White’s of Henry Lane

A little less than a year ago, I wrote about a simple technique in Outlook that I’ve employed to simplify my email management. The technique is more social engineering than technical solution. In short, I suggest sticking agreed-upon keywords at the front of your subject line, and then setting up a rule to autosort them. The post has been very popular, and a number of folks asked me to explain exactly how to do this. This is that long awaited post.

This hack will be orders of magnitude easier if your company uses a docket system to track client work. My employer uses a system of three letters that are remiscent of the client’s name, then three digits for the project. So let’s say we’re doing some work for Brewsley Brewing Corp. We might have dockets like this that we charge our time against:

• BRU 101: Define and Discovery phase, consumer site
• BRU 102: HTML email newsletters
• BRU 103: Investor relations site redesign

The first step is to get everyone to agree to prepend [BRU 101] to their subject line. If you can’t make this happen, you aren’t totally out of luck. If you just stick that in the subject line yourself, you’ll be able to at least capture responses to your mail. But this is most useful if you can get everyone to agree to use this technique.

The next step is to create a folder for either the client (if its a low volume project) or the docket. Once you’ve done that, create a rule for each docket code that routes the email from your inbox to the appropriate folder. If you need help with this, you can check Microsoft Assistance’s “Create a Rule”.

At the very minimum, move the message. I like to also clear the new message notification, but maintain unread. I also do this with a set of rules that automatically flags the project managers from whom I get the most tasks as “Follow Up”. This gives me two quick ways of seeing what’s been dropped in my lap, and ensures that my inbox stays clean. This also gives you far more control over when you address your mail. If you’re not booked on a project, don’t open that folder.

One of the questions I was asked was “do you have to do this for every docket”? Unfortunately, yes, with the default rules wizard there are no regular expressions options that would allow you to capture the docket string, and use it for the destination folder. It seems to me, though, that there should be a way to do this with VBA. There is an article at Windows IT Pro with code that allows you to automatically move items marked “Important” to a folder which might work as a basis, if anyone is interested.