Use Web Mail More Efficiently

     There are many products that are available free to send, receive and view email through an internet browser. You have most likely heard of many of these mail services; gmail, hotmail, yahoo mail, etc. We all know and love these services that offer tons of free space to facilitate email communication. Signing up for these accounts is very easy and in minutes a user is established with an online email service. This works great for most people and there aren’t many complaints about free email.
     There are however pitfalls associated to these services and any email service for that matter. How often do you find yourself spending 80% of your dedicated email time sifting through garbage, marking messages as spam and searching for legitimate messages in your inbox? People new to email can easily become overwhelmed by this information overload and give up all together. Many users set up an email account then pass out the address to their friends and think nothing of the matter. Then, later when the same user signs up for something on the internet they provide the email address again without question. How many times have you given out your address to some random web page which offers site memberships and maybe even newsletters? This blatant carefree use of an email address is what leads an inbox to become a daunting and scary cluttered mess.

     The easiest way to combat this overbearing email onslaught is not as difficult as one may think. Add to the confusion and create a second email account. Actually a second email account can serve as a valuable tool with regard to mail organization and traffic management. A user can easily sign up for an alternative email account from another provider. This second account will allow a user to filter personal mail from mail that may be generated as a result of signing up with various websites. Let’s get rid of the trash. Sounds like a no brainer, right? A user now has a legit account, that she checks daily, and a second account that serves as a virtual trash bin. Checking this second account is as easy as logging in and deleting any messages that arrive. You don’t read that stuff anyway and if you did you would have provided your legitimate mail address in the first place. Pay special attention when giving out your mail addresses. Give out your main address sparingly use the second account for most everything else.

     What if you also have an email account associated with work? There are a few options to consider when you have two or more accounts that you want to actively check manage. Mail forwarding is a way to funnel all messages to a single account where they can be then organized. Forwarding options are usually easily managed within the web mail account. Check the settings of your web mail account and look for these options. Forwarding can be a great way to merge personal accounts but these should always remain separate from business mail accounts. Many places of business prefer that employees utilize work mail for all communication within the organization. It is wise to treat work mail as a completely separate entity. Forwarding work mail to a personal web mail account can potentially lead to disaster at work. Imagine working in the health care industry, as I do, and mistakenly sending an email containing patient information to someone in your contact list who is not within your organization. This creates a HIPPA violation. This applies to companies who often utilize non-disclosure agreements as well. Protected company information should never be given to the wrong individuals. Therefore, eliminate the chance of this happening and keep personal and company email communication separate.

     It is still very possible to manage work mail communication in a web browser environment. Many organizations allow users to access work email outside the company network. If this is a company wide practice you most likely received the logon instructions during your orientation process, if not ask your system administrator if web mail access is available. Outlook is widely used within the business world and works well with Microsoft Exchange Server, which is also commonly used. Exchange Server coordinates all company users’ email and Outlook allows users to create, read, save and send their messages. Many times, if Microsoft Exchange Server is being used, the web mail portions are also available. To check this, a user needs to know the company web URL (ex. www.somecompany.com), their domain name (ex. somedomain) and their personal username/password information. The domain name may need to be obtained from the system administrator but you can check for domain information through the properties window of “My Computer”. Look on the “Computer Name” tab for workgroup or domain name information. After you have gathered these pieces of information, open internet explorer and type the URL to the mail server into the address bar (ex. https://mail.somecompany.com/exchange). Notice the address settings add “https://mail.” before the company URL and “/exchange” at the end. This address points to the company network and the logon page dedicated to web mail. If this feature is enabled and the settings are default, users will see a logon screen where they must provide network user information such as domain, username and password. If this info is entered correctly the user will next see their mail inbox which looks much like the layout of Microsoft Outlook. Exact logon information should be obtained from your network administrator; your company may have changed from default settings.

     Now you potentially have three web mail accounts; personal, business and trash. It becomes a task in itself to keep track of the passwords and logon information associated with this many mail accounts. The best way to organize this is to attempt to make the settings similar for each account. I like to try and use similar names and passwords, if not the same, whenever possible. I realize this creates a security issue but I am diligent about changing these passwords frequently. And frankly, I could care less if someone got into my junk trash account, maybe they will do me a favor and delete all that junk for me.

     Finally, the efficiency of using these accounts can be maximized easily with one simple task. Place your mail icons where you can see and best use them. Instead of making icons on my desktop for each mail account and creating clutter, I prefer to shift this clutter to my internet browser. Internet Explorer 8 allows you to add favorite websites to a sub folder labeled “Favorites bar”. This will display convenient button links to pages within your favorites list. Use this list to your advantage. Place the logon pages of each of your mail accounts within this folder for web mail with true ease of use. Create easily located buttons for hotmail, yahoo mail, gmail and even one dedicated to you companies web mail logon page. There are many ways to optimize your use of web mail this article provides one approach that works very well for me.