Outlook, Mobility and Small Business Email Requirements

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 23:19:56 -0400

While mobile solutions for email are abundant, few actually meet the requirements for small businesses that depend on Outlook. They look great on paper, but in practice, not so good.

At the outset, there are [perhaps] tens of thousands of small business owners that use Outlook with a POP email account; they don’t have access to an Exchange server. That said, the challenges for mobility and practical email management in this climate is challenging.

Synchronization

The key requirement for mobile email is synchronization; this is to say that when performing email tasks while away from the desktop, any actions taken, must also be reflected in Outlook when you return to the office. It really doesn’t help to create a reply or delete a message while away from the office only to return to an environment that hasn’t been updated to reflect the activities conducted away from the office. The lack of explicit and accurate synchronization erodes productivity, lessens the ability to use email as a knowledge management solution, and creates confusion for users.

Some argue that leaving messages on the server is the solution, but since Outlook supports only two deletion options; (i) delete from server after (n) days, or (ii) delete from server when deleted from the Deleted Folder, there’s no straightforward way to capture received emails in a locally accessible knowledgebase. Retaining messages locally in the deleted folder retains them on the server. Most business people want to keep received messages indefinitely, thus suspending them on the server indefinitely.

But it gets worse; assume you have a desktop and an iPhone and you blindly assume that setting up each client to leave messages on the server will meet your requirements. Messages sent from the iPhone will be saved to the sent folder on the iPhone; they will not be in the sent folder on the desktop. Most business people rely on their sent messages as a key component of basic knowledge management. Fragmenting messages across multiple devices eliminates all possibilities to manage historical communications in a manner that would allow one to find anything.

The Last Mile of Spam

Further complicating matters is the tired issue of spam control. While most ISP’s provide general spam filtering at the email server level, the vast majority of Outlook users spend a good deal of time tuning the last mile of spam rules to catch the 20% of useless messages that creep through the ISP filters. Reading our email pre-Outlook (as is the case with a POP account that leaves messages on the server) bypasses the last set of spam rules, thus forcing the user to manage spam in two locations; the desktop email client and the mobile device email client.

Business Rules

Many Outlook users create rules that manage email tasks such as filing, forwarding, and deleting messages. These rules exist in Outlook and some are fairly complex and critical to the productivity of the small business person. However, reading the messages on the server with your iPhone device requires you to see the messages before the desktop client is able to process them. This creates more effort, more thinking, more tasks and in an environment that is far less conducive to more tasks.

The Solution

The solution is simple – there should be only one authoritative location where email is received, managed, and archived. Oddly enough, this is precisely what Microsoft Exchange achieves. But for small businesses (whose owners and employees are typically more mobile than most), and who typically lack access to Exchange servers, they need an email-server proxy – i.e., a proxy that allows their mobile devices to arbitrate email transactions with Outlook running on their desktops.

Until last week, Soonr provided precisely this approach; a desktop server that transformed Outlook into a remotely accessible application. As messages were received, Soonr would update the remote view of the inbox by proxy. As new messages and replies were created, they were replicated as email transactions that occurred on the desktop. When I would return to the office, Outlook was exactly s it appeared on my iPhone.

A similar (and equally useful) solution was provided by AT&T some time ago, but they (like Soonr) decided to get out of the email business and probably for the same reasons – mobile email clients are available from many providers. Their stories (of course) read well on paper, but these providers are delivering client applications, not solutions.

It’s possible there’s a configuration that will meet my requirements, and I’ve simply over-thought the challenges. I’m open-minded to try new ideas, however, I’ve not found an abundance of alternative approaches. Please contact me if you know of any.

Using Twitter as the API Gateway to Evernote

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 22:26:51 -0400

Evernote lacks the ability to pipe RSS content directly into; but it does provide a simple Twitter integration.

While there aren't many use cases for piping RSS content into Evernote, it is possible and it's not very difficult. Ideally, an Evernote API for RSS content would be helpful, but lacking that, here's one way to achieve a seamless and automated integration.

Since tweets sent to @myEN are delivered into your Evernote account, it's pretty easy to setup up a private role account in Twitter to act as the gateway for capturing RSS content.

A separate [protected] Twitter account and a feed added to TwitterFeed (or HootSuite) where each item includes @myEN, will cause the feed to be captured in the Evernote account attached to the protected Twitter account. You want the Twitter account to be protected to avoid publishing the feed contents to the public timeline.

A key element of this approach requires that @myEV be included in RSS item title. This is not difficult to add through Yahoo! Pipes. Using pipes it is also possible to filter certain items for publsihing to your Evernote account.

Women Shop Most: Would They Make Better Brand Managers?

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 12:11:03 -0400

This is one of those questions that requires hardened and reliable research data, but here are a few observations.

We know that women make the majority of purchase decisions in America, but can we also surmise that they would [therefore] make better brand managers than men?

I'm not a brand manager, but I have a hunch that the skills required to accurately target a consumer segment and implement a successful brand strategy is largely dependent on the background and collective experience of the brand manager. These attributes (at casual glance) seem to be gender-agnostic, but experience in the market-place - specifically shopping activity - might increase awareness or provide a slight edge to women.

On the other hand, author Martin Lindstron [buy-ology] suggests (perhaps I should say "has proven") that buying behavior is hardwired into emotional connections which are deeply embodied in long-term memories.

Women Shop Most: Would They Make Better Brand Managers? I'm not convinced they would, but some good research data would certainly be interesting.

Technology Commentary | Global Technologies Corporation

Outlook, Mobility and Small Business Email Requirements

See Also

Using Twitter as the API Gateway to Evernote

Women Shop Most: Would They Make Better Brand Managers?