ITS Tech Tips: GroupWise Tips

The Efficient Use of E-mail

a Best Practices Guide

E-mail: We're Drowning In It!
Keeping E-mail
E-mail Overload
Internal SPAM

E-mail Solutions
Reply Options
Plain Text vs. HTML
Web Links vs. Attachments
Mailbox Volume
Keep An Eye On The Size Of Messages
File Those Messages
Archiving Mail
Filter Out The Trash
Using Mailbox Cleanup
Tips on SPAM
Using the Intranet

E-mail: We're Drowning In It!

Keeping E-mail

Imagine if you kept every piece of hardcopy mail (forever) that you've ever received in your life. Your office or home would be uninhabitable. That's the situation that faces CWU and just about every other organization with an e-mail system.

E-mail Overload

The amount of e-mail stored affects the ability to run maintenance programs and increases the potential for e-mail outages.

Backup times and the space needed are increased.

It makes your mailbox sluggish too.

Internal SPAM

There is a definite need to be able to communicate messages to the CWU community. Until recently, the easiest way to do so was to send these announcements via e-mail.

FACT: A typical e-mail sent to *.cwu that consumes 240K of disk space will use 81Mb of disk space (that's 360 times as much) if sent to the listservs (classif@cwu.edu, exempt@cwu.edu, faculty@cwu.edu). Add in an attachment and you've got BIG problems! See chart below:

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E-mail Solutions

Reply Options

If you receive an e-mail addressed to the campus that you want to reply to, use the Reply to Sender option as opposed to Reply to All. A chat room area has been set up on the Intranet for group discussions.

Also, you can choose to not include the original message text with your reply.

Plain Text vs. HTML

HTML mail is nice, but it is big. It can be fun to “dress up” an e-mail with background pictures or special fonts but these extras just add weight. Use HTML mail sparingly and Plain Text for generic messages.

• Click on your View menu to switch back and forth from HTML and Plain Text.

Web Links vs. Attachments

If you need to distribute an attachment to a large group of people, consider using a web link instead.

To save a document and create a web link to it,

• Save your document on the CWU web (Zeus) drive.
• Compose a brief e-mail letting everyone know the file is available.
• Type the url in the e-mail. For example http://www.cwu.edu/˜gladenk/file.doc.

As soon as you press the Enter key, GroupWise knows you've entered a link and will format it for you appropriately.

Tip: If you want to link to an existing document or web page, you can either type in the address directly or copy and paste it from your browser window.

Important! Don't forget to delete the file from the web drive after everyone has gotten it.

Mailbox Volume

Try to keep your Mailbox and Sent Items folder to as few messages as possible. We recommend less than 100 messages in each area.

Keep An Eye On The Size Of Messages

Add the “size field” to your mailbox and folders so that you can easily sort by size, and delete the large unnecessary e-mails.

To add the field size,

• Right-click on the header of your inbox (where is says FROM, SUBJECT, DATE, etc.)...and select SIZE.

The column will automatically be added. Deleting one large e-mail with an attachment can have the same effect as deleting 100 or more smaller e-mails.

Note: You can also just delete the attachment from the e-mail with the new Delete Attachment applet.

File Those Messages

If you receive important e-mail you want to keep, you can set up a folder and move it there. This does not provide the same system benefit as archiving, as the e-mail is still within the main post office... but it does make e-mail management easier, and makes identifying e-mail that can be deleted much easier.

To create a folder in your Cabinet,

• Click on the Cabinet icon in the left pane of the GroupWise window to select it.
• Click on File, New, Folder... and follow the steps GroupWise walks you through.

Archiving Mail

You can tell GroupWise to automatically archive old messages and calendar items for you. They are moved to a separate directory on a different server, which you specify, and you can retrieve them at any time.

All of the folders in your Cabinet will be re-created in your archive for you.

If you set up GroupWise to automatically archive for you, all of the items in your Cabinet folders as well as those in your Mailbox that are older than the time period you specify will be moved to your archive.

All of the appointments, tasks, and reminder notes on your calendar can also be moved automatically if you want.

For more information on archiving mail, including instructions on how to do so, please visit the GroupWise online Help Pages and click on the appropriate platform (Mac or PC) on the left side navigation menu.

Special notes: A disadvantage to automatic archiving is you may be archiving junk mail. Use this utility with caution. Another option would be to use a rule-based archiving method such as that listed on the ITS Tech Tips web site under GroupWise tips. If you start to run out of room in your archives, you'll need to consider alternate storage such as a CD. Contact the ITS HelpDesk at x2001 for assistance.

Filter Out The Trash

A simple method for cleaning out the inbox is to go through and manually delete mail with the delete key. You can also use the filter method to move e-mails into a temporary folder to read later, then delete.

To make things easier, you can use the GroupWise filter to quickly display a list of messages you want to delete.

To run a filter,

• Click on View, Edit/Create...

• Type in the appropriate field or fields the criteria you'd like to filter by. For example, when the e-mails were coming in about the crosswalk controversy in June, you could type in a Subject filter for "*campus community*" to capture all of the e-mails with that in the Subject line. The asterisk (*) works as a wildcard so there can be any text before or after those words.
• Click on OK to run the filter.

Note the word (Filtered) appears in the header bar. You can clear your filter by clicking on View, Filter, Clear.

Now it's a simple matter of selecting these messages (Edit menu, Select All) and either moving them to a temporary “read later” folder or just deleting them.

Items deleted with the Delete key will be moved to the Trash can. If you accidentally delete something in this manner, you have 10 days to retrieve it from the Trash can before it is automatically emptied.

Using Mailbox Cleanup

Another way to delete mail is to run the Mailbox Cleanup utility.

This applet will quickly delete or move items (e-mail or calendar postings) in a given date range.

To run Mailbox Cleanup,

• Click on the Mailbox Cleanup button on the toolbar or click on the Applets menu, Run... , Mailbox Cleanup.
• Select the Action you want to perform (i.e. delete or move to a folder)
• Select which Item types you want to act on (i.e. mail, appointments, etc)
• Select where the items are going to be (Item source).
• Give it a date range and click Next.

GroupWise will search through your account for the items you specified and prompt you when the job is complete.

Tips on SPAM

If you must SPAM the entire campus, please send the e-mail to *.cwu, instead of sending messages to the listservs (faculty@cwu.edu, classif@cwu.edu, and exempt@cwu.edu)

Sending to *.cwu generates only 5 emails which everyone points to. Sending to the individual lists generates nearly 1800 emails.

Using the Intranet

Remember, it is no longer necessary to send e-mails to the entire campus in order to get your message across. An alternative is to post announcements and information on the CWU Intranet.

For PC users, the Intranet is part of GroupWise. We recommend that Mac users make a shortcut or bookmark to www.cwu.edu/˜intranet.

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Page last updated 08/14/06. Send questions or comments to ITS Training.