Betsy Fanning of the AIIM Standards Watch is requesting Best Practices for Email Management:
AIIM recently initiated a community of practice (CoP) to develop best practices for email management.... If you have any topics that you would like the group to include in their discussions, please feel free to sent them to me at [bfanning AT aiim DOT org].
It sounds as if the group is closed, as she isn't inviting anyone to join. But she is asking for suggestions as to what the group should discuss. Here are my thoughts, duly submitted.
It would be nice to have pointers to research on the impact of "poor" management of email. I'm thinking of the bad practices we always discuss: inbox full of read-but-not-handled email; checking email frequently; bad subject lines; cc'ing to everyone... You know, the usual suspects.
Actually, that list of research on the impact basically suggests the topics I'd like to see covered.
- How to write email so that the recipients know what they are getting and know what they are expected to do: subject lines, CC list, body of the message.
- How often is "enough" for reading and responding to email? How to set these standards within a work group?
- Practices for effectively processing email so that email doesn't overwhelm the day.
- Hints and suggestions on the best ways to use popular email services: Outlook, Notes, Gmail. Are their applications that make the "best practices" easier to implement?
- Needs to be asked: Guidelines on dealing with spam and unsolicited email. The short form: ignore anything unsolicited or from unknown sources.
That list should get the committee started.