Email BMPs

Email Best Management Practices (BMPs)

So, you don't like email. Now, is that any reason to get hostile? Here are a few suggestions you might try before getting violent.

1. Some folks get upset about email because everytime a new message arrives their computer "dings" and a message box pops up interupting whatever they were doing and announcing the arrival. In most email programs this frustration is easy to cure. You can usually turn off this annoying feature by adjusting the user options in your email program.

2. Some folks get irritated when their inbox fills up with "junk" email or "shotgun" messages sent out to a mailing list of people. A useful technique to minimize this irritation is to create automatic actions to handle incoming messages. Netscape Messenger and Eudora Pro use the term "filters" for these automated actions, cc:mail refers to them as "rules", and Lotus Notes uses "agents" as the term for them. With most good email programs you can create these automated filters to do a variety of mail management actions. For examples you might:

- Sort incoming mail into folders according to categories of your choosing. For example, a filter might move all incoming mail from a particular sender into a special folder.

- Respond to messages that have key words or phrases in the subject line. For example, you might setup certain documents that you routinely distribute as attachments to email messages. You could create a filter that automatically forwards a copy of the message with the attachments to all incoming messages with special key words in the subject line (e.g. Request Form XYZ).

- Temporarily forward incoming messages to other addresses. For example, you might want to forward incoming messages to an alternate address while you are on vacation or out of town.

- Setup your own mailing list service. You could create filters which allow people to join the service by sending in a message with the word "subscribe" in the subject line. Similarly they could stop the service by sending in a message with the word "unsubscribe" in the subject line. Another filter could be used to forward messages addressed to the mailing list to all the subscribing members.

Unfortunately, all email programs are not equally capable of executing filters. If filters are important, then compare email programs to find the one that allows the filter functions you need.

3. Perhaps the most satisfying technique to solve email frustration is hitting the delete key. It wastes no paper and only takes milliseconds.

4. If you just can't cope any other way, try getting someone else to read and respond to your email for you. This might work for the lucky few who have personal secretaries, executive assistants, etc. Most of the rest of us will have to do it ourselves.

5. If these simple Email BMPs don't soothe your techno-frustration, then the final solution is to just not run your email program. That is a drastic solution and not one I would recommend.

Eventually, software vendors will develop programs which solve the annoyances and make email a more functional tool. You might as well learn to live with it. It is here to stay for awhile.

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