management management using Gmail Ceri Clark

Filtering your s If you get more than a few s a day, you may know the feeling of being overwhelmed You can use your client to filter these mails into different categories (or labels or folders) You can decide what these are for – Pending – Important – FYI – Newsletters

Filtering your Once you have the categories set up, you filter your s into them – The first time may take some time if you have a full mailbox – Once the mailbox is empty (or nearly empty) you can spend a little time on it regularly and keep it in bounds – At first the filtering may be have to be done by hand – Most clients will “learn” from your actions You can make a filter a ‘permanent’ command, so that every time an shows up with the features which match the that you filtered by hand, it will be dealt with the same way

Discussions/Threads Most clients will keep “conversations” together if you wish Useful to keep track of a series of s to and from one person without having to search for them

Replying and Forwarding The difference between Reply and Reply All is important! – If you use Reply All, make sure that everyone who is going to receive this SHOULD receive it – Once a mail is sent, it’s gone! (well, after 30 seconds in Gmail) – Usually it is considered polite to put your NEW reply at the TOP of the – so the recipient does not have to read through all of the to reach the current message

Replying and Forwarding Always include the message you are replying to – especially if the person receiving it is very busy – it’s hard to remember what the message “yes” or “ok” means when you get 50 messages a day! Forwarding an – Consider carefully what you are doing! – There may be legal implications – do you have the original writer’s permission to do this? – Does the recipient of the forward really need to see this?

Structuring your Give it a good subject line “urgent” or “confidential” are useful Give your message in the first paragraph if not the first line Make it clear what you are asking/telling the recipient to do – and put it at the TOP of the Send an about only ONE topic – more than that and your second message will be overlooked!

Structuring your It is possible to use many of the same effects in as in a word processor, bold, italics, etc. Do not overuse these! Spell check your if you care about the impression your will deliver

Spam Most clients have spam filters YOU can help them to be better and improve spam filtering for other people too! When you mark something as spam, the client will remember and mark other things that are similar as spam without your having to do it Watch your spam folder – Sometimes things end up there that you want!

Phishing s These are s targeted at you They are disguised to look like they are from companies / people that you deal with For some reason, they usually have typos or misspellings Never click on any link or reply to these! If you are unsure, contact that business or person by phone. Reputable companies will NOT use for the purpose of changing passwords or any security activity

Space in your account Attachments The bodies of most s will be small, a few kilobytes But attachments to s can take up megabytes or eventually gigabytes! If you are using an client that is not a web- based client, you can save the attached files whether or not you save the it came with Be careful about attachments you were not expecting! Don’t click until you’ve scanned it!

“Canned” messages You can set up filters that send out pre-written messages – Usually in a business environment – Most common is the “vacation” message Used to reply to s you receive while you’re gone Don’t forget to turn it off when you come back! – Some people only check a few times a day May use this to tell people who write them that they need to use another medium if the matter is Urgent