more flexibility and control. There are many ways that you can improve the way you use your email system and all you need to do is give Correct a call on (02) 8831 8200 and let us help you. With our experience we can ensure that you email system is humming along as efficiently as possible at all times

Image courtesy of ddpavumba at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

One of the most common IT services that can effectively be migrated to the cloud, is email. There are lots of options out there, but you may not be aware that Correct Solutions provides this service.

We have Microsoft Exchange email servers in our capital city data centers, on which several of our customers are already hosting their email. So what advantages does a Correct hosted email service provide? The first is that everything is provided and managed by the team at Correct. That allows us to utilise our extensive technical experience with Microsoft products to provide the most optimal solution. It also means that when you have issues, you are talking to the same people who build and manage the service – there is no middle man. That allows our techs to solve your problems faster.

Another benefit of using Correct’s services is that you know the data is stored on our servers in our Australian data centers, not hosted somewhere off shore. Having the data local means that it is faster for you to access. Correct will maintain and update the servers which saves you the trouble, with the added benefit that you don’t need to buy any server hardware or software.

Correct’s Hosted Exchange allows you to simply pay for what you need on a monthly basis and allows us to do all the hard IT stuff behind the scenes. You get the assurance that the people selling you the service manage and maintain the service, and that your information stays within our local data centers. So, if you have been thinking of moving your messaging to the cloud give us a call at Correct on (02) 8831 3200 and chat to us about what our hosted Exchange option can provide for your business.

Image courtesy of Master isolated images picture at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

For those of you who haven’t heard as yet there is a virus making its way around the internet in a number of different variations with increasingly intelligent means of inviting users to click and thereby infect their machines.

That virus was originally known as Cryptolocker but since then has come across as a number of different variations such as TorrentLocker and Cryptowall.

Their success has grown as they use delivery methods that appear extremely genuine. Emails with links to download the virus have previously presented as Gas or Electricity bills, Australia Post Tracking Information, State Revenue Office fines, Courier Tracking Information, Resume’s and even Australian Federal Police Infringements.

While Anti-Virus Software can often protect you from infection, it is only as good as its understanding of the latest viruses. As such, everyone needs to be vigilant and apply caution to emails that seem fairly safe but may not be something received on a regular basis.

Correct will always urge caution and if you are ever unsure simply send the questionable item over and ask us to have a look.

Below are some of the screenshots seen so far.

There aren’t too many businesses that don’t on some level live and breathe email. Passing messages back and forth across the internet has streamlined the way we communicate. It has also lead to inherent problems with security, storage and continuity.

Whilst enhancing productivity on some levels, an Exchange Server without SPAM protection can waste hours of employee’s time. Emails without consistent branding can leave customers and other contacts confused about your company’s image. An Exchange store without proper management can become large and unruly, taking up valuable storage space and causing headaches for administrators attempting to manage the size of their users’ mailboxes.

That’s where a Mail Utilities Program comes into its own. Good management and sanitisation tools can alleviate the problems that revolve around sending, receiving and storing emails.

Call Correct to discuss your concerns, we can help you with:

Utilising:

• Disclaimers and Signatures to help manage corporate branding
• Mail blocking and redirection, for example if an employee has left and their mail needs to be delivered to a different address

Archiving:

• Improved performance of the Exchange Server by reducing the load and increasing efficiency
• Storing emails and documents so that they can’t be tampered with to help with compliance
• Eliminating PST files by automatically archiving email history to a central store
• Storing emails and documents in a way that makes them easy to search and restore
• Identifying legal risks and managing productivity through reports

Sanitisation:

• Anti-SPAM technology to trap the maximum quantity of SPAM and minimise false positives
• Anti-Virus software to help combat Viruses, Trojans, Malware, Spyware and Adware

Business Continuity:

• Assuring message delivery
• Allowing time to perform server or network maintenance without the risk of emails bouncing
• Stopping identity theft and domain blacklisting

We wanted to share a couple of quick tips to help you get the most out of your email system.  The first one comes with a disclaimer; it doesn’t relate to essential reading (for example, the publication you are reading right at this moment!)

Tip number one is unsubscribe from junk.  When you’ve been employed in the same position for a period of time, your early enthusiasm for all things published starts catching up with your inbox!  Re-examine those email alerts and lists you signed up to years ago.  Is the information still relevant?  Go on a reverse subscription rampage and instead of just deleting the next email that comes in, navigate to the unsubscribe page and free yourself for good.

Tip number two, allow your marketing department to use your signature to advertise goods and services.  There are software programs that enable the marketing department to make universal updates to graphics in everyone’s signature – so as new products or services are being promoted, you can push information out via everyone’s signature block!

Ever tried to send a huge file via email?  It’s not typically a great result for anyone, right?

The growth in file sizes means we all from time to time have some pretty big files that need to be sent to someone else.  Most email systems (particularly if you have hosted email) have limits on the size of attachments.  A more practical way to send large files via email is to use third party services like YouSendIt.

YouSendIt is an add on you can use with most current versions of Outlook that allows you to upload the large file to YouSendIt and then send a link in an email to that file so they recipient can download it directly from YouSendIt. The best thing is that YouSendIt provides a Lite plan that is totally free and allows you send files of up to 50MB in size.

There are of course additional paid plans that provide for larger file sizes and storage limits, however for many people the Lite plan is certinaly a great start.

You simply need to sign up for an account and then download the addin for your version of Outlook. This will add a number of additional buttons to the Outlook toolbar with which you can attach documents. Even though it is exactly like the traditional method of attaching files to emails, in the background the attachment is uploaded to the YouSendIt servers and the email message is appended to include a link for the recipient to click on to download the file.  In practice, all very transparent.

If you have the need to overcome the email attachment limitations of your email system then YouSendIt is a great option given how well it integrates with Outlook, not to mention the free option that it provides. There also a number of other capabilities the product offers that are well worth checking out.

A recent article worth reading states that the average user sent and received 110 emails per day and that was expect to rise at a rate of about 13 precent per year.

Here are 5 ways to take back control of your inbox and take back your life

What it highlights is that most people are not the boss of their inbox. They let others flood it with irrelevant and unproductive information. They allow emails to accumulate in the default location (typically the inbox) and they fail to perform any sort of maintenance.

The price of this? Simple. Frustration, because they find actually getting their job done harder and harder amongst the flood of email. Interestingly, employees are rewarded for reading and storing emails, they are rewarded on actually processing emails and getting work done. Sadly, many employees spend a large part of their days dealing with emails.

There is no doubt that email is an essential business communications tool but it can also be a major source of distraction. For example, the first thing people do when they arrive at work is open their emails and read the most recent items. Typically, they then start working on these latest items rather than what they may have had already planning period to opening their inbox.

Such habits result in a very fragmented work day and this usually translates to reduced productivity which really doesn’t help getting things done. If you feel you are not being as productive as you could be because of your emails take control of your index by:

– Creating rules to route non urgent emails away from your inbox

– Each time you touch an email either deal with it, delete it or archive. Don’t simply leave it un-actioned.

– Try and keep your inbox empty. This means moving emails you need to other locations but away from the main point of entry. You’ll be surprised how much less stressful an empty inbox can be.The more productive you are the fewer emails you should have in your inbox, not the converse.

– Shut off emails for a period of time everyday. Pick a time and during that time shut down you email program so you can concentrate on getting things done. As you find this being more successful, extend this time and only process emails during certain period of the day.

There are plenty of strategies for dealing with the flood of emails. The most important of these is simply to take action to deal with information overload.