Too Many Emails!

I hear it quite often: "I get hundreds of emails every day! I can't keep up." Can you relate? Here are some ways to reduce the clutter.

Step 1 - Your Chatter Emails
I've been heartened to see that more and more people are posting things to Chatter rather than sending an email to the Everyone or Sales or Design group. This is one way to lessen emails. Do you get too many emails from Chatter? Here's what to do (below). Set all your Chatter notices in one place - right now - once!

• In Salesforce, click on your name near the top right, then Setup
• Go to My Chatter Settings > Chatter Email Settings

By default you get one daily digest email listing everything related to you in Chatter -- whatever group you're in, whoever you're following, and so on. So theoretically you don't need any more than that one. It has everything. Now, there may be exceptions to that. Maybe, for example, you'd like to get notified immediately if someone posts an update to something important to you. You decide. AND you set the default for all future groups you're in.

• Scroll down to the Groups section.
• In Set default frequency for groups I join: you can set the frequency of emails for any future groups you're added to. Remember: You'll get one a day that includes all Chatter related to you, so you would be safe to set this default to "Never."
• In the table below, indicate the frequency by group. Again, you could theoretically set them all to "Never" because you'll get everything in the personal daily digest.
• Save!

And there you go! One fell swoop and you've reduced your emails significantly. Now the only other thing is to be sure to post things in Chatter groups rather than send group emails!

Step 2 - Stop & Ask Yourself: Who Needs to Read This Right Now?

Often, the majority of our emails are messages we're being included on, as an fyi. Do your co-workers a favor, and hopefully they'll do the same: Really think before you include names on the cc or bcc line, even the to line. Who needs to see this message right away? Could you make one fyi message that reports a bunch of things to your manager or team member at the end of the day instead of copying them multiple times throughout the day? Or start a list to cover with them at your next meeting?

Step 3 - Rules

You can create mail rules to move messages directly to folders, or even delete immediately. Right click on a message you'd like to make a rule for and scroll down to "Rules." If you need detailed instructions, do a search for "mail rules" in Outlook help (click on the little blue question mark in the top right to get to Help). If you receive newsletters or regular, repeated emails that you'd just as soon have in a folder you check periodically, mail rules can be a great way to reduce what hits your Inbox.

Step 4 - The Future - Project Cloud

There will be new ways to work when we start using Project Cloud ("Dexter in the Cloud" -- Salesforce). We'll have lists of things that are pending -- such as "my pending requests for Khameleon Quotes" or "my pending requests for labor quotes" or "my forms waiting for approval" and so on. I think we'll find we don't need the email requests every time -- we'll just get in the habit of living in those lists.

We may also use Chatter in a new way in Project Cloud. You know in ServiceNet how you have a tab for discussions? Well, in Salesforce you can use Chatter on any object and have "discussions" there.

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Hope these ideas make sense and help. What about your ideas? How do you handle the email blizzard??