Stupid e-mail features which would make me MUCH more productive
I work in a place driven by e-mail. Perhaps unhealthily so. Today, I’ve sent 18 e-mails and received 56 e-mails. Note that I’ve had my e-mail closed for several hours today, just to get work done. And so, I propose some new Outlook features (yes, I have to use Outlook) that would make me MUCH, MUCH more productive. They are:
Unsubscribe From E-Mail Thread
If I click this button, any person who uses the “Reply to All” button on any message in the thread will not automatically reply back to me. The “To:” and “Cc:” lines will not contain my address.
If someone actively adds me back to the To: or Cc: line, that’s fine. Perhaps I need to be involved again.
Wrong Person
This button works much like “Reply to All” button, except that:
- It contains a “Right Person” header, along with the “To” and “Cc” headers. When the message is sent, the “right person” is added to the “To” line.
- The text, “For this kind of issue, please contact <right person>.” is inserted in the reply body, and the cursor will be placed right after the period. If the “right person” is already copied on the e-mail, it will instead insert the text, “Please don’t copy me on this kind of issue – <right person> can handle this and bring me in, if necessary.”
- Hitting “Send” will also unsubscribe me from the e-mail thread as above.
- Outlook should track the total number of times a particular “right person” has been recommended to the message’s sender, and use increasing font sizes and increasingly gaudy colors for each successive e-mail recommendation.
Attach This E-Mail To Our Stupid Internal Tracking System
Clicking this button will prompt for a tracking number, and all future e-mails in the thread will be stripped of previously included content and appended to our obligatory Stupid Internal Tracking System’s tracking item (task, project, Excel page, whatever) where it can be publicly read.
Forward Answer Again
This button forwards an e-mail from your Sent Messages folder to the person it was originally sent to, as well as increase both the font size and the gaudiness of the font’s color, and copies the person’s manager.