MAXIMIZING THE UTILITY OF MICROSOFT OUTLOOK · MAXIMIZING THE UTILITY OF Presented by: MICROSOFT...

Presented by:MAXIMIZING THE UTILITY OF MICROSOFT OUTLOOK

Lisa Hendrickson (@callthatgirl)

Deborah Savadra (@legalofficeguru)

www.techshow.com #ABATECHSHOW

INTRODUCTION: INBOX = MONEY

Your inbox equals money, as it does for anyone who runs a business. Most, if not all, of the email you receive represents money coming in or money going out.

Most folks already know the basics of sending and receiving email in Outlook, so we will move to a more in-depth fast track learning on simple ways to help you manage your emails (i.e., money) better in Outlook.

A Word About MS Exchange? Typically, if you're working in a firm that provides you with an email account and Microsoft Outlook,

you're probably using something called a Microsoft Exchange server. This means your emails are delivered to and saved on the firm's Exchange server. That same server has your contacts and calendar, too.

Your Exchange server could be set up one of several ways that affect how, when and from which devices you can access your email. Ask your IT person for more information about your firm's specific configuration.


MANAGING EMAIL How do you feel when someone asks for says to you

Did you get my email?

I emailed you a few weeks ago

You didn’t reply

You said you’d get back to me

Our typical response

“Sorry, I’ve been busy”

“Oh, no….I didn’t get it” (and maybe you did, maybe you didn’t, or don’t remember so this answer is easiest.


MANAGING EMAIL PART 2 – WHY WE DIDN’T EMAIL THEM BACKThese are examples or probable reasons of why didn’t you email this person back

It wasn’t a money reactive email

As owners of businesses, we tend to react quickly to emails that make us money

They wanted information you didn’t have quickly

It would take up a lot of time to go and find the information and since it’s not really something that makes you money, it didn’t attract you to move instantly on the request.

You simply didn’t consider it something important

You didn’t know what to do with it, not a standard email you would delegate to your assistant

You don’t know the person

You didn’t make it a priority


24X7 VERSUS 9-TO-5 –WHAT TYPE OF PERSON ARE YOU? Checks their email via computer or phone all day/night/weekends

Will respond to some email instantly if it includes making money or a current job in progress

Usually attract other 24x7 people and love fast reaction time.

Tend to read an email up to 5 times before deciding on what action to do with an email if it does not include making money.

Problems these people have

Email just sits in the inbox as they are just fielding new emails

Expectations, if you send an email during off 9-5 hours, people expect you are working and will email you expecting further communications. Be careful and you might want to use the send later option.


9-5 Leave a job at 5:00 and either don’t work from home/phones or cannot due to policy at work or chose not to work after hours/weekends.

They come into work in the a.m. to emails from the day before, delegated work from the 24x7 people

Spend a good portion of their morning working just on email, before even doing their job.

Overwhelmed with morning emails, not sure where to start and how to start doing their real job. Believe it or not, email is not a job.

Without a good email management strategy, they will waste more time going through their inbox doing the exact things a 24x7 person does, not knowing what to do with an email, so it just sits there


HOW DO YOU MANAGE YOUR EMAIL?

Are you an inbox managed person? Never an email in the inbox, you keep it very clean

Or are you a person with 1000 emails or more in your inbox

If you are this person, and you are not alone.... from a person who manages their inbox daily, where does one day start and one end?

Do you keep your email this way because you like searching it?

Or are you the type that is in the middle, it can get crazy but you clean it up often


HOW PEOPLE RESPOND/REACT TO THEIR INBOX IN OUTLOOK AND PHONEMoney! New client or past clients. We all tend to reply to emails asap that include money. We all respond to emails that involve money faster than any other email

Work you have to do. This is usually an email that gets answered while you are on a project/client jobs, etc. This is actually “Your job”.

Things you don’t know what to do, hate doing or are not exciting. Communications requests or other things you don’t have time for, these emails usually don’t get responded to quickly, usually non-making money emails.

Junk/more junk

Newsletters/journals/association emails


BEFORE MOVING INTO OUR FIRST STEP, WE MUST PREPARE FOR THE DECLUTTERING OF THE INBOX.Think of 4 or 5 important things in your work life. (Clients in progress, work to review, Projects, etc)

Clients in progress

Other business issues

Personal

Newsletters/Journals/Associations/ABA!

Now try to think of one day a week you could schedule off your calendar 30 minutes to do the extra ‘emails” you don’t want to do right away and that you can have as a quick response “I’ll do this Thursday”

This will be important for our management tip. You can consider this “work I have to do but don’t want to do” time.


CONTINUED –CLEARING THE CLUTTER

Creating a few top-level folders, reason for this is two-part. You are more focused if everything you do is in the top four lines of your Outlook and on your smartphone.

Make a new folder called "old inbox". If you need to create it as @oldinboxto make sure it’s top level, that is fine.

Create a “work in progress” top level folder, use the @ symbol to help it stay high

Create a “@Thursday folder”


CREATE A NEW FOLDER


CLEAN UP YOUR INBOX

Move every email in your inbox to that new folder ‘old inbox”.

This gets it out of the way, but it's still searchable and you know where it is.

This frightens people at first, but it’s a good way to get your inbox clear enough so you can start learning better email management habits.

If you are uncomfortable moving everything out, maybe just leave 100 emails and use these for your practice time.


PRACTICE WITH THE INBOX Practice making fast decisions on what to do with an email

If you left some emails in the inbox, go ahead and start moving those emails to the subfolders. Consider this training. Have a goal though to get through those 100 in a day or so, so then you can get going on having a managed inbox.

If you are on Exchange or IMAP, a tip for you on smartphone is that if you’re a 24x7 person, at night and on weekends, start getting in the habit of reading your emails once and then doing an action with it.

Get it out of the inbox. Otherwise as we said, you will read it 10x and what a waste of time that is. Right?

If you have POP email, you will not be able to do this unfortunately.


USING OUTLOOK TO MANAGE INCOMING MAIL

Rules & Alerts

Quick Steps

Converting Email to Tasks or Calendar Items

Tagging “junk”


RULES & ALERTSo Find an example of an email you’d

like to move automatically

o Right-click on it

o Choose Rules

o Choose the subfolder that messages

from that sender should always go to

o Choosing Create Rule will take you

through a wizard that allows you to

fine-tune email selection process (e.g.,

text in Subject line, all emails from a

domain such as uscourts.gov, etc.)


QUICK STEPS

Not comfortable letting your computer make decisions about moving mail out of your Inbox?

Quick Steps is a more interactive way to automate email handling.


QUICK STEPSo Quick Steps commands are located on the

Home tab in Outlook

o Think of them as macros – you can chain

several actions together (mark as read,

move to folder, etc.)

o Different from Rules in that you get to

select which email(s) need Quick Steps

applied (CTRL-Click to select several

emails; SHIFT-Click to select contiguous

emails)

o Quick Steps can also automate tasks

related to outgoing email – more on that

later.

o EXPLORE!


TAGGING JUNK MAILRight-click on any message and choose

Junk > Block Sender to flag it as a Junk

item. That will re-route any future

messages to the Junk folder.

Conversely, check your Junk folder DAILY

for anything that shouldn’t be there, right-

click on it, and choose Never Block

Sender (for an individual email) or Never

Block Sender’s Domain (for all emails

from a particular company).


TURN EMAILS INTO TASKS OR CALENDAR ITEMS

o Drag any email down to the lower left-hand

corner to the folders

o When you release the mouse button, you’ll have

3 options:

o Copy as Text – Embeds the text of the email into the resulting Task or Calendar item

o Copy as Attachment – Good for any emails that have attachments you want to preserve within the Task or Calendar item

o Move as Attachment – Ditto, except takes email out of your Inbox altogether

o When you release mouse button again, a new

Task or Calendar item window pops up so you

can complete and save.


USING OUTLOOK TO MANAGE OUTGOING EMAIL

Did that person receive or read my email?

Did my email get lost in an overflowing inbox?

Would it be annoying/micromanaging to follow up to see if/when they’ll respond?

Why did that recipient reply to me and not my assistant as I instructed?

Would I prefer to send this email later instead of right now, but I'm afraid I'll get busy and forget?

I send this same email all the time - can't I automate some of that?

I'm going to be out of the office - how can I notify the right people without making myself vulnerable to bad guys?

You don’t think about outgoing mail as something to be “managed”,

but how many times a day do you wonder:


DELIVER/READ RECEIPTS

Opinions differ as to whether

these are a good idea, and they

don’t always return accurate or

helpful information.

But if you’re sending a message

for which these are appropriate,

before you click Send, go to the

Options tab and check the boxes

highlighted at right.


FLAGGING MESSAGES FOR FOLLOW UPIf your email is hosted on Exchange

Server OR you’re using POP email, you

can attach flags to outgoing email to

prompt your and/or your recipients’

follow up. The flags show up in the Inbox

view, and flagged emails also show up on

the Task list as something that needs to

be done. Plus, at the date and time set on

the reminder, a window pops up with an

alarm (just like Calendar items).

Effectiveness of this for outside recipients

is a little iffy, but this works great for

people on your same Exchange server.


REDIRECTING REPLIESMost Outlook users don’t know they can

control the Reply-To address for their

outgoing messages. When the recipient

hits the Reply button, you can designate

more/other addresses for the To: address

block of their message.

This is good for redirecting replies to

your assistant or ensuring specific people

are included in the reply if the recipient

doesn’t hit Reply All.

This feature is found on the Options tab.


DELAY DELIVERY / SEND LATER

You can even control what date/time your outgoing

message actually leaves your Outbox! This is good

for:

o Just-in-time reminders (ex: remind client 1 hour

before meeting with directions and parking

instructions)

o Sending message right before a deadline when

you know you’ll be too busy

NOTE: Your Outlook must be up-and-running at the

date and time your message is queued to exit the

Outbox; otherwise, it’ll sit there until you start

Outlook again!


OUT-OF-OFFICE (A.K.A. AUTOMATIC REPLIES)This is where you notify people that

you’re away from the office with

limited/no access to email or otherwise

unavailable.

Check with your professional liability

insurance carrier for guidelines on content

and recipients.

This is only available to you if your email

is hosted on Exchange Server.

The Automatic Replies button is found on

the File tab of Outlook.


OUT OF OFFICE (A.K.A. AUTOMATIC REPLIES)

Message to internal recipients Message to external recipients


QUICK PARTS FOR “CANNED” REPLIES, ETC.

If you find yourself replying to email with the same

text over and over, save it as a Quick Part for

future use.

Select your text, go to the Insert tab, and choose

Save Selection to Quick Part Gallery.


SIGNATURES

To set up signature

blocks, go to the File

tab and click Options:

You’ll see the Options dialog box. Click Mail, then click the

Signatures button:


SIGNATURES


MISCELLANEOUS TIPS

Don’t use urgent exclamation marks

Using the flags for outbound reminders/great for assistants

Put your Signatures on smartphones or at least your phone

Texting with clients outside of “I’ll be there at 10” is not recommended

Outlook cannot be configured to email text. This means you cannot get texts sent to your Outlook so you can reply faster than using your phone.


HOW MUCH TIME COULD YOU SAVE?

Source: http://xkcd.com/1205/


FINAL HOW TO FOLLOW OUR TIPS – QUICK OUTLINE

Set aside some time to work on this

Create the new subfolders you need for your top folder delegation

Create your quick parts for quick replies with a canned message

Create a scheduled day on your calendar to deal with the “quick responses” to deal with the email you don’t want to handle as you get them

Clear the inbox of all old email. Tip! Clear out everything past 100 and use these tips to help you with the last 100, training yourself.

Now tackle on those 100, make an instant decision on what to do with that email


QUICK OUTLINE CONTINUED

Answer immediately, then move the email to the correct folder on computer or smartphone to work “work in progress” folder

Delegate it

Respond and move to “Thursday” folder, use Quick Parts!

Junk it

MAXIMIZING THE UTILITY OF MICROSOFT OUTLOOK · MAXIMIZING THE UTILITY OF Presented by: MICROSOFT...

Documents

Transcript of MAXIMIZING THE UTILITY OF MICROSOFT OUTLOOK · MAXIMIZING THE UTILITY OF Presented by: MICROSOFT...