by jay on January 7, 2010
Saved Searches saved my life.
Well, not really. But when you have email you want to keep track of but you don’t want to check 15 mailboxes throughout the day, you’ll feel like Saved Searches are a dream come true.
You have a lot of options in using Saves Searches. You can search for mail by date, sender, subject, tag, and about 15 other criteria. And you can combine criteria, so you can look for mail sent by Bob between January 1 and January 15. Or mail sent by Bob and tagged Follow Up. Or mail sent by Bob, assigned to Janet, tagged Newsletter, and unread. You get the idea…
Now, there are two ways to use this. There’s the one time search, where you just really need to find that one email. You can put together a saved search, but not save it. Find what you’re looking for, and then just move on.
Or you can create the searches that you’re going to use time after time. For instance, I have saved searches created to show me all the mail my supervisor sent related to certain products (by tag and by subject line) . By defining the search criteria and saving the search, I can easily look at all the mail I want to see.
Once created and saved, you have the option of sharing your search. So if it’s a personal one that nobody else really needs access to, fine. It’s only available to you. But if you want your team members to use the search to track the particulars as you’ve described them, then you just click the Share box, and your search will show up in everyone’s list.
Now, here’s the coolest part: You can create an alert to tell you when there’s mail that meets the criteria of your Saved Search! Check out my next post for details on setting up the alerts you need to make your life even easier.
by jay on December 17, 2009
Say you’re a journalist with a technical question for a scientist at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.
Where would you send that email? And how would you know that the right scientist was going to see your inquiry?
The American Geophysical Union knew you’d be asking that question. So they created a handful of email addresses just for the event. Then shifts were arranged to share the response burden amongst the attending scientists, providing 24 hour email coverage. Experts were available around the clock to answer science questions related to climate issues and the negotiations.
But how did they manage it?
Email Center Pro, of course.
The work flow the AGU set up for the event was really interesting. They knew they’d have all these of scientists available. And they knew they’d be getting a ton of emails about a very wide range of issues.
They needed:
- A centralized system that would allow journalists to direct their questions to a simple address (rather than to specific scientists or organizations).
- A way for all the scientists to log on (usually several at the same time), get into those mailboxes, and get answers out as quickly as possible.
- A system that is easy to use, since the scientists weren’t going to want to spend a lot of time learning a new email client for a week’s worth of responding.
- A Web based application, since getting a program installed on all those computers, with all those operating systems and system requirements, would be a nightmare.
- A way to make sure the right answers got out: It had allow mail to be moved to different inboxes, information to be shared amongst users, etc.
- A system that would handle the large volume of mail they were expecting.
The AGU needed Email Center Pro.
