Folders vs. Tags For Shared Email Accounts?

binarybum writes "I run a student organization with a 10-member 'board of directors.' We hardly ever all have time to attend meetings and a large part of how we interact with the student body is through email. We have a shared email account (accessible by the 10 of us on the board) right now that is typically accessed through an outlook web-access portal. We've been attempting to keep things organized in the account through a complex collection of folders that have been tacked on ad libum. It's turned into a complete mess. I have the onerous task of restructuring the folder system in hopes of achieving sustainable organization, but I'm wondering if I should just switch us over to a tagging system — perhaps Gmail. Has anyone used tags for a multi-user account successfully or does it end up being just as messy?"

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Re:Go with tags

[nacturation]

Use both. Problem solved.
 

Re:Go with tags

[ShieldW0lf]

It would make more sense to create a mailing list, and have emails sent to the list forwarded to all ten members. Then they could administer their folders as they see fit.

With 10 people on one email account, it's hardly surprising that it turned into a clusterfuck.

Re: Go with a mailing list

[nick_urbanik]

It would make more sense to create a mailing list, and have emails sent to the list forwarded to all ten members. Then they could administer their folders as they see fit.

With 10 people on one email account, it's hardly surprising that it turned into a clusterfuck.

Hear, hear!

Corporate emails at my work consist of endless top-posting after re-top-posting that must be read from the bottom to the top to make any sense of the mess. In the process, I need to skip over multiple re-inclusions of the same email, and not get annoyed that the entire mess mostly consists of disclaimers. LookOut seems to strongly encourage this technique of mis-communication.

"What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant disclaimer."
"

Re:

[Kalriath]

Um, LookOut is a search addon for Outlook. Are you blaming all that miscommunication on one of the two decent search addons?

Re: LookOut

[nick_urbanik]

LookOut is what you do when you use OutLook.

Re:

[lucas teh geek]

Corporate emails at my work consist of endless top-posting after re-top-posting that must be read from the bottom to the top to make any sense of the mess.

I hate top posting. the only thing worse than top posting, is when there's one person insisting on using the opposite posting style in reply to an email with many replies already in one style. (ie. top posting in reply to a bottom posted email thread/bottom posting in reply to a top-posted email thread) Then you cant just read bottom to top (or top to b

Re:

[kabloom]

Hear, hear!

Corporate emails at my work consist of endless top-posting after re-top-posting that must be read from the bottom to the top to make any sense of the mess.

I hate top posting. the only thing worse than top posting, is when there's one person insisting on using the opposite posting style in reply to an email with many replies already in one style. (ie. top posting in reply to a bottom posted email thread/bottom posting in reply to a top-posted email thread) Then you cant just read bottom to top (or top to bottom), instead you need to jump all over the friggin' place to follow the conversation.

Re:

[bpsbr_ernie]

Thats exactly what I do. We have a mailing list for Board members, Officers and Volunteers. It allows them to chat and discuss topics and lets them organize (or delete) items they no longer want. The mailing list also archives them, should anyone need to go back and review the history or find something they accidentally deleted.

Re:

[bigdavesmith]

All 10 of them use the same email account? The problem is far from solved... This is strait out of WTF.

Re:

[PopeRatzo]

Use both. Problem solved.

That's the winner, right there.

With all the organizational emphasis these days placed on "teams" (a term that makes me a little sick), you'd think that making a simple mailing list would be the most obvious choice, as ShieldW0lf points out.

Better yet (at least for me) is the old bulletin board model. Even with most mailing lists, I find myself ignoring a lot of the incoming messages, mostly because most of them aren't important to me.

With a simple forum-style bulletin board, I ca

Re:Go with tags

[djinnn]

I tend to agree: using tags, you're not limited to disjoint sets.
Intersections are quite common in real life, and designing the perfect category tree is not easy nor fast. Even when you succeed, you're always running the risk of being confronted with a new item that doesn't fit in your tree, or would need a complete tree redesign to fit in well (see biology).

However, tag systems usually are "all-flat" (Gmail is anyway): there is no notion of sub-category.
If you're going to have dozens of tags, this is going to be messy too...

Re:Go with tags

[timeOday]

Tagging still requires everybody to have a consistent ontology (i.e. to want to use the same set of labels, and to interpret them consistently) which in practice they won't. I would choose something with a good search facility instead. Throw it all in a huge pile and just search it later.

(Actually I agree with other posters who say this is just a normal application for an email list, let people do whatever they want, but the OP ruled that out?)

Re:

[Firehed]

Yeah, but the ontology problem is going to apply to any system. Searching may be the way to go, but tagging is also quite effective, and the combination of the two is probably the best without making [e-mail] send out to ten private accounts in a small list of sorts.

Lucky Gmail combines tags with great searching, and it sounds like it's already on the table. The good thing with tagging is that since it's not stuck to a single folder, duplicate tags (if you will) aren't going to clog things u

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Re:

[tom's a-cold]

Throw it all in a huge pile and just search it later.

Based on having done it a number of times before, I disagree. Free-text search gives poor result relevancy compared to search that's aware of metadata. So use tags, AND also invest in a decent search tool.

And it's worth spending some time coming up with an initial set of tags. That, by the way, is taxonomy not ontology. Ontology is about modeling a wider range of relationships than the "is-a"/"has-a" that taxonomy covers.

If the users want to add mo

Re:

[Zhiroc]

When accessing GMail via IMAP, it emulates folders by interpreting a '/' in the tag as the "directory separator". It gives you the flexibility of tags with the organization of folders, if you want it. However, the web interface doesn't do this. And, of course, it doesn't solve the problems others mention with consistent use.

Re:

[Dan541]

The Problem is that email wasn't intended to have 10 users per address.

The best way to go would be to try out a "support ticket system."

why sare?

[woodchip]

Why don't you just send a copy of every email sent to that address to each of the 10 members individuals addresses, and let each of them sort it anyway they want.

Re:why sare?

[hyfe]

Why don't you just send a copy of every email sent to that address to each of the 10 members individuals addresses, and let each of them sort it anyway they want.

That only works well under the presumption that everyone's able/bothered to work out their own filtering system... and that's one heck of a presumption :)

If you're going to use tags, since you're a small group you're pretty much going to have to limit yourself to a set predefined ones.. and then the only difference between tags and folders is that a document can only have one folder, but several tags. If you're only 10 people I doubt you really need that finegrained a control, so folders should work just as well as tags.

That said, what this essentially boils down to is the general answer to next to every bloody architectural question out there is; it doesn't matter what you do, as long as you do it well. Seriously, what solution you choose is next to never important, it's how well you use that solution that matters.

Re:

[Bloke down the pub]

In that case it seems to me that email is the wrong solution anyway.

Re:

[zappepcs]

I agree that use of the system is paramount, but to put a finer point on it, all users should agree what tags should be used. For example: If you have a '2008race' tag and an 'Election2008' tag it gets messy quickly.

Should such email data be tagged 'politics' or 'election' or 'RonPaul' or something entirely different.

When you alone are using the tagging it is easy to remember what tags are for what. If you share it, you should also share a hierarchy of tag name/use conventions. Without it, you are just los

Re:

[pipatron]

For example: If you have a '2008race' tag and an 'Election2008' tag it gets messy quickly.

When this is discovered, the incorrect tag will be deleted, the message will be tagged with the correct one, and the person who used a completely new tag when there was one suitable would be flogged. Just as if someone puts a message in the wrong folder.

Should such email data be tagged 'politics' or 'election' or 'RonPaul' or something entirely different.

It should be tagged 'politics' if it has to do with politics, in this case yes. It should be tagged 'election' if it has to do with an election, so again, yes. It should be tagged 'RonPaul' if it has to do with Ron Paul, so who knows.

With tags it's not

Re:

[Kelbear]

That's the method we use. It's a presumption, but being able to organize your own affairs is a basic prerequisite for a wide expanse of roles. If they can't sort out their own stuff, how can you expect them to assist in sorting anything else out? It's pretty reasonable to expect them to be able to keep track of their own sorting system, and not reasonable to expect them to find things as quickly when someone else has done all the sorting first and they now need to find where the e-mails went.

For us, e-mails

Lazy versus incompetent

[sjbe]

That only works well under the presumption that everyone's able/bothered to work out their own filtering system...

I don't buy the "able" argument personally. That's just laziness to my mind. Which leaves "bothered" in your terminology. If someone can't be bothered to organize their own account I find it highly unlikely they will be bothered in a joint account.

Personally I think joint accounts are normally a terrible idea. They are extremely difficult to maintain since (supposedly) everyone is responsible. In my experience if everyone is supposed to be responsible then in reality no one is actually responsible. Tragedy of the commons [wikipedia.org] applies here. Everyone trusts someone else will deal with it and it becomes a big old mess.

Re:

[binarybum]

This is exactly the problem, and it seems especially difficult in a student organization where people are doing this sort of stuff just for fun or for resume building - irresponsibility runs rampant. I'm leaning towards giving only the secretary access to the account and just having her selectively forward incoming mail to the pertinent board members. Perhaps I'll start using a board accessible google documents as a storage space for old event fliers, databases, sample thank-you letters, etc. (instead of

Re:

[grcumb]

Why don't you just send a copy of every email sent to that address to each of the 10 members individuals addresses, and let each of them sort it anyway they want.

That only works well under the presumption that everyone's able/bothered to work out their own filtering system... and that's one heck of a presumption :)

Correction: That only works well if you accept that people are capable of being moderately competent at their job.

This is a textbook example of someone trying to use a technical answer to replace (not improve) a human process. Unless the members of the group are going to actively use a consistent and mutually comprehensible process, no amount of tagging or arbitrary organisational measures is going to work. And in any group of 5 or more people, that's a lot to ask.

The solution: Set a few basic expecta

Re:

[DarkProphet]

Or, you know, they could take sheer minutes out of their "busy" lives and actually show up for their meetings and skirt the issue entirely. There is no technological solution for irresponsibility and/or laziness. Period. The poster asked the wrong question in the first place. Don't dignify it by trying to give a reasonable response. They fail and so do you.

Re:

[techno-vampire]

Why? Because that would be the sensible approach, rather than the technological approach. A slashdotter will always prefer technology over common sense. You must be new here.

Re:

[crispin_bollocks]

Sounds like I'd have an equal chance of receiving no reply or 10 different replies. Why not use some sort of CRM instead of just webmail?

Forward to individual accounts

[Eric Smith]

The only way it's going to work well is if no one uses the group account directly, but rather all of the email it receives is forwarded to the individual accounts of the members. Then each member can organize the mail however he or she sees fit.

Re:

[JackieBrown]

KDE 4's Kmail in trunk supports tags.

Somewhat the same situation here

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in the board of a student organisation as well, together with 6 other people. We all have our own e-mail account and one catch-all account. The abactis is in charge of all mail (snail and e) and has her own computer with all of the e-mail accounts via IMAP open. There she can drag and drop e-mail and keep a look at all mail.

Use a group

[rmcd]

This sounds like an ideal application for a Google or Yahoo groups account. You would have a private group for the board. All of the e-mail would be available in a central location, with individual messages accessible by search, and each board member could forward each mail to their own personal account or not, as they see fit.

Re:

[Macblaster]

I completely agree. We established a Google Group for the board I am on, and find it is ideal. Collaberative documents can be shared using Google Docs, we can post other important files to the group page as well, etc. If anything, it means that we can just email the group's email list, instead of having to CC all members for every important conversation.

Re:

[TorKlingberg]

Not really. Those services are for discussion inside a group, not for handling emails from outside.

Re:

[sjbe]

Those services are for discussion inside a group, not for handling emails from outside.

So set up an email account to forward to the group. Problem solved. A Google Group (or similar - not recommending a specific one) would be a MUCH better solution than a joint email account for almost any application I can think of unless there is some pretty serious security issues involved.

Link one email address to several accounts

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you *sharing* a single email account? Why not instead have a email account that will forward all e-mails to that one account to every other member of the board?

This is far more efficient, since then each person can manage their own emails, and it's also far more SECURE. When people leave the board, you don't have to keep changing email addresses. Also, when someone sends an email from this one address, you don't know who actually sent it so there is zero accountability.

The solution you have is by

I like the tags

[jgarra23]

My email has never been more organized and I can put things under multiple tags. Using GMail... there are some filtering techniques they are lacking but overall it's great & the have a nice function "filter for emails like these" that can aid in creating filters...

Tags

[drgonzo59]

Go with tags, they are more powerful. Folders will force you into a hierarchy (if you can even have sub-folders).

With tags you can create arbitrary categories. So a "status" tag can be assigned to an email that already has a "report" tag but also to the one that has a "meetings" tag. In other words it is like being able to put the same object in two different folders.

One drawback of tags is, that it is harder to visualize. Google does a good job with searching but I can't think how you can visualize it (as a graph/hypergraph actually might work).

The other drawback is that people are more used to folder because they dealt with file systems before ("I'll make a folder for dates, then inside we'll split them by topic" kind of thinking).

Suggestion

[Jeff321]

Use a message board.

Google Apps (but how?)

[bgfay]

I like the idea of a Google Apps account and just sending everything to everyone's account. So how does one do such a thing centrally so that users don't have to think about it? My ideal solution would be to have users send mail to [e-mail] and it would then distribute it to everyone in the group. Is that possible with Google Apps?

Re:

[rmcd]

Look into google groups. Each user can decide what to do with new messages, including forwarding messages to their own accounts.

Re:

[bgfay]

Okay, here's how dumb I am: we have a Google Group and almost everyone is using it in just this way. Wow, I should probably quit sniffing so much glue.

Folders allow better organization

[engun]

Personally, I like hierarchical organization over tagging. I think it's more natural to organize information this way and helps you to narrow down your subject faster. For example, I have a folder called work within which there is a folder for each project I work on. If I move an e-mail into just one of these project folders, I've already significantly narrowed things down.

Tagging on the other hand is just like having a folder a single level deep. One difference is that you can tag the same e-mail multi

I used to think that way..

[Junta]

Until I thought about the ability to have multiple tags on an item. Essentially, with tagging you have the full power of set arithmetic. A hierarchical scheme can be considered a strict subset. If you have INBOX, with a subfolder called 'Bank', and a subfolder called 'Credit', you can acheive the same thing by tagging the same message both 'bank' and 'credit'. The 'subfolder' would now represent the set intersection of the two tags. True, all your groups are visiibile from the top level, but a UI could

Re:

[Zaphod2016]

I'm not sure that would work.

Msg 1 tags: bank, credit

Msg 2 tags: credit, visa

Msg 3 tags: bank, visa

Define the drill-down structure.

If you are going to limit user input, so that some keyword combinations are prohibited, you are essentially back to using a rigid set of cats & sub-cats.

My solution has always been to list related tags. Ex: when browsing "credit" show related tag "visa", "bank", or use a recursive function to go back X relationships to show the entire tag family (i.e. bank => visa => c

Re:

[pthisis]

All available tags can be drilled down (assuming you've not already drilled them down and there's something in the sub-intersection).

So at the top, you could go bank->visa or visa->bank and you'd see message3.

It's not a hierarchy.

Top level is
bank
    credit
    visa
credit
    bank
    visa
visa
    credit
    bank

Re:

[Zaphod2016]

So what you end up with is a tag cloud, which shows related tags once selected. I'm imagining a menu based on many, many unique organic tags, with only a few top level options, as to be readable.

Re:

[maxume]

http://del.icio.us/tag/work+project [del.icio.us]
http://del.icio.us/tag/multiple+tags [del.icio.us]

Tags: Good; Another Idea?

[no1home]

Emails don't really fit into the folder structure very well because they might belong to several groupings at the same time, thus requiring multiple copies or shortcuts/links to an original (which most email programs don't do). Tags are definitely better for this since an email can have many tags at once.

Here's another idea you might, or might not, like:

Use GMail, or similar, for a group of accounts, one of which is the main, public address. This main account auto-forwards to the 10 member accounts, much like a list-serve. Replies from a member are CC'ed to the main account (set the rules right, or you could end up with an endless loop!!) and the 'Reply To:' field from the members is to the main account. This way, everybody gets everything, the group account is still the focal point, and everybody is responsible for keeping their own account organized.

If a single person is responsible for all of this (you?), you can set it up such that you are the one who can make changes to all the accounts and the others only have emailing privileges (but I haven't thought this part out and it may be difficult with some systems). One thing to consider if you use this is to either have an agreement (which some will break) or a setup that does not allow the users to use this account setup with out the CC'ing. This prevents them from using the account for personal or nefarious reasons.

Re:

[Belial6]

Ok, it's been a number of years since I have used Outlook, but are you saying that you can't put a single email into two different folders at the same time in Outlook or most other email programs?

Re:

[stevey]

You can certainly have an email in two places; but that works as you'd expect - there are two unrelated mails in two unrelated folders. There isn't a magic "This message is the same as that message" relationship stored.

i.e. If you copy a message into folders "TODO.Urgent", and "Customer Bob" there is no notion that these messages are the same.

Ideally the copied message should be treated as a symlink, or similar. If that were the case you'd be able to reply to the first message and the second would be u

Re:

[Belial6]

That is truly surprising. Lotus Notes has been handling this correctly for decades.

Re:

[stevey]

I loathed the usage of lotus notes so much that I managed to not notice!

In general, though, I had the impression it was more featureful than Outlook, etc.

Me? I use mutt for mail handling at home & work these day!

Re:

[Matje]

Yes we are. Have you been living under a rock or did you communicate using RFC1149 [faqs.org] exclusively? :P

Re:

[Belial6]

No, I have been using Lotus Notes, which has allowed you to put the same email in multiple folders for well over a decade. Anything less is truly a crappy design. I am just shocked that every other email application out there is still decades behind in such a basic function.

Re:

[LMariachi]

Most modern email clients let you achieve this functionality with "smart folders" or "saved searches" or whatever nomenclature the particular client uses. These are basically dynamic search results in the guise of a folder. So you might have one smart folder that "contains" all email from [e-mail], wherever the actual messages reside in in the real folder hierarchy. Tagging lets you extend this by adding arbitrary criteria that don't exist in the original message, e.g. "StuffThatCanWait," "ProjectMayh

Re:

[techSage]

Outlook has this ability via Categories, of which items can be assigned to several.

Re:

[Kalriath]

Technically you can - if you categorise your email, and create Search Folders, then your email "exists" in all Search Folders that match the categories on it (though it still only physically exists in one place). Search Folders are incredibly handy (Gmail also has an equivalent - the whole Virtual Folders thing).

Forums

[Linker3000]

There's been some good email-oriented suggestions but maybe you'd also like to consider a private forum, setup on an in-house system (takes minutes with a CMS like Joomla and fireboard) where you can create sub-categories as required, contribute to multiple issues with an nice visual overview of all live topics and see a complete threaded history of all discussions.

An added benefit is that if all connections are secured (https) then provided the core system is setup properly, all correspondence is safe fro

Re:

[Demiansmark]

I agree with the parent. I think it's obvious that email isn't the ideal solution here. Scale this up even a little more (say 25 people) and it's obvious that a shared email account isn't the answer. A forum, as noted, might be appropriate or even looking into to other solutions like 37signal-esque stuffs like Basecamp and Backpackit, might work.

Folders are tags, with restrictions.

[Peeet]

If you think about it, folders are just tags with restrictions placed on how many "tags" a message can have. So anything you wanted to do with folders or tags can be done with tags; it gives you more fexibility. In reality, the computer is not actually moving the data around anyway, just re-"tagging" the pointers to the data and enforcing those restrictions. I would say go with tagging, but then I'd also say go with Google Apps and / or Google Groups and either set up a mailing list (in Apps) or one priv

Let's ask the stupid questions first...

[Angostura]

... because the are always the most valuable.

Currently, I'm completely unclear as to what kind of information you are attempting to organize here.

You imply you communicate with each other via e-mail, you say you communicate with the student body via e-mail. Fine, so what exactly is the purpose of these myriad nested folders? What is the organizational problem you are trying to solve?

You have a broken culture

[barfy]

There is absolutely no reason to share emails in this organization.

The secretary's job is not just the completion of the minutes. But to organize and forward on information that is required for the board. Information that is supposed to represent the boards point of view should go through the same single point.

Ad hoc access to, filtering of, replying to and otherwise manipulating the email is broken. One of the symptoms of that brokenness is the problem you are seeing now.

Fix the culture, the rest will follow.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. Email was meant for point to point communication. It is not a group collaboration tool. You system is failing because you are trying to use the wrong tool for the job. Use this as an oporuity to migrate to a better tool entirely.

Do you want to see who's read what

[bkleinman]

One way to use tags in this scenario (I haven't, but I've contemplated it) is that you can use them to indicate what items some of you need to read or have read. You might need 10 new tags for this: person(x)-unread for each person in your group. A rule can be set up so that all incoming email is tagged with person-unread for all the people in the group. Whoever reads an email first can categorize it properly, and can also remove their unread tag. Setup a filter for each person, so that they can see the

"outlook web-access portal..."

[msauve]

HAW! HAW! You misspelled "lookout."

Re:

[Kalriath]

No, they correctly spelled the name of the email client. It's only if they were talking about the popular search addon for said email client that they would be talking about LookOut.

We Switched their Tags with Folgers Crystals...

[neildiamond]

Let's see if anyone notices.

Apathy is hard to cure.

[wandering56]

If your fellow directors can't be bothered to properly sort the traffic as they like it, chances are any solution you come up with for them ultimately won't work. Well organized chaff is still chaff.

It's an interesting question, kind of, but it doesn't seem worth a front page link.

Advice from another student group

[Anonymous Coward]

I also manage e-communication at a university for a large student group (13-person exec board & 40+ non-exec members). Each exec member has his own committee to communicate with as well as the entire exec board. This year my university adopted Google Apps, and most of our members had Google accounts anyway. So we had each exec member use either their own personal Google account or a university google account. All e-mails or organized privately by each individual in his own account. Google Docs is where

uhm, mailman? NNTP?

[brezel]

why not use the technologies that have been around for ages and were specifically designed for that kind of thing?

ad libum?

[BorgCopyeditor]

"tacked on ad libum."

This phrase bears to Latin the same relation that "el trucko" bears to Spanish.

Re:

[BorgCopyeditor]

Yes, unless you want non-Spanish-reading English-speakers to get it.

What are you trying to do?

[Hacksaw]

I'd suggest the folders can be okay if you have a filing system.

My suggestion is that the filing system consist of a folder for each project you are working on, and an archive for folders from past projects.

Don't let yourself have a "miscellaneous" folder, that'll just become a dumping ground for things no-one wants to deal with.

Don't forget to make a few folders for things you might not consider a project, like suggestions for future projects.

So, imagining that you are a kite-flying organization, some exam

Who cares?

[RiotingPacifist]

Using either system in the group you described is going to end up being a mess. After a while both systems are going to require somebody to go through and sort them all out manually.

Tags. Or three folders maximum.

[Qbertino]

Tags can intermingle You can have multiple tags on one mail, but you can't put a mail in multiple folders.

If you use folders, I suggest you reduce your amount of them to a maximum of three: Important, Archive & Junk. You can even actuallly reduce that to Inbox and Archive. Or make a list of [Name]SawIt folders. The last one in the alphabet is responsible for archiving it into archive. That way you can make sure everyone read the important stuff. Just move it to the next userfolder in line after you've r

Re:

[LMariachi]

You can have multiple tags on one mail, but you can't put a mail in multiple folders.

You can with dynamic saved search "folders," which are pretty much a prerequisite to making any use of tags to begin with.

redirect to private Mailman

[tigerc]

I'm in charge of the tech aspects of a school group with two email addresses that we accept mail from the public. I've set up an internal Mailman that only board members know about. The two external emails accounts are forwarded to the internal mailman which then sends a copy of the email to all of the people subscribed to the listserv.

I then set up Mail man to munge the reply-to fields so that the reply to field is the same as the private listserv. As a result, we can talk amongst oursevles about someth

Wiki

[Mipsalawishus]

You might want to look into using a good wiki system that lets you manage permissions and groups. Take a look at Confluence made by Atlassian, or Clearspace made by Jive (Jive Software also makes a great XMPP server that integrates nicely with Clearspace). One nice feature with Confluence is that it email edits to members of a group automatically, further extending it's reach to your members. I know you can get an academic license for Confluence, and probably one for Clearspace. I've used both products and

ad libum

[statemachine]

Is that Celtic? Otherwise I think you just said "to the cake."

Re:

[zensufi]

Well, a paper by Hess, Shanks, and Hutjens called "Accelerated Calf Growing Program" [uiuc.edu] says that "ad libum" means "to appetite," which I assume means you give as much of the food/drink to the cows as they are willing to consume. So perhaps the questioner means that they made new folders whenever they got hungry instead of eating? Or that they made folders until their folder-making appetite was sated?

Re:

[statemachine]

That conflicts with my source, who wrote a cake recipe [novaroma.org].

Use Categories (Tags), Outlook Has Them

[techSage]

Use Outlook categories. They are the same thing as tags and you can create search folders in Outlook that can act a one-click access to certain topics as a regular folder would, with the added advantage that you can have more than one tag per item (as others have mentioned). Plus, since it's already available in Outlook, you don't have to move your mail over to GMail, giving them the opportunity to capitolize on your content, unless you're into that.

A village is missing its idiot

[Zey]

Your setup is completely idiotic. A shared account is just begging to be abused, particularly in a student politics environment.

Email arrives, on an issue which incriminates a board member: "Oh gee, it's been deleted and nobody knows who did it or what it contained." Issue turns up at the local student meeting and details regarding why that dodgy contract was approved: "Golly, looks like that email was removed." Crazy stuff. Unless your cabal intentionally wants to make itself unaccountable, you need to f

And a quick Google..

[neveragain4181]

..brings up this email tagging solution.

http://www.taglocity.com/ [taglocity.com]

Seems to be what you are looking for?

Admit it

[JaQuinton]

Admit it, you wanted GMail way before you posted this.I say go for it, I wish our school had the luxury of having email but those jack-asses refuse to let us students acess anything even remotely related to email... good thing I know ways around all that.

Re:

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

Our school uses Yahoo to manage all the email accn'ts. I wish they'd used a google solution.

Re:

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

as a university, yes, email is important. y'know, for distance education?

Email is the Wrong tool

[Count_Froggy]

There are any number of collaborative group sites from Google Groups, Yahoo Groups, and Airset; any of which is a better choice for your purposes. All allow the individual member to get emails, notifications of postings and other information as they choose. All provide for easy posting of text and files for group distribution. This is like using a screwdriver for a screw instead of a hammer.

Wrong tool for the wrong problem

[thoglette]

Firstly, what are you trying to do?
If it is "discussion between a group of people" then email is the wrong solution. That's what nttp was invented for - threaded discussions. Even a modern blog/bbs will do a better job.

Secondly, part the secretary's job is summarise and communicate the businesss and decisions of the board. And _sometimes_ the reasons for the decisions. If you can't write minutes, have a dedicated blog. With a printed hardcopy filed with your departmental/faculty secretary.

On that front,

Yes, Use Gmail

[Ender!Krum]

Simple answer to your question - Yes, use Gmail.

If you are looking to completely revise how you use email, I am sure there are 100 ways to accomplish it (and some suggestions here are helpful). However, it seem like the current system is working fairly well for you (and your colleagues) and you just want to streamline it somewhat.

You can do this by using Gmail with their "tags" but, more importantly, the ability to never have to delete anything and search everything.

Good luck!

Your solution

[The Cisco Kid]

As others have suggested or hinted at, is to quit sharing one email account, either for communication between 'board members', or with 'the student body'.

I think a Google Group would work far more efficiently. Each 'board member' would have their own account, and have some administrative access. the masses would have less access. If there are recurring cases where you need to communicate to all 'board members', but privately (eg without the student body reading that communication), then perhaps two groups,

Wiki Wiki

[wikinerd]

Use a wiki.

Your organisation appears to adhere to a "shared information repository" culture. Email was not designed with this culture in mind. You use the wrong tool for the wrong purpose. With email, every person and/or every role within the organisation should have a unique email address (eg [e-mail] or [e-mail], the second being just a forwarding address). If more than any person (save for the admin) has access to someone else's email then the system is broken.

Wikis can fit in yo

Is this the solution the actual problem?

[BiOFH]

Now, this is just my opinion... but to me e-mail is a transitive communication medium. When I read this it sound to me like the electronic equivalent of running this board using post-it notes. It sounds to me like you need documents where ideas are captured. Not the raw ideas in a box somewhere (or on post-its).

Thunderbird search

[flyingfsck]

Use Thunderbird with IMAP. Search is practically instantaneous, so you don't have any need for sub-folders or tags.

Tags, Forums, and a question

[PhotoGuy]

Tags are obviously a great way to flag topics of common interest and track them. Although as another posted suggested, a forum seems like a better tool for this purpose.

Which leads me to this question: is there any hosted service that provides either email or forum that gives detailed and accurate read-tracking? I have a need for two parties to communicate, and to legally prove when each party reads a given message. Return receipts in traditional email are a joke. I've googled quite a bit, and other tha

Try Google Sub-Accounts

[cwgmpls]

Google allows you to create sub-accounts within one email account.

Log in to Gmail, then go to Settings / Accounts / Add another e-mail address.

Each person will get a unique email address but the email can all be accessed and sorted by person or keyword through one central account.

Re:

[bgfay]

This is crap. Sometimes there is an advantage to a discussion instead of reading something Googled. What happens is that one idea bounces off another and another as people listen to the ideas being shared. The idea that everything about this question has been said is ludicrous.

I'm not in favor of lots of meetings in any organization, but I do like to have the ability to interact with other people who will lead me to something I haven't thought of before. Maybe I can get something close to that by searching