Office communications protocol

[Unas]

Kind of ironic to think of e-mail, central to a paperless office, as a paper trail.

 

[tvguy]

I realize how very unique your environment must be as well as your employee base seems to be very young and transient. I guess the TV News business is really like no other work environment.

Yup. 2 years in about average, and most are under 30. This is my shortest tenure in a job, 9 years, and I've over 50. I was in my last job 16 years, and the one before 12. DW blows it all out of the water, she has been at her station 35 years in September.

 

[Robinrs]

As I have commented, the immediacy of things at my work may be out of the norm, but I have to comment that I am a little amazed at how many people feel the need to have a paper trail at work. That's a little disturbing.

In my office there are only three of us working in the office regularly. Everyone else either travels, are stationed at a station or works at the studio. I communicate with over 200 tv stations all over the country (maybe even YOURS ) and every single one of them need a paper trail. I even get mad when one of my co-workers at the office don't follow up a conversation with an email.

My email IS my file most of the time because so much of what we do is thru conversation.

 

[Robinrs]

Yup. 2 years in about average, and most are under 30. This is my shortest tenure in a job, 9 years, and I've over 50. I was in my last job 16 years, and the one before 12. DW blows it all out of the water, she has been at her station 35 years in September.

Wow~35 years???

Mind if I ask what dept is she in? Is it admin or traffic? Those are the depts most people die in!

 

[tvguy]

Wow~35 years???

Mind if I ask what dept is she in? Is it admin or traffic? Those are the depts most people die in!

Editing.

Traffic department is almost a thing of the past. None at my place or my wife's. Department eliminated and all done remotely from corporate. Turnout in Admin is every couple of years too.

 

[Robinrs]

Editing.

Traffic department is almost a thing of the past. None at my place or my wife's. Department eliminated and all done remotely from corporate. Turnout in Admin is every couple of years too.

Sad, it's what I did for almost 30 years. Now it's all hubbed out like making money for the company is a second thought.

 

[tvguy]

In my office there are only three of us working in the office regularly. Everyone else either travels, are stationed at a station or works at the studio. I communicate with over 200 tv stations all over the country (maybe even YOURS ) and every single one of them need a paper trail. I even get mad when one of my co-workers at the office don't follow up a conversation with an email.

My email IS my file most of the time because so much of what we do is thru conversation.

I have run into this at the bottom of e-mails a few times this year.

Our company accepts no liability for the content of this email, or for the consequences of any actions taken on the basis of the information provided, unless that information is subsequently confirmed in writing. If you are not the intended recipient you are notified that disclosing, copying, distributing or taking any action in reliance on the contents of this information is strictly prohibited.

 

[tvguy]

Sad, it's what I did for almost 30 years. Now it's all hubbed out like making money for the company is a second thought.

Yes, the HUB. One for traffic. One that can run the station remotely (and does nightly from 11:35 pm to 3 am). We even have an HR HUB, but at least THAT is at our station. The days of someone in traffic scurrying in to make log changes the break before a spot is supposed to run are long gone. The log is finalized at noon for the next broadcast day, and the log day starts at 5 am

 

[Robinrs]

I have run into this at the bottom of e-mails a few times this year.

Our company accepts no liability for the content of this email, or for the consequences of any actions taken on the basis of the information provided, unless that information is subsequently confirmed in writing. If you are not the intended recipient you are notified that disclosing, copying, distributing or taking any action in reliance on the contents of this information is strictly prohibited.

I see this disclaimer a lot, also. I get LOTS of emails not intended for me so I understand that. Some include highly sensitive information. I send it back to the sender with a "I don't think this is for me" note.

 

[tvguy]

I see this disclaimer a lot, also. I get LOTS of emails not intended for me so I understand that. Some include highly sensitive information. I send it back to the sender with a "I don't think this is for me" note.

I get a few mistaken faxes...got a ladies entire medicla history once....and yes we still have a fax machine, a lot of government agencies only accept and send documents via fax.

 

[kwelch10377]

As I have commented, the immediacy of things at my work may be out of the norm, but I have to comment that I am a little amazed at how many people feel the need to have a paper trail at work. That's a little disturbing.

Not sure why you would find a paper trail disturbing. It is really helpful to be able to look back at an email to see what had been done in the past for something, double check a response, etc. I work on creating on a lot of customer survey questionnaires and we have may different versions and notes in emails on why something may have been changed. I can't tell you how many times someone would ask, well who wanted such and such a thing changed. It makes life so much easier when I can take a email and just forward it to that person telling them who made the change and why.

 

[mamacatnv]

Not sure why you would find a paper trail disturbing. It is really helpful to be able to look back at an email to see what had been done in the past for something, double check a response, etc. I work on creating on a lot of customer survey questionnaires and we have may different versions and notes in emails on why something may have been changed. I can't tell you how many times someone would ask, well who wanted such and such a thing changed. It makes life so much easier when I can take a email and just forward it to that person telling them who made the change and why.

How do you organize all the conversations? I'm in a new position and the email is making me crazy. I can't decide if I should keep or just delete when the conversation is finished

 

[kwelch10377]

How do you organize all the conversations? I'm in a new position and the email is making me crazy. I can't decide if I should keep or just delete when the conversation is finished

I keep everything in folders in my Outlook. I have a folder for each of my projects (and in some cases sub folders) that way I can see everything for one project in one folder. If I do need to reference something it may take a little digging through which email train it was in, but at least I have everything narrowed down some. I also have an archive folder where I will transfer any inactive project folders into. It did take me a while to determine what emails I really did need to keep and which ones I can delete. Now I have such a better idea of what things I may need to reference back to it is so much easier for me to determine what I may need to look at again.

 

[Hrhpd]

All the out of office people I contact get their e-mail on their cell phone, and to say e-mail delivery that way is unreliable would be an understatement. They will immediately get a call too.

You seem to have an unusual amount of technology problems.

I would definitely have one of your techs look into that.

DH works for a large, well known IT company. They are global, so he is communicating with people all over the world at all different hours. A huge portion of the company also telecommutes. Extremely difficult to do much face to face. When they are in the office, it is e-mails, chat and conference calls.

Outside of the office, his phone is his life. He receives e-mails on it hourly, 24x7, although never followed up by a phone call. Never has had a problem receiving his e-mails on his phone.

I would hit the ceiling if his e-mails were followed by a call. We would never get any sleep nor family time.

 

[tvguy]

You seem to have an unusual amount of technology problems.

I would definitely have one of your techs look into that.

DH works for a large, well known IT company. They are global, so he is communicating with people all over the world at all different hours. A huge portion of the company also telecommutes. Extremely difficult to do much face to face. When they are in the office, it is e-mails, chat and conference calls.

Outside of the office, his phone is his life. He receives e-mails on it hourly, 24x7, although never followed up by a phone call. Never has had a problem receiving his e-mails on his phone.

I would hit the ceiling if his e-mails were followed by a call. We would never get any sleep nor family time.

Oh boy do we have technical issues with email. We switched to Microsoft Office 365 a few months ago. Today I got an email from someone in Phoenix asking me to remove her from my mailing list. She isn't one it. Local IT escalated it to Corporate IT who escalated it to Microsoft. This person is not at my location, not on the mailing list, and there is no way she should be getting these emails, but she is.

I understand people working remotely. My original post was people e-mailing or calling people 3 or 4 desks away.

My son is an IT consultant so get a bit of feedback from him. His biggest frustration are when software vendors point fingers at each other when it is clear which vendor's software if the problem.

 

[Lynne M]

I keep everything in folders in my Outlook. I have a folder for each of my projects (and in some cases sub folders) that way I can see everything for one project in one folder. If I do need to reference something it may take a little digging through which email train it was in, but at least I have everything narrowed down some. I also have an archive folder where I will transfer any inactive project folders into. It did take me a while to determine what emails I really did need to keep and which ones I can delete. Now I have such a better idea of what things I may need to reference back to it is so much easier for me to determine what I may need to look at again.

I used to do folders, I gave up on it pretty quickly because it took too much time. Now I flag e-mails that need further attention, and use For Follow Up and work my way down the list. If I need to find some info in an old e-mail, I just use the 'search all mail items' box.

It's much quicker to search than it is to organize messages into folders.

 

[kwelch10377]

I used to do folders, I gave up on it pretty quickly because it took too much time. Now I flag e-mails that need further attention, and use For Follow Up and work my way down the list. If I need to find some info in an old e-mail, I just use the 'search all mail items' box.

It's much quicker to search than it is to organize messages into folders.

I'll flag stuff that I know need a response or follow up.

So much of my stuff has the same type in it, so search is not helpful because it usually brings up tons of results. I think a lot of how you organize depends on what you do. It took me a little time to figure out what works best.

 

[tvguy]

I'll flag stuff that I know need a response or follow up.

So much of my stuff has the same type in it, so search is not helpful because it usually brings up tons of results. I think a lot of how you organize depends on what you do. It took me a little time to figure out what works best.

I had forgotten our e-mails auto-purge after 6 months or when your mailbox hits 250 MB here. You certainly could save them as a word document I guess. My last job the auto purge came at 60 days and 100 mb.
32,000 employees keeping e-mails will fill up a lot of hard drive space.

 

[disneychrista]

I used to do folders, I gave up on it pretty quickly because it took too much time. Now I flag e-mails that need further attention, and use For Follow Up and work my way down the list. If I need to find some info in an old e-mail, I just use the 'search all mail items' box. It's much quicker to search than it is to organize messages into folders.

I have mine set up to auto sort into folders, based on email.

 

[kwelch10377]

I had forgotten our e-mails auto-purge after 6 months or when your mailbox hits 250 MB here. You certainly could save them as a word document I guess. My last job the auto purge came at 60 days and 100 mb.
32,000 employees keeping e-mails will fill up a lot of hard drive space.

Anything in our regular Outlook auto deletes after 3 months. Personal folders in Outlook only delete if they are deleted manually. All the personal email files in Outlook are only available if you are connected to the our network and we have no issues with not having enough space to store stuff on our servers and we have 60K employees worldwide. Saving them to Word wouldn't make any difference because you still have to save the Word files to the same network servers that you would the email.