 You've got mail
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Be a
responsible email user
AS AN EMAIL USER,
you have responsibilities to other users and to your organisation:
Check your mail at least daily: Anyone sending
you an email of any importance at all will have a minimum expectation for the time it will
take for you to get round to reading it. It is reasonable to expect that you access your
mail daily, if not more regularly. Obviously there will be circumstances when you
physically can not get to a suitable computer, in which case other arrangements should be
made.
- Respond quickly, even if it’s just a holding
response: Unless the mail is junk or ‘for information only’, you should aim
to respond promptly. It is so simple to make a quick email response, that there really is
no excuse for not doing it. If you really can not satisfy the request immediately, you can
always send a holding response to let the sender know that you are dealing with it and
when they can expect an answer.
Have your mail dealt with while you’re away:
When you will not be available to handle your email, you can make other arrangements. Most
email software will allow you to forward mail to another address. Some software will allow
you to send automatic holding responses telling the sender that you are away and for how
long. If neither of these is possible, you could email those people most likely to mail
you and let them know not to expect any response for the time that you are away.
Delete unwanted messages immediately: Messages
sitting in your in-box clog up the mail server, particularly when they come with
attachments (if you have a dial-up connection and have downloaded them from your ISP, then
you're clogging up your own hard disk). Do your organisation (or yourself) a favour
- get rid of them.
- Save messages for reference in an organised way:
Those messages that you need to keep - and that's a small minority - should be filed in an
orderly manner in folders that sensibly compartmentalise your work. That way you stand
some chance of finding them again.
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