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All of the basic rules set out below relate mainly to business correspondence with your partners, colleagues, customers and performers. Their use in personal correspondence is a private matter for everyone. However, following these rules in personal correspondence will only create a good impression of you.

Business Email Ethics

If you suddenly do not want to read further, limit yourself to at least the following basic rules:

Use the “Reply All” button when you reply. This will keep copies of the recipients of the initial email, so your response won't pass by. I highly recommend hiding the "Reply" button in the interface settings. If necessary, you can remove unwanted recipients by hand.
Do not leave the "Subject" field blank. The people you correspond with may receive hundreds of emails a day, and they use this field to quickly assess the importance and content of the email.
Quote letters. Do not start a reply with a new letter, click "Reply All" on the received letter and do not disable the quoting function for replies and forwards in the mail client settings.
When fully cited (if your answer to the entire letter as a whole) write the text of the answer at the BEGINNING of the letter, and not at the end, at the bottom.

WILL CONTINUE?

Receiving letters

Received letters should be read. If you received a letter, it means that someone sent it for some reason (of course, spam is not considered here). If a person has letters marked as unread, and they are older than one day, he does not know how to work with mail. However, it is forgivable if:
- the person died or suddenly fell ill;
- working with mail is not included in his official duties (then he does not need a business e-mail).
If you are not a manager, check your email at least 2 times a day: in the morning and in the afternoon. The lack of an answer from you to a production question can stall the work of other people and delay the resolution of issues.
If you're a manager, your day should start by running an email client that doesn't unload all day and automatically checks your mail. Set up automatic delivery / receipt of mail at least every 10 minutes (preferably 1-3 minutes).
You received a letter. If you are very busy, immediately assess who it is from, the topic and skim it through your eyes - this will help you quickly decide whether the letter requires an urgent response or may wait a little.
If you can, then answer right away. This is the easiest and most effective way to move your business and not collect mail jams.
If you understand that you will not be able to answer within 24 hours, it is better to immediately write “I will answer within a couple of days” or at least “I will answer a little later”.

"To", "Cc", "Bcc" fields

Remember that there are "To", "CC" and "BCC" fields. Your further actions (and actions of correspondence partners) depend on them when receiving a letter:
- “To” - the letter and the information or questions it contains are addressed directly to the recipient. If you are sending a question, you are waiting for an answer from the addressee specified in the "To" field. If you are the recipient, then you must answer.
- "CC" ("Copy") - recipients standing in copies receive a "note" letter, for information or are "invited to witness". The recipient in copies should not generally reply to the letter; moreover, it is considered polite to start with the phrase “sorry to interfere” when there is such a need.
- "BCC" ("blind carbon copy") is a field for "palace intrigues". By specifying a recipient in this field, you "secretly" send this letter to him: the main recipient or those in copies will not know about the fact of sending a letter to this person. It is also used for mass mailing so that all recipients do not know your address book.
Use the “Reply All” button when you reply. This will keep copies of the recipients of the initial email and your response will not pass them by.
DO NOT remove from copies of the letter people added there by your correspondent. If you want to answer something personal so that other correspondents do not receive your answer, then delete everyone from the copies, except for the one who wrote the letter (yes, we never use the Reply button).
If there are more than two addressees in the “To” field in the letter received, this means that both of these correspondents or either of them must respond. Consider that BOTH should answer - if the letter is addressed to you and to someone else, answer also you (even if it is an answer like “This question is definitely not for me, let such and such answer”).
In turn, it is highly recommended that you DO NOT include more than one recipient in the “To” field. For a letter sent to two, you will not receive a response from either, since each will think that the other will answer. Not everyone has read this article.
Forwarding private correspondence to a mailing list without the consent of the correspondent is unethical!

Subject field

Don't leave it blank.
The subject of the letter should be short, but reflecting the main content, subject of the letter. Headings like "Question", "Hello!" or empty headings give you a newbie lacking basic business writing skills.
When you reply to one of several emails with different subject lines, answer the correct ones. Answer the letter with the subject "Meeting on Tuesday, 18.04" about the meeting and the letter "Materials for printing" about materials for printing. This is due to citing previous correspondence (see below section "Writing letters").
If you need to periodically send e-mail such as weekly reports, try to keep the header constant, or at least part of it should be constant so that the recipient can set up automatic rules for sorting such mail.

Importance of writing

If the letter contains information about urgent changes, the text of the agreement or other information that you need to pay attention to first of all - use the importance "high", this will highlight the letter in the "Inbox".
Do not use "high" importance in vain - "loud" people are annoying, be more modest.
Mark a personal letter to a business correspondent or a letter with a funny picture or link with the importance "low".

Writing letters (replies)

Start with a greeting, that's polite. "Hello gria!" suggests that you are too lazy to write the person's name. Even just "Andrey!" or "Good afternoon!" quite polite and enough.
Talk to the person in the same language. This applies not only to the Russian / English language, but also to the form of the text. If you received a formal letter, an informal response to it will be disrespectful to the respondent and a demonstration of your own low culture. The formal answer to an informal appeal is either a call for compliance with regulations, or it is simply required by corporate rules.
Try to always reply to the last letter in the chain of correspondence, and not to some intermediate one.
Ne ispolzuyte translit except when sending letters from conditions in which it is difficult to type text in a different way (for example, from a mobile or from a computer without a Russian keyboard layout).
If your mail client does not support the Russian language or spoils the encodings, then attach the response text with an attachment.
A business letter should be precise, concise and specific:
- Accuracy - include the exact information you are referring to (date and subject of another letter, date of the meeting, agenda item, file name, link to document on the web, etc.).
- Laconic - some set out in three pages what could be written in three sentences. The one who thinks clearly states clearly, and your correspondent sees it.
- Specificity - it should be clear from the letter WHAT EXACTLY is required from the recipient, what actions they want from him.
Business correspondence is not a place for epistolary exercises and not a place for expressing emotions. For this, there are forums, chat rooms and other means of electronic interpersonal communication. Laconic business text is not dryness, but time saving and precise thought.
If the letter contains several questions, topics or tasks, structure them and separate them with paragraphs with or without numbering. The continuous stream of thought is difficult to read, and it is easy to miss the main point of the letter. Moreover, some people tend to immediately send a poorly structured letter to the trash can (although this is probably extremism).
Keep in mind that the answer to a request or task "Let's do it!" incomplete. “We will do it by such and such a date”, “after so many days”, “after such and such an event” - these are more definite and accurate answers.
If the letter is worded in such a way that it can be answered simply "ok", then the answer is likely to be received much faster. For example, if you have multiple options for what to do, suggest a default.
The text must be free of errors. Eyeballs not scary, but if you write and write the word incorrectly in every letter, it becomes noticeable very quickly, and your "three" with a minus in Russian becomes obvious (as well as speculative further conclusions about your general level of education and culture).
Try not to use html-formatting of the letter. Unfortunately, this format of writing letters is the default in Outlook, but when using it, especially when quoting (answering and forwarding), a lot of questions arise.
If you received an email in html format, DO NOT change it to plain-text, this breaks the sender's perception of information when receiving your reply. The more important your correspondent is to you, the more important it is to preserve his adequate perception. You can cope with the highlighting of your answers in html-citations with color, or you can also use the Decrease Indent button on the html formatting panel (although there are some capricious nuances).
Quote the text of the original letter. What do you think that would mean? I don’t know either: To: AIST - creative bird Subject: Re: Re: Re: Question Ok! Vasya
Never edit another person's text when quoting! This is a kind of letter forgery.
With full citation (if your answer to the entire letter as a whole), write the text of the answer at the BEGINNING of the letter, and not at the end.
If you answer bullet points using quotations, separate the quotation with blank lines ABOVE and BOTTOM, and use Capital Letters at the beginning of the sentences. Try to find the answers here:\u003e we propose to replace the logo with the attached one,\u003e since this very colorful background did not find the logo in the attachment\u003e correct the inscription - instead of "fish" you should write "slave"! \u003e otherwise we will be misunderstood the inscription was corrected, sorry\u003e and the last ...
When we write a letter to a friend or relative, we can ignore mistakes and punctuation marks, shorten words as we like, use slang. The main thing is to make it clear what it is about. But if we write to a stranger or unfamiliar person and want to get an answer from him, then some rules should be taken into account.

Communication rules

1 . Always include a subject line.

The "Subject" field must be filled in anyway and it is highly desirable that it match the content of the message.

If you want, for example, to sign up for a consultation on March 5th, write: "Sign up for a consultation (05.03)".

2. When replying to an email, keep your correspondence history.

When you receive an email from someone, there are three ways to reply to it:
1. Copy the sender's address and write him a new letter.
2. Click on the special response field at the bottom of the message.
3. Use the "Reply" button.
In business correspondence, you should answer in the third way, that is, click on the "Reply" button. A new letter will open, repeating the one you received. The theme is the same, only with the prefix "Re:", the original text is fully quoted.

This is a common form of response and you should not change anything in it. You must type your answer before the quoted text. This is done so that each participant in the conversation at any time could remember what was being discussed.

3. Always say hello and address your interlocutor to "you".

Any message should start with a greeting. And it is better if it is individual. If appropriate, call the interlocutor by name, otherwise - by name and patronymic.

It is desirable to finish the letter with the following construction: Best regards, ... (name / surname or name / patronymic).

For example: Hello, Alexey Petrovich. Please send the contract to Ivan Mikhailovich. Best regards, Ilya Krivosheev

4 . Reply as quickly as possible.

The sooner you reply to a message, the better. Ideally, within a few hours. But it is acceptable for several days. The longer you wait to answer, the worse it affects your reputation.

As for the text of the message, then when writing it, you should also follow some rules.

Write specifically, but in detail

Don't make the other person guess what you mean. If the problem is not obvious, describe it in as much detail as possible: how did you get the result that you have, what exactly you want to achieve and what is required from the interlocutor.

But this does not mean at all that it is necessary to indicate all the details in the smallest detail. Leave the excess - value the other person's time.

Keep it short and to the point

There is no need, for example, to talk about how your wife, mother-in-law and other relatives are doing.

As for the size, ideally one "screen" (no scrolling). Maximum - the size of the text that fits on an A4 sheet.

Use Common Sense and Decency

Be polite, considerate, thank you for your letters and your time.

What absolutely CANNOT be done

1 . Overuse punctuation marks.

One exclamation mark or question mark is enough. They should not be duplicated. You should also not overuse ellipsis.

An example of a "bad" letter:

2. Use different fonts, letter sizes and colors.

Mail sites and programs allow you to change these parameters. You can choose an unusual font, increase or decrease the letters, paint the text in different colors. But this is inappropriate in business correspondence!

It's better not to change anything at all and leave everything as it is specified by default. The only thing that is permissible is to make some words bold or italicized. But only if necessary!

An example of a "bad" letter:

3. Insert emoji pictures.

Leave funny and sad faces, flowers and hearts for personal correspondence. It is better not to use emoticons in business letters - neither text nor pictures.

An example of a "bad" letter:

4 . Print the text in capital letters.

It is considered bad form to type text in large letters on the Internet. This applies to both business correspondence and personal, as well as communication on social networks, on Skype, on forums and in other places. Moreover, this applies to both the entire text and individual words.

The Caps Lock keyboard key is responsible for capital letters. That is, if all your letters are typed in large, you just need to press it once and release it.

Moreover, do not type in large letters "Subject" of the letter - this is the height of disrespect!

On a note . Printing individual words and all text in capital letters is perceived as a cry. And screaming is aggression that goes beyond cultural correspondence.

If you really need to highlight something in the text, it is better to do it using bold or italic style.

And it is also very desirable to avoid in the subject line the words "Urgent", "Important" and others that express impatience.

Literacy

You should not be too strict about this, but try to write correctly in your letters. A few simple tips:
- Each sentence must begin with a capital letter. To type it, hold down the Shift key.
- There should be a period at the end of each sentence. In the Russian keyboard layout, it is in the bottom row on the right (before Shift).
- To print a comma, hold Shift and press the period key.
- Do not put a space before a comma or period. There must be a space after them.
And one more tip for those who are at least a little able to use the text editor Word (Writer). First type the letter in this program. She will underline errors with a red line and by clicking on such a word with the right mouse button, you can correct it.

Copy and paste the finished text into the letter field. But before pasting, you should turn off the formatting so that it can be added without formatting from the Word (Writer) program.

In the mail.ru mail, for this you need to click on the inscription "Remove the design" at the top.

In Yandex.Mail, the Disable Appearance button on the right.

After inserting, the appearance can be re-enabled.

What is email? In the modern business world, these are:
- Your face. It is with the help of email that you can create a positive image in the eyes of the counterparty or ruin the first impression.
- Your work tool. A lot of communication with the outside world happens by email. Therefore, having a good command of this tool, you can greatly make your life easier.
- A powerful distraction. The outside world is trying to get you, distract and lead you astray via email.
From this point of view, let's look at working with e-mail. Let's start simple.

Letter design

I use the Mozilla Thunderbird mail client, so I will use it as an example. Let's create a new letter and go from top to bottom in the list of fields.

To whom. Copy. Hidden copy

Someone might not know, but Mozilla's "To" can be changed to "Cc" or "Bcc".
- To whom: we write the main addressee or several addressees separated by semicolons.
- Copy: we write to the one who should read the letter, but from whom we do not expect a response.
- Hidden copy: we write to the one who should familiarize himself with the letter, but should remain unknown to the rest of the recipients of the letter. Especially suitable for mass mailing of business letters, such as notifications.
Wrong in mass mailing, specify recipients through the "Cc" or "To" fields. Several times a year, I receive letters in which 50–90 addressees are listed in the “Cc” field. There is a violation of privacy. Not all of your recipients need to know who else you are working with on a similar topic. It's good if these are people you know each other. What if the list includes competing companies that don't know about each other? At the very least, you need to be prepared for unnecessary explanations, at the maximum, for the termination of cooperation with one of them. Do not do it this way.

Letter subject

The importance of the subject line is often written (sometimes sensibly) in their corporate blogs by professional mailing services. But there most often we are talking about sales letters, where the subject line solves the problem "email must open".

We are discussing daily business correspondence. Here the theme solves the problem “the letter and its author should be easily identified and then found”. Moreover, your diligence will return to you in the form of karma of numerous response letters, only with prefixes Re: or Fwd, among which you will have to look for the desired letter on the topic.

Twenty letters is the volume of a one-day correspondence of a middle manager. I do not speak about entrepreneurs and business owners at all, their number of letters sometimes goes off scale for 200 or more per day. Therefore, once again: do not send emails with an empty subject.

So how to formulate your subject line correctly?

Mistake # 1 : only the company name in the subject. For example, "Sky" and that's it. First, for sure you are not one of your company communicating with this counterparty. Secondly, such a topic does not bring any meaning, because the name of your company is already visible from the address. Third, guess what your own mailbox will look like with this approach to correspondence? Something like this.

Is it convenient to search for such topics?

Mistake # 2 : a flashy, selling headline. It's great if you know how to write headlines like this. But is it appropriate to use these skills in business correspondence? Remember the purpose of the subject line of a business letter: not to sell, but to provide identification and search.

Text of the letter

There are many writing guides for different occasions. For example, Maxim Ilyakhov, Alexander Amzin and other masters of the word have a lot of useful things. I advise you to read their articles at least to improve general literacy and improve the general style of writing.

In the process of writing a letter, we must consistently make several decisions.

A question of courtesy ... At the beginning of the letter, you can blur in courtesies or even tenderness in the spirit of "My dear Rodya, for more than two months now, I haven't talked to you in writing, from which I myself suffered and did not even sleep another night thinking." It is very polite and very costly, both in terms of time to compose such an introduction, and in the time of the interlocutor to read it. This is a business correspondence, remember? Not an essay of the epistolary genre for the competition and not a letter to Raskolnikov's mother, but business correspondence.

We respect our time and the recipient's!

It makes sense to introduce yourself and remind the circumstances of acquaintance only in the first letter sent after a fleeting meeting at the exhibition. If this is a continuation of cooperation or current correspondence, in the first letter of the day we write: "Hello, Ivan", in the second and subsequent ones: "Ivan, ...".

Appeal ... I was always worried about who to contact in a letter, if there are several recipients. I recently wrote a letter to three girls named Anna. Without any hesitation, I wrote "Hello, Anna" and didn't bother. But this is not always the case.

What if there are three or even seven recipients and they don't share the same name? You can list them by name: "Good afternoon, Rodion, Pulcheria, Avdotya and Peter Petrovich." But it is long and takes time. You can write: "Hello, colleagues!"

For myself, I use the rule to refer by name to the one who is in the "To" field. And to those who are in the copy, do not apply at all. This rule also allows you to more accurately determine (one!) The addressee of the letter and the purpose of this letter.

Citation ... Often, correspondence is a chain of letters with questions and answers - in a word, a dialogue. It is considered good form not to delete the history of the correspondence and write your answer at the top of the quoted text, so that, after returning to this correspondence in a week, you can easily read the dialogue from top to bottom in descending dates.

For some reason, the default setting in Mozilla is "Place cursor after quoted text". I recommend changing it in the menu "Tools" → "Account settings" → "Composing and addressing". It should be like this.

Purpose of the letter ... Business letters are of two types:
- when we simply inform the interlocutor (for example, a report on the work done for a month);
- and when we want something from the interlocutor. For example, so that he approves the attached invoice for payment.
As a rule, there are many more encouraging letters than reporting ones. If we want to achieve something from the interlocutor, it is very important to say this in a letter in plain text. A call to action should be accompanied by a name call and followed by the last sentence in the letter.

Wrong : "Porfiry Petrovich, I know who killed the old woman."

Correctly : "Porfiry Petrovich, it was I who hacked the old woman, please, take measures to arrest me, I'm tired of suffering!"

Why should the correspondent think for you what to do with this letter? After all, he can make the wrong decision.

Signature in the text ... She must be. Moreover, all email clients allow you to configure auto-substitution of a signature, for example, the classic "Sincerely, ...". In Mozilla, this is done under Tools → Account Options.

To write or not to write contacts in the signature is everyone's personal business. But if you are in any way connected with sales - be sure to write. Even if the transaction does not take place based on the results of communication, in the future you will be easily found by contacts from the signature.

Finally, one more feature of the body of the letter for those interlocutors who do not like (cannot, does not want, does not have time) to answer your letters. Specify the default in the text of the letter. For example, “Porfiry Petrovich, if you don’t come to arrest me before 12:00 on Friday, then I consider myself amnestied”. Of course, the deadline must be real (you shouldn't send the example text on Friday at 11:50). The recipient must be physically able to read and decide on your letter. This "silence" relieves you of responsibility for the non-response of the interlocutor. As always, the use of this feature must be approached wisely. If a person responds to your letters on time and regularly, such an ultimatum may, if not offend him, then strain him a little or lead to a decision not to reply to the letter right now, but make you wait for Friday.

Attachments

Letters often come with attachments: resumes, commercial offers, estimates, schedules, scans of documents - a very convenient tool and at the same time a source of popular errors.

Mistake : huge attachment size. Emails with attachments up to 20 MB are often received. As a rule, these are scans of some documents in TIFF format, with a resolution of 600dpi. The correspondent's mail program will almost certainly hang for several minutes in vain attempts to download a preview of this attachment. And God forbid the recipient to try to read this letter on a smartphone ...

Personally, I immediately delete such letters. Don't want your letter to end up in the trash before being read? Check the size of the attachment. It is recommended that it be no more than 3 MB.

What if it exceeds?
- Try reconfiguring your scanner to a different format and resolution. For example, in PDF and 300dpi, quite readable scans are obtained.
- Think of programs like WinRar or 7zip. Some files are perfectly compressed.
- What if the attachment is huge and you can't compress it? For example, an almost empty accounting database weighs 900 MB. Cloud storage of information will come to the rescue: Dropbox, Google Drive and the like. Some services, such as Mail.ru, automatically convert huge attachments into links to cloud storage. But I prefer to manage my information stored in the cloud myself, so I don't welcome automation from Mail.ru.
And one more not entirely obvious recommendation about investments - their name ... It must be understandable and acceptable to the recipient. Once we in the company were preparing a commercial offer addressed to ... let it be Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. I received a letter from the manager with a project proposal for approval, and the attachment included a file named "ForFedi.docx". With the manager who sent me this, a dialogue took place something like the following:

Dear manager, are you personally ready to approach this respected person and name him in the face of Fedya?

Somehow no, respected person, everyone calls him by name and patronymic.

Why did you call the attachment "ForFedi"? If I send him right now, do you think he will buy axes from us for this CP?

I was going to rename later ...

Why prepare a time bomb - a potential client's rejection - or do yourself the extra work of renaming a file? Why not immediately name the attachment correctly: "For Fedor Mikhailovich.docx" or even better - "KP_Nebo_Topory.docx".

So, we have more or less sorted out with email as a "face". Let's move on to looking at email as a tool for effective work and talk about its distraction.

Working with letters

Email is a powerful distraction. As with any distraction, mail needs to be dealt with by tightening rules and implementing a work schedule.

At a minimum, you need to turn off ALL notifications about the arrival of mail. If the mail client is configured by default, you will be notified with a sound signal, and the icon next to the clock will blink, and a preview of the letter will be shown. In a word, they will do everything to first tear you away from painstaking work, and then plunge you into the abyss of unread letters and unseen mailings - minus an hour or two from life.

Someone's powerful willpower allows them not to be distracted by notifications, and for ordinary people it is better not to tempt fate and turn them off. In Mozillla Thunderbird, this is done through the menu "Tools" → "Options" → "General" → "When new messages appear."

If there are no notifications, how to understand that a letter has arrived?

Very simple. You yourself, consciously, set aside time to parse mail, open the mail client and see all unread messages. This can be done twice a day, for example, at lunchtime and in the evening, or during forced downtime, for example, in traffic jams.

Often asked, what about reaction times and urgent emails? The answer is: you have no urgent letters in the mail. Unless you work in the customer support department (such a department has its own rules for working with mail).

If there are urgent letters, the sender will notify you about this via other channels - phone, SMS, Skype. Then you will deliberately go into the mail client and process urgent mail. All time management gurus (for example, Gleb Arkhangelsky with his "Time Drive") declare the standard for responding to email up to 24 hours. This is a normal rule of good form - do not expect instant replies from the interlocutor by email. If there is an urgent letter, notify about it via faster communication channels.

So, we turned off notifications and now we turn on the mail client according to our schedule.

So what should we do when we went to the mailbox and started the activity called “parsing email”? Where is the beginning and end of this work?

I have heard a lot about the zero inbox system, but, unfortunately, have not met a single person using it. I had to reinvent my wheel. There are articles on this topic on Lifehacker. For instance, " ". Below I will talk about the zero inbox system in my interpretation. I would be grateful if GTD gurus would mark in the comments, add or improve the described system.

It is important to understand and accept that email is not a task scheduler or archive for your activities. Therefore, the Inbox folder should always be empty. If you have taken up the parsing of your inbox, do not stop and do not be distracted by anything until you empty this folder.

What to do with emails in your inbox? You need to go through each letter sequentially and delete it. Yes, just select and press Delete on your keyboard. If you can't bring yourself to delete the letter, you will have to decide what to do with it.
1. Can you answer it in three minutes? Do I need to answer it? Yes, it is necessary, and the answer will take no more than three minutes, then answer immediately.
2. You need to answer, but preparing the answer will take more than three minutes. If you use a task planner that allows you to convert an email into a task, turn your email into a task and forget about it for a while. For example, I use the absolutely wonderful Doit.im service. It allows you to generate a personal email address: you forward a letter to it, and it turns into a task. But if you do not have a task scheduler, move the letter to the "0_Run" subfolder.
3. After a quick response to a letter, turning it into a task or a simple familiarization, you need to decide what to do with this message next: delete or send it to one of the folders for long-term storage.
These are the folders I have for long-term storage.
- 0_Run. I don’t have such a folder, but if you don’t have a planner, I repeat, you can put letters here that require detailed study. This folder also needs to be cleaned regularly, but with a thoughtful approach at a specially allocated time.
- 1_Ref. This is where I put letters with reference information: welcome letters with logins from various web services, tickets for upcoming flights, and so on.
- 2_Projects. The archive of correspondence on partners and projects with which there is a current relationship is stored here. Naturally, a separate folder is created for each project or partner. In the folder of a partner, I put letters not only from his employees, but also letters from employees of "Heaven" related to this partner. Very convenient: if necessary, all correspondence on the project is at hand in a couple of clicks.
- 3_Museum. Here I am throwing those letters that are a pity to delete, and the benefits of them are not obvious. Also, folders with closed projects from "2_Projects" migrate here. In a word, the first candidates for deletion are kept in the "Museum".
- 4_Documents. Here are letters with electronic samples of documents that may be useful in the future for accounting, for example, statements of reconciliation from clients, tickets for trips. The folder in many respects has something in common with the folders "2_Projects" and "1_Sprav", only it stores accounting information, and in the folder "2_Projects" - management information. In "4_Documents" - dead information, and in "2_Projects" - alive.
- 5_Knowledge. This is where I only add really useful mailings that I want to come back to after a while for inspiration or finding solutions.
There are other settings of the mail client that are important for the operation of this system. First, by default, Thunderbird has the Mark messages as read checkbox selected. I prefer to do it deliberately, so the checkbox is gone! To do this, go to the menu "Tools" → "Options" → "Advanced" → "Read and display".

Second, we use filters ... Previously, I actively applied filters that automatically forwarded letters to the appropriate folders based on the sender's address. For example, letters from a lawyer were moved to the “Lawyer” folder. I refused this approach for several reasons. First: letters from a lawyer in 99% of cases refer to a project or partner, which means that they must be moved to the folder of this partner or project. Second, I decided to add awareness. You yourself have to decide where a specific letter should be stored, and it is more convenient to search for unprocessed messages in only one place - in the inbox. Now I use filters only for categorizing automatic regular letters from various systems into folders, that is, letters that do not require me to make decisions. Filters in Mozilla Thunderbird are configured in the "Tools" → "Message Filters" menu.

So, with the right approach, email should take between 10 and 60 minutes a day, depending on the volume of correspondence.

Yes, and one more thing. You've already turned off notifications about new emails, right? ;)

Surprisingly, many people, when they are required to send a letter to several people at once, simply list the addresses in the "To" field, this is normal when this letter is addressed to your colleagues or friends, but when you send letters to a group of clients, this way you show everyone addresses and other recipients, actually disclosing their address base.
It is enough for any of the clients to forward this letter to your competitor and your contacts will immediately flow away.
Strange, but many far from stupid people are surprised to learn that if you need to send a letter to many addressees so that they do not know about each other, then there is a "Bcc" field for this.
For example, for mail.ru it will look like this:
And so again briefly: indicated addresses in "whom" - everyone can see who you sent letters to, indicated in "blind carbon copy" - everyone thinks that the letter is only to him.
And each recipient will receive a letter where in the "to" field there will be only his address ... For other programs, if you cannot find where to specify the blind carbon copy, then have someone show you. Another small point, it is imperative to specify one address in the "to" field, most programs or mail servers will not allow you to send a letter without this parameter.
And so, when it comes to sending an offer, news to a group of your clients - here the practice of using a blind copy is unambiguous, you must hide your address base. An interesting moment with sending a letter to your colleagues, here they recommend to act according to the situation, for example, sending a letter with a request to send suggestions (for example, to improve customer service) and if each colleague sees that other people have received the same letter, then most likely they will not answer - relies on others, so you need to use a blind copy. If this assignment is fulfilled, for example, an indication of the "whom" of your colleague's boss will simply work wonders, and your assignment will be fulfilled.
A separate question with suppliers. On the one hand, listing all recipients in the copy should show the supplier that you have a choice and that he should offer you good prices. On the other hand, the manager who received your letter, seeing that it was sent not only to him, is likely to react to your request "cool". Personally, in my opinion, I think that in the case of suppliers, you need to use a blind copy, at least to protect trade secrets, but more likely for good relations with the supplier's manager.
You can read a recent case of a specialist's mistake, when all the recipients saw other addressees: Smack everyone in this chat, there really were respectable people - the directors, but still many received spam in return.
Well, as always, discussion in the comments is welcome.

If you actively use mail when communicating with clients and colleagues, rarely a day goes without copies. They are an integral part of work correspondence. Therefore, many clients, moving to Omnidesk from the good old mail, often asked about Cc and Bcc support. Before this functionality appeared, we received 47 (!) Requests to add it. The figure is impressive, because at best 5-7% of those who wish write about their needs and questions.
Before moving on to the details of our implementation of copies, let's understand what they are.
Types of email recipients
To: (to whom) - the main recipient of the letter.
Cc: (copy, carbon copy) - secondary recipients of the letter to whom the copy is sent. They see and know about each other's presence.
Bcc: (blind carbon copy) - hidden message recipients whose addresses are not shown to other recipients.
Examples of using copies
and. The user asked for help and asked to send replies to both work and personal mail. You indicate his personal address in the copy (Cc) so that he can reply from any address and see all the correspondence in each of them.
b. The client has paid for consulting / support / development, and you regularly communicate with his employees. You add it to the copy (Cc) so that he receives all your answers, can break into the correspondence at any time and evaluate the quality of the services you provide.
in. The manager wants to monitor the support communication with the VIP clients. In requests from these clients, the manager is added to a blind carbon copy (Bcc) so that he always receives your replies (with the history of correspondence).
The beauty is that the client does not know about the "surveillance", and the manager can answer you personally and, for example, make a remark :)
g. The client contacts you to discuss getting a discount and payment methods. He immediately adds his accountant to the copy (Cc), so that he can follow the progress of communication and take the baton at the right time.
How did we implement copy support?
The above examples describe just some of the scenarios that customers "sold" to us, arguing the need to maintain copies on the service. We have implemented all the standard features, but did not forget to add some useful features. Let's consider everything in order.
Basic functionality
1) To the right of the "Recipient" field name, we have placed two links for adding copies - "Cc" and "Bcc".
2) When you click on "Cc", the "Copy" field appears, and the "Cc" link disappears.
3) When you click on "Bcc", the "Bcc" field appears, and the "Bcc" link disappears.
5) When an employee append address to plain copy (Cc), his reply is sent to the main address from the "Recipient" field and to the address from the "Cc" field. In this case, both users see that the letter was delivered to two addresses. Each of them can answer both the employee and the employee + another user.
6) When an employee add address to blind carbon copy (Bcc), his reply is sent to the main address from the "Recipient" field and to the address from the "Bcc" field. In this case, the main user sees that the letter came only to him, so his response can only be sent to the employee.
At the same time, the user sees from a Bcc who was the main recipient and can send a letter to both the employee and the employee + the main recipient.
7) Copy support works the other way around. If a user sends a request (or a new response in the current conversation) and adds another address to Cc, we automatically write this address in the "Cc" field so that when the employee responds, the letter is sent to both addresses.
Useful tricks
8) All changes in the fields "Recipient", "Cc" and "Bcc" are recorded in the history of actions.
9) For each request, we remember all the addresses that were specified in the fields "Recipient", "Cc" and "Bcc". Therefore, after removing the address from the field, it can be easily returned. It is enough to click in the required field, and we will offer to select an address from the drop-down list.
10) When a Bcc user responds to the employee and the main user, their email is added to the case as a regular response. If he answers only to the employee, then his letter added to the ticket as a note, which is not visible to the main user (when viewing the correspondence on the appeal in his account).
11) In the rules for incoming calls, we added the condition "Copy (Cc) of the appeal"so that you can track the presence of a specific address (or domain) in the copy and automatically perform the necessary actions.
12) All rule types have two new actions - "Add to copy" and Add to Bcc in case you need to add addresses to copies when the appeal meets the conditions of the rule.