E-mails have become part of our lives both at work and at home. They are easier to retrieve than paper letters and can be reviewed on virtually any device from any location. Office workers often receive hundreds of e-mails every day, and sometimes it's just not possible to find the e-mail they're looking for.
A crowded inbox with old and spam messages can be frustrating alike. It makes it difficult to find the messages you're looking for, prevents new messages from coming in, and generally causes you to feel unorganized, improve your inbox, and keep messages to a minimum.
The first step in managing e-mail records management is to put messages in folders, groups, and priorities. By creating superordinate categories such as projects and finance, you can organize corporate emails. In addition, folders for individual customers keep the client's work organized.
In most e-mail programs, you can label messages with labels and flags to sort by importance. It's worth learning how to manage your emails both on the desktop and on the phone.
Filters automatically sort your emails when they reach your inbox. All you need to do is tell your e-mail provider which term to look out for and what action is needed. They can be quite verbose with them – currently Gmail has about 20 filters, including subject, body and e-mail address. Depending on the filters you set up, your emails will be automatically sorted or archived into different folders.
That can be quite daunting Delete a bunch of emails, but if you just do not read them, they just claim Storage space and make it difficult to find the emails you actually need. Delete emails that you do not read or classify as junk mail, and make your inbox much tidier.
When you send an e-mail that you may want to find later, try using certain words in the subject line instead of the usual terms "important", "article" or "review". This is even more important if you usually have long e-mail chains where many people respond at different times. Be precise and descriptive and try to use words that are specific to the email itself – this will greatly facilitate future search.
Emails are the lifeblood of the modern office environment. Although all e-mail systems create records, most e-mail systems are not designed to capture and manage e-mail as records. Rather, companies need to look for a suitable electronic recording system that records, manages and accesses records over time.
Access Records Management helps organizations store, scan, and destroy their records. We help them build organized digital filing systems and can save their files for them.
To find out how we can help you manage your personal and business records, contact our team today.
