There are really more than three things that we can think of to not include in an email - but these three top the list in terms of frequency or severity.  In no particular order they are…

Don’t type when you’re angry

    Typing while you’re still angry is no different than having an argument where the other person is not talking back - it’s not going to end well.  Usually it’s best to cool off first…get a bite to eat or just wait 24 hours before you allow yourself to respond and when you come back, you can present a clear and logical presentation of your view.

Don’t gossip about co-workers

    This rule could really be generalized to something like “Don’t put anything in email that you wouldn’t want your priest/rabbi/cleric to read.”  In other words, stay away from non business matters because you don’t know who is reading your emails (besides your recipients) in an office environment.

Don’t put anything you don’t want to become public

    Ask yourself this question before hitting send:  What if everyone were to read this?  Would it spell legal or moral issues?   If you have any doubts, it takes just a few seconds to pick up the phone or go have a face to face meeting with someone.

  As an aside, our Safeguard Send tool can be used to catch some of these occurrences by looking for, and flagging you when, phrases like these appear in the email: “I am so pissed at”, or “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this but”, or “Are we even allowed to do this?”.  Find out more about Safeguard Send at http://www.SperrySoftware.com/Outlook/Safeguard-Send.asp.

Advances in cell phones, voice mail, instant messaging, RSS, Facebook, Twitter, Google Wave - they all have been proclaimed as email killers.

Facebook (and even Microsoft’s Sharepoint technology) have their place - facilitating the collaboration of groups and the collective wisdom to complete projects.  Instant Messaging (and texting in general) allows for faster communications.  These styles of working cannot easily be done over email.

But what would it take to really kill email?  The new technology would have to have a rich set of  tools (for the interface, searching, and backup), the ability to serve as a matter of public record (e.g., compliance with government regulations), and the ability to send messages one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many (among other requirements).

However, the most important function that email provides is the ability for you to leave a message for someone and later, at their own computer and their own leisure, have them read it.  This concept is called “Store and Forward”.

So far, nothing beats the Store and Forward concept.

Granted, there have been other technologies (social networks in particular) that store your messages for reading later by an audience (in fact, Facebook (and others) have email systems built into them) but because email was “first to market” it has become entrenched like no other technology.

By the way, did you know that email is 38 years old this month?  Ray Tomlinson is widely regarded as the first person to send an email from one computer to another (first to himself for testing, then later a message to his colleagues explaining how to use email). 

Yes, email has been the killer app for 38 years and I’m guessing, the next 38.  Happy birthday, email.

  Recently we had a customer ask if we thought if Microsoft is stepping on our toes with the new Mailtips feature.  After considering it, we decided that the answer is no.  Here’s why:

  Mailtips and our add-ins do not directly overlap - there are some features in Mailtips that are useful and not in any of our products (Moderated Contact Group, Invalid Recipient Address, Message Too Large For Recipient for instance).  There are features that are in both (Restricted Recipient, Large Number of Recipients, External Recipient).  Then there are the features that are only in our products (missing attachments, missing subjects, warn when using certain keywords). 

  In addition, our add-ins do not require Microsoft Exchange Server and they work in older versions (Outlook 2000 and higher). 

  So no, we do not think Microsoft is stepping on our toes, in fact we recommend moving to Outlook 2010 as soon as possible and think our add-ins will make a great compliment to your email platform.

“Someone sent out confidential salary information to the whole firm.”
Safeguard Send has a keyword filter and warns you when you send out an email with words like “salary information”, or “salary figures”.

“Someone made a nasty comment about a supervisor and it was sent to the supervisor by mistake. It eventually led to dismissal.”
Although the author didn’t say how this happened, it easily could have been from clicking a “Reply To All” - this could ahve been prevented with the Reply To All Monitor which simply puts a prompt like “Are you sure you want to reply to everyone?”

“A person called another employee an idiot in an e-mail to everyone in the company.”
This definitely could have been prevented with the Reply To All Monitor.

“One of our vendors accidentally e-mailed me information about their sales performance, so I gained some inside knowledge about that vendor.”

“We sent an e-mail to a client that was meant for a vendor. It made it difficult when the client had seen our costs.”

“Confidential information about one client was sent to a different client. It was certainly embarrassing.” Safeguard Send will optionally prompt you when you are sending an email outside the company, or to certain people. In all these cases above, it could have helped by alerting the sender that they were sending the email to a client - giving the sender a chance to think before sending.

“Someone crafted a scathing, sarcastic e-mail about a customer and did not mean to hit ’send.’ It caused problems.”
Here we have case where an add-in might not be as helpful as simply adding a delay to your Send/Receive time. Doing this causes your emails to sit for a few minutes in your Outbox so that if you think of anything else before the email goes out (like what being professional means to you) you can catch it and edit it. (Note: to implement the delay, go into Outlook, then to Tools…Options…Mail Setup. Uncheck the box that says “Send immediately when connected”. )

“I once sent an internal memo about restroom etiquette to a prospective client by accident.”
As soon as the words “accident” and “internal memo” show up in the same sentence, our ears perk up because it’s usually a case that our aforementioned Reply To All Monitor can help.

“Someone sent me a copy of an employee’s bank records by mistake.”
Safeguard Send, with it’s ability to warn when you are sending an email outside the company (in this case the bank) would have helped here.

Over and over again, each day many email mistakes are made - let us help you to not make one of them!

It turns out that Nielson has turned off the Reply To All button, suggesting that they can save server space (due to the lack of all those identical messages being replied to everyone) and save time (by forcing replies to only go to those in the conversation, preventing everyone from having to read the sometimes inane responses).  This was motivated after the fact, of course, by an “errant” email.  [Editor's note: See the prophetic previous blog posting].

It seems to us that for the people who know how to use Reply To All, its invaluable.  So why limit it for everyone?  There’s nothing wrong with implementing Permessa’s solution or own own Reply To All Monitor for those companies whose employees need full functionality out of their email client. these tools allow the best of both worlds - full email functionality and preventions of errors by unknowing uses.

It’s not their fault.  They were simply trying to do their job, and so when the email arrived, each person  would simply hit reply to all, instead of just replying to the original sender. 

In many  organizations, this kind of behavior happens.  But when it happens at the State Department and there are roughly six thousand recipients, and many of them click the reply to all button…well you can imagine the ensuing chaos.

Patrick Kennedy, the Under Secretary of State, sent out a missive which then threatened the employees with disciplinary action if the reply to all broadcast mechanism was abused.

While threatening the employees to not hit the reply to all button again is one way to deal with it, it can be mitigated through our own Reply To All Monitor.  Some technology solution should be implemented, because in my experience, based on the customer tales that many of you have told me, I can tell you that it WILL happen again.

  Here’s a few of the many links covering the story, including WebProNews, Government Computer News, and the Huffington Post.

The implementation of our knowledge base system is the most significant source of information for our customers. The knowledge base provides a familiar resource for finding answers to common questions anytime. One of the biggest hurdles for a small company is to provide customer service anytime, day or night. The knowledge base provides immediate answers for many questions.

The community forum is another addition to the Sperry Software family. This system allows customers to help other customers. It is differs from the knowledge base because it may not provide immediate answers. It does, however, allow more complex, or even random, issues to be solved collaboratively. We encourage any Microsoft Outlook questions to be posted in the forum.

The addition of new staff to provide customer service has been very helpful. The new staff has increased our ability to answer calls and emails more quickly.

Conferences have been a new experience for us over the year. It was the first year that we have attended a conference as a vendor. We were able to attend TechEd in Orlando, FL and a Law conference in Chicago, IL. Attending a conference helps us get face time with our customers. It also allows us to collect feedback about current products and ideas for future ones.

After thinking about this a bit, I realized that our Safeguard Send add-in - with it’s ability to inspect emails before they are sent out - might be useful here.  Because the add-in can search for phrases (like the ones listed by Elizabeth Charnock) as well as keywords, it can put up a warning prompt before the email goes out to help users think before hitting Send.