Computer Tip of the Day: Managing Your Emails

computer tip of the day managing your emails

computer tip of the day

In the business world, one of the keys to success is knowing how to be organized. Whether you’re managing important files on your desktop, or are browsing through your web applications, always keep things organized. However, the same applies to your emails as well.

Sometimes, you receive important messages from your coworkers, while other times you’re bombarded with junk mail. What are some tips for managing your emails? Here are a few things to keep in mind for today’s computer tip.

One way to better manage your emails, is by setting up a spam filter. It catches all of your junk mail, which helps to separate the important emails, from the ones that are useless. However, you should also make sure to add any important email addresses to your “safe senders” list. While the filter is useful, it’s also known for catching important messages or ones that aren’t in your contact list. Adding your contacts to the “safe senders” list, prevents these emails from being regarded as junk.

Also, it’s important you clean out your inbox on a regular basis, discarding messages that aren’t needed. The longer you wait, the more your messages pile up, and it eventually becomes a jumble of businesses emails and unimportant junk. If nothing else, try cleaning out your inbox on a weekly basis. This helps to prevent things from getting too overwhelming.

For more information about the importance of managing your emails, contact us today at AE Technology Group. We look forward to hearing from you.

Taking Full Advantage of Gmail

taking full advantage of gmail

Gmail has a few powerful tricks that can protect your personal information and improve your efficiency in business. Today we will discuss them in our computer tip of the day.

Manually Redirecting Spam

After your account name, you can place a plus sign and a keyword that you want to highlight as a source of spam. Gmail allows you to redirect these emails into any folder that you want.

Proprietary Domain Structuring

You can make a Gmail address look as though it is sending mail from your own website domain. The listing is under Settings, then Accounts, then Add a New Email Address. Input your name and the other email address that you want to use.

Connect Your RSS Reader to Gmail

Setting up your RSS reader to let you know when you get a new Gmail message is easy. Enter the feed name as “https://gmail.google.com/gmail/feed/atom.” Then enter your password and your username. Not all feed readers have this capacity, so do not automatically assume that it is your fault if this trick does not work; just switch feeders.

Make sure that you contact us for all of your IT support needs. We give you a full team of specialists for less than the price of a single in-house IT employee. You get more service, less hassle and a team of professionals who know how to stop problems before they become truly serious.

What You Need to Know About the Newly Upgraded Office 365 E5 Plan

what you need to know about the newly upgraded office 365 e5 plan

office 365 e5 plan

If your business has its finger on the pulse of software productivity, you might have heard by now that Microsoft has made a few changes in their top-tier enterprise plan.

The new Office 365 E5 plan takes the place of the old E4 plan, with many of the same features, as well as several that are new. For anyone looking to find a package that crams as much productivity software and services as possible into a single package, Microsoft has certainly hit the nail on the head.

The E5 plan includes a gamut of new features that make it more worthwhile, however, and should not be dismissed right away. Note that these features come at an extra price for anyone on the lower plans.

  • Advanced Threat Protection for secure attachments and URLs
  • Cloud PBX (Private Branch Exchange) through Skype for Business
  • PSTN Conferencing and Calling
  • Fully integrated Delve Analytics
  • Power BI Pro

The most powerful features of the E5 plan are the last two listed. Delve is a software that helps monitor the health and collaboration among groups of coworkers, clearly and beautifully displayed analysis of communications. Power BI Pro is a new tool to analyze your company’s data quickly and easily. Microsoft touts the possibilities,

“In less than five minutes you can start creating personalized dashboards and reports on your data using natural language and drag-and-drop gestures to find answers to your most important questions.”

If you have any questions or just want a bit more clarity on what this plan is all about, please contact us.

Computer Tip of the Day: Step Away from Angry Emails

computer tip of the day step away from angry emails

computer tip of the day

Email makes it easy to respond to someone else without actually confronting them face-to-face. This can prove a problem when you’re trying to respond to something negative. You don’t see the other person, so you’re more likely to say something negative, insulting or unprofessional because all you’re doing is typing words to get emotions off your chest. You sometimes forget in the heat of the moment that someone else will be reading your words and if he or she is offended, your business may lose an important client, a responsive vendor, or a valued colleague.

If you feel the anger or other strong emotion welling up inside you when you read a negative email, the advice in this computer tip of the day should help you formulate a good response.

  • Do something else. Spend at least half an hour doing something else, preferably away from your desk. Perhaps you need to file that stack of documents that’s been building up, inventory some supplies, or take a walk outside the office. Any activity can break the stewing of emotions that leads to overly dramatic responses.
  • Put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Is the other person behaving normally? In that case, you can respond normally as well. Is the other person uncharacteristically negative? Then put yourself in his or her shoes to uncover the actual reason behind the negative email.
  • Get a second opinion. Go ahead and type your responding email but do not fill in the To field, so you don’t accidentally send it. Then have a trusted co-worker look at the text. A dispassionate set of eyes can tell you if your words are unprofessional and emotional and offer ways to clean it up. If you’re a one-person shop, set the response aside and look at it again the next day. Most people allow at least a day for any responses to come back.

Any unprofessional email that you send can come back to haunt you and your business when it becomes part of the Internet. So it’s worthwhile to judge anything thoroughly you send out, especially email.

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6 Benefits of Zarafa Email

6 benefits of zarafa email

The Zarafa program offers traditional groupware features and allows you to control almost every aspect of your inbox. The Zarafa email is an open source and collaboration service that is extremely reliable.

More details about the Zarafa Email software:

Open Source: The collaboration platform is licensed under Affero GPLv3. Zarafa uses standard Linux packages that are interchangeable with other packages which can do the same tasks.

User-Friendly: It is easy to use because the features; the address book, public folders and calendar are similar to Outlook and the layout is familiar. You can get connectivity with Outlook through a plugin.

Device Support: You can have a Web 2.0 Outlook feel through web access on any of your mobile devices and on all your ActiveSync compatible mobile devices.

Contacts: The technology enables you to create, use, and manage your contacts from one place as well as share contacts across your organization. Another great feature is the global address book.

Team Mailbox: You can connect email addresses to a team mailbox. The team members can monitor incoming messages. Each mailbox appears in a folder navigation pane and stays open until closed.

Add-Ons: The features you can add-on are Spreed, Dropbox, IM and ownCloud Support.

AE Technology Group understands your business and can provide computer network managed services. Zarafa Outlook Sharing & Webaccess gives you the advantages of Microsoft Exchange at only half the cost. It combines usability of Microsoft Outlook with the flexibility and stability of a Linux server. Zafra involves a fast setup process and easy migration.

For more information please contact us.