Lets talk about inboxes.
So I sit here and have a colossal amount of information to process. You see, my job is a program manager which I came to naturally, I was a technical development lead who exhibited a passion for customers and smoothing out the development process. When the opportunity to do both came along, I rose to the challenge.
Part and most of the job is processing information and making it cohesive and making it available to the right players at the right time. I must consume data from all manner of sources, from email aliases, customer interactions, inter and intra group requirements and correspondence, technical, user groups, and the list goes on. My email inbox gets hundreds of emails per day. Coping with this influx (a figurative fire hose) of input can be very perplexing. To survive I have built a series of rules, search folders and flags to my in box as supported by MS Outlook 2003. These rules have transformed my inbox and outlook from a laborious task into a workflow engine that makes my task much easier.
The list of steps that are undertaken are categorized by two groupings, automated and not automated.
Automated:
· Created a set of rules and have those rules take out the least critical emails, from technical email distribution lists and the like.
· Next I created a series of search folders that categorize the remaining emails by source, feature or job function.
Manual:
· Label by category (another outlook feature) with broad user defined categories by feature id or user and customers.
· Mark any important issues or messages that need further review by using the outlook follow up flag features. These features have a default set of urgency colorings and allow you to set time limits to follow up for time sensitive data.
This leaves my inbox with email that is both important and unprocessed. By revisiting the automated section, I can continually revise the automation and have my email automatically sorted and screened.
Of course this may or may not work for anyone else but I have found it very useful in sorting out the plethora of data shoveled into my inbox.
Disclamer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
