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People- vs. Project-Centric Email Workflow
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Posted by Ken
Dec 3, 2021 at 03:29 AM
James Salla wrote:
>One of the problems I’ve noticed with
>using email as an informal “data dump” is that often people write about
>multiple projects or topics in a single emails. That’s why MS-Outlook’s
>foldering system isn’t very useful for email - the same email might
>belong in more than one folder, but it won’t let you do that.
Agreed, and that is why I try to keep topics on subject in my messages. And while I agree that tagging is much more flexible, I would be happy with multiple copies if need be, but I am sitting very low on the totem pole and do not have much say as to how things get done that will effect thousands of my colleagues. Welcome to the bureaucracy.
—Ken
Posted by Ken
Dec 3, 2021 at 03:34 AM
MadaboutDana wrote:
>
>I looked into this at great length back in the early 2000s, and
>concluded that Novell GroupWise would indeed be the best all-round
>solution for this kind of requirement (a fundamental business
>requirement, in fact). Nothing else came close. But implementing
>GroupWise would have cost us an arm and a leg, so we used a combination
>of solutions in the end, including a powerful piece of Australian
>groupware that is now, alas, defunct. Now, of course, GroupWise is also
>defunct.
We started out with Novell GroupWise as well. I probably still have files that were migrated from GW to Outlook. I am not sure which I prefer more as an end user, but I can say that I truly enjoyed using Ecco (for myself) to keep a personal calendar separate from GW. I am not even sure we initially used the calendar feature when we were using GW for mail.
—Ken
Posted by Ken
Dec 3, 2021 at 03:39 AM
Larry Kollar wrote:
>
>We’re stuck with all-Microsoft at work, too. My Outlook has a button in
>the “Move” section of the ribbon to copy a message to OneNote. You can
>share notebooks, so maybe that would be the way to go?
>
>Sharepoint, at least for us, turned into a data swamp. The only way to
>effectively navigate it is to get a link from someone who knows where
>the good stuff is, then be religious about saving bookmarks.
You can shout this from the mountaintops and the diehards would never believe you about SP becoming a data swamp. I have a OneNote page that has all of the invitations that I receive so at least they are in one place, although I believe that MS now shows you all of the files that have been shared with you in certain views. But, yes, if everybody has a SP site, and the project has a SP site, pretty soon it is impossible to find anything. My wife’s nephew used to work for MS and told me that nobody he worked with used it because they switched teams so often that it did not make sense. Perhaps things have changed, but I wish MS would overhaul the UI for SP. It is a kludge at best IMHO, and it is the underpinning of Teams, so behind the scenes it is creating untold numbers of folds and paths.
—Ken
Posted by MadaboutDana
Dec 7, 2021 at 04:53 PM
I use it as my regular backup system now, running on a Mac Mini; it’s very reliable and picks up e-mail at least as well as any of the (many) e-mail clients I’ve experimented with over the years.
Unlike MailStore, however, its built-in search engine is quite slow. You can export e-mails as PDF files, but if you’ve got a lot of e-mails (and yes, we do have many thousands), that takes a ridiculously long time. But the search function works fairly well, as long as you’re not in a tearing hurry.
I may have to go back to MailStore at some point – because let’s face it, if you’re searching through mail archives, then normally you ARE in a tearing hurry, and MailStore’s search function is extremely fast – but alas, that will mean running a dedicated Windows machine, which seems a bit ridiculous (although I do have a couple of those tiny Lenovo micro-PCs sitting around not doing a lot).
Effective e-mail management is another business niche just waiting to be filled…
satis wrote:
>
>MadaboutDana wrote:
>
>> for a good Mac-based backup solution, you could do worse than
>> Mail Backup X (http://inventpure.com/)
>
>The specs look good for it but I’ve been wary because it’s always on
>sale somewhere, at differing prices (AppSumo and StackSocial right now,
>for $49 and $59) - and even on its own site it’s $29 down form $79 but
>there is also an unknown discount available if you fill out a
>questionnaire on the site and wait for an email from them.
>
>Also, when searching I never find reviews, just hits for sales.
>
>Again, it looks good, but I’ve found that using EagleFiler (
>https://c-command.com/eaglefiler/ $50, or $40 with coupon code if you’re
>a Tidbits.com member) is an easy way to backup mail messages (.eml
>format) or entire mailboxes (.mbox format) - and can import from webmail
>or all major Mac mail apps - that can easily be searched.
>
>https://c-command.com/eaglefiler/help/importing-mail
>
>More generally, I also use it as a replacement for Devonthink.
Posted by MadaboutDana
Dec 7, 2021 at 05:02 PM
Ha, yes, everything you say is spot on. We experimented with SharePoint a few years ago, and after desperately trying to control the efflorescence, I finally gave up and sacked it.
We even had a special extranet running on SharePoint for one of our major clients at the time (part of Sony); it had lots of useful info on it, including archives of advertising/marketing material and all sorts. Did anybody ever use it? Nope. Members of the client’s marketing department would visit it, admire it… and then leave it alone.
There’s something basically confusing about SharePoint; it’s what I would call a “fuzzy” app, something that appears to be friendly but isn’t really. Craft, a wonderful, gorgeous app for macOS/iOS, is similar – the structures are fuzzy, making it quite difficult to organise things in logical ways. But at least Craft has a really great search function (now that they’ve upgraded it), whereas the SharePoint search function almost feels bolted on as an afterthought. Or it did – I must confess I haven’t used SP in anger for several years.
And I shouldn’t really criticise Craft; it’s brand new, and its developers produce new, improved features at a stonking pace, whereas SP? Just seems to get fuzzier and fuzzier…
Cheers!
Bill
Ken wrote:
Larry Kollar wrote:
>
>
>>
>>We’re stuck with all-Microsoft at work, too. My Outlook has a button in
>>the “Move” section of the ribbon to copy a message to OneNote. You can
>>share notebooks, so maybe that would be the way to go?
>>
>>Sharepoint, at least for us, turned into a data swamp. The only way to
>>effectively navigate it is to get a link from someone who knows where
>>the good stuff is, then be religious about saving bookmarks.
>
>You can shout this from the mountaintops and the diehards would never
>believe you about SP becoming a data swamp. I have a OneNote page that
>has all of the invitations that I receive so at least they are in one
>place, although I believe that MS now shows you all of the files that
>have been shared with you in certain views. But, yes, if everybody has
>a SP site, and the project has a SP site, pretty soon it is impossible
>to find anything. My wife’s nephew used to work for MS and told me that
>nobody he worked with used it because they switched teams so often that
>it did not make sense. Perhaps things have changed, but I wish MS would
>overhaul the UI for SP. It is a kludge at best IMHO, and it is the
>underpinning of Teams, so behind the scenes it is creating untold
>numbers of folds and paths.
>
>—Ken