Email is one of the most important communications tools for businesses. When it stops working, people start to get nervous.

While there are many things that a user can do to mess up their email, many of these problems can be resolved with a restart of the software or the computer.

However when the old standby of restarting doesn’t work, it is time for the email administrator to start looking into the issue a bit more deeply.

Here are some of the more common errors found in Outlook 2007 along with some of the ways you can make things right again:

1. Error message that reads: “Cannot open your default e-mail folders. The information store could not be opened.”

This issue can be fixed by first locating Outlook.exe that can be found here: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12.

Next, right click Outlook.exe and then click on Properties.

On the Compatibility tab, clear the check box that reads ‘Run this program in compatibility mode’. Then click Ok and restart Outlook.

2. Error message that reads: “Your Microsoft Exchange Server is unavailable.”

This error is a bit trickier to resolve only because there can be many different causes.

No data connection – test your SMTP connection using telnet. If you are unsure how to do this, Microsoft has provided a guide on their TechNet site that walks you through this process: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb123686.aspx.

Office Outlook files are locked – there are times when .ost and .pst files are accidentally, or purposefully, set to read only. Check the permissions of these two files by navigating to:

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\ for .pst files and C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\ for .ost files. Make sure that neither is set to read only.

Third party applications are interfering with Outlook – many programs, including anti-malware solutions, can interfere with Outlook connecting to the Exchange Server. To check to see if this is the cause, start Outlook in safe mode.

Outlook files are corrupted – this can happen after an upgrade is applied to Outlook. If any of the .dat files listed below are present they should be deleted or renamed.

• Extend.dat – Located in C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\
• Frmcache.dat – Located in C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\Forms\
• Views.dat – Located in C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\
• Outcmd.dat – Located in C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\

All the files, with the exception of Outcmd.dat will be re-created. The Outcmd.dat file saves customized toolbar settings so if it is removed these settings will have to be re-applied.

3. Office Outlook will not open personal folders or personal folders do not show up in Outlook.

Personal folders are often the root of many problems related to Outlook. Microsoft has published the Inbox Repair tool, Scanpst.exe, that can be used to scan .pst and .ost files for errors in the file structure. If this is not intact, it will reset the file structure and rebuild the headers.

This tool will only work on the files that reside on your computer’s hard drive, not the files on the Microsoft Exchange Server.

This will also help to resolve the error message: “Cannot open your default e-mail folder. The file c:\users\owner\documents\software info\outlook.pst is not a personal folders file”.

4. Error messages that read either: “The action cannot be completed. The connection to the Microsoft Exchange Server is unavailable. Your network adapter does not have a default gateway” or “Your Microsoft Exchange Server is unavailable”.

This error occurs when Outlook is unsure of the default gateway address. The former is the error message that shows when the Outlook profile is configured automatically and the latter appears when the profile is manually configured. Both have the same fix.

To repair this you will need to edit the registry so clicking on Start and then Run is necessary. Then, enter regedit in the Open box and click OK.

Next, navigate to the registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\RPC. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.  Type DefConnectOpts, and then press ENTER. Now, right-click DefConnectOpts, and then click Modify. In the Value data box, type 0, and then click OK.

5. None of the authentication methods supported by this client are supported by your server.

This happens to people when they use their computer in multiple locations. For example, a laptop is taken home and connected to the home network or perhaps a computer is taken on the road. Basically, it comes from authentication rules for the SMTP server.

When this error occurs go to the Account Settings tab and click on Change then More Settings. Now select the Outgoing Server tab.

The option that reads: “My outgoing server requires authentication” and the one that reads: “Log on to incoming mail server before sending mail” should both be looked at. If there is a check in the option box remove it.

5 Common Outlook Errors and How to Fix Them

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Google recently hung a ‘going out of business’ sign on its Message Continuity service for users of Microsoft Exchange. Google will continue to provide the service to its users until their contracts run out, but after that, they’re on their own.

Since the service was launched a little over a year ago, “hundreds” of businesses have subscribed to the offering, which uses Google’s cloud to provide email continuity when a Microsoft Exchange environment is interrupted for any reason.

Hundreds of users, though, can’t compete with the “millions” of businesses that have moved their entire email operation to Google Apps, so Searchzilla has decided to scrap its continuity product for Exchange  and concentrate all its resources on its application suite.

Current users of the continuity product were “encouraged to consider using Google Apps as their primary messaging and collaboration platform” in a company blog written by Vice President of Product Management Dave Girouard.

The brusque departure by Google from the Exchange disaster recovery scene contrasts sharply with how it entered it:

“Google Message Continuity advances our commitment to providing rapidly deployed, cost-effective email management solutions for organizations of all sizes,” Enterprise Product Manager Matthew O’Connor wrote when the continuity product was announced.

Looking back on the announcement, it appears that Google’s “commitment” to the Exchange market was as solid as an adolescent’s commitment to the latest fad.

That’s not to say that Google’s intentions in offering an Exchange product weren’t clear from the start for careful readers of the company’s pronouncements. “Additionally, for organizations interested in eventually moving to Google Apps, Google Message Continuity can provide a smooth bridge to the cloud,” O’Connor slyly observed in his blog item.

O’Connor’s colleague, Rajen Sheth, the group product manager for Google Apps had a similar pitch at the time:

“Google Message Continuity can also help organizations transition to Google Apps down the road,” he wrote. “Since Microsoft Exchange and Gmail are always in sync with one another, there’s no need to migrate email data when eventually deploying Google Apps.”

Little did those who signed on for Google’s continuity solution realize when they did so that if they didn’t “transition” to Google Apps fast enough to suit the Ferret King, they’d be left looking for another business interruption solution within a year’s time.

Google has been criticized in the past for its flighty attitude toward product development. Some detractors maintain that Google often enters markets to be disruptive, not competitive. Like a sea gull boss, it will undercut competitors in a market and when things don’t work, abandon that market, leaving customers who had faith in the Google brand to clean up the mess.

That kind of product management may work with consumers, but it leaves something to be desired in the business world. Google’s competitor in the enterprise market, Microsoft, knows that. While the Redmond crew have suffered a few slings and arrows for sticking with products too long, their commitment to legacy products has been an important, if sometimes overlooked, part of their success in the business market.

Google’s forsaking of Message Continuity brings to mind some remarks by Microsoft Senior Director of Online Services Tom Rizzo in his famous “Google Graveyard Spooks Customers” blog written on Halloween last year:

“Google releases experimental products and tracks adoption to determine whether to continue providing them,” he wrote. “Its products are like spaghetti, Google throws them up against the wall to see if they stick.”

“The burials of de-supported products are more examples of what is convenient for Google and not good for business,” he added.

Google deserts Exchange users by killing Message Continuity

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Customize the Exchange Management Shell as an Exchange administrator, it’s only a matter of time before you embrace the dark side and come to know the true power of shell. The Exchange Management Shell is the direct interface between you and the underlying PowerShell cmdlets that are used to query, configure, and manage Exchange. Getting comfortable with a command line interface after years of GUI work is a big shift for many admins, but if you start out slow, and work your way through things step by step, you’ll soon find that you are a PowerShell Jedi. Making something your own is the first step towards getting comfortable with it, so in this post, we’ll see how to customize the Exchange Management Shell to make it your own.

Again, the Exchange Management Shell (EMS) is simply Exchange’s pathway into PowerShell. If you look at the properties of the EMS shortcut, you will see that it does three things:

C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -noexit -command “. ‘C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\bin\RemoteExchange.ps1′; Connect-ExchangeServer -auto;”

1. It launches PowerShell,
2. It runs a PowerShell script called RemoteExchange.ps1, and finally
3. Automatically connects to the localhost Exchange server.

PowerShell uses profiles to control how it looks and feels. You can also use profiles to configure PowerShell with your own aliases, functions, etc. If you examine the RemoteExchange.ps1 script referenced in the path above, you will find that it configures the size of the EMS window, provides the tips you see at launch, and defines some functions specific to Exchange.

To tailor the appearance of your EMS, you can create/edit your PowerShell profile. You won’t always have a profile to start with. When you open the EMS, type this command:

Test-Path $profile

If you have a profile the result will show True. If you don’t, it will show… care to guess? That’s right, False. To start working with your profile, enter this command:

notepad $profile

If you didn’t have a profile, you will be prompted to create one. Now that you have a profile, what can you do? I like to have the EMS automatically open in the scratch directory I tend to save working scripts, output files, etc., in and change up the colors a little bit. Here’s an example profile file:

$Shell = $Host.UI.RawUI
$Shell.WindowTitle="A little knowledge is a dangerous thing"
$Shell.BackgroundColor="Black"
$Shell.ForegroundColor="Green"
Set-Location C:\\scratch

Let’s see what we’re doing here. First, we create a variable called $Shell, and populate it with the properties of the $Host.UI.RawUI, which stores all the attributes of the UI. Then, we set the value of the WindowTitle attribute (quote enclosed), set the foreground and background color, and then essentially we CD into our c:\scratch directory. Here’s a list of the colors you can use:

• Black
• Blue
• Cyan
• DarkBlue
• DarkCyan
• DarkGray
• DarkGreen
• DarkMagenta
• DarkRed
• DarkYellow
• Gray
• Green
• Magenta
• Red
• White
• Yellow

Save the file, and then launch the EMS. You should see your EMS with the foreground and background colors that you chose, and that your current directory is c:\scratch (or whatever you chose). Notice what you don’t see? Your Window title should display “Machine:FQDN” of your Exchange server. When you use the Connect-Exchange server command, it updates the window title to reflect the server. However, when you launch the regular PowerShell (instead of the EMS) you will see your catch window title at the top.

We’ll look more into PowerShell and the power of the EMS in upcoming posts. If you have a particular customization you like to use, please feel free to share it in a comment below.

Customize the Exchange Management Shell

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In an age where millions of emails are sent every day it is hard to find someone who hasn’t made a mistake when sending a message.

If you are using Microsoft Outlook and Exchange, you can quickly recall a message and delete unread copies, if you are lucky that is and no one has opened the email. If someone has already opened your errant message, then it’s too late.

Companies have become a bit more cognizant that some employees are just a bit too quick to pull the Send trigger on their mail. To compensate, many have put into place a time delay that gives someone the opportunity to think twice about a message that was sent out and stop it before it is delivered.

Just recently, the New York Times suffered a rather embarrassing incident where they had planned to send a few hundred emails out to some of their subscribers offering them a discounted rate if they did not cancel their subscription. Instead the message went out to over 8 million people.

That was mistake number one.

This was then followed up by a message that read:

“If you received an email today about canceling your NYT subscription, ignore it. It’s not from us”

sent out via Twitter. So they were blaming the mistake on someone else, a spammer perhaps.

But, as it was later discovered, the Times was the guilty party. They did send the initial message and then pawned off the responsibility.

Where the mistake hurt

This gaffe wound up costing the Times. Not only was their reputation hurt, but so was their bank account.

Since a discounted rate was promised to the few hundred who were thinking of cancelling their subscription to the Times, other customers felt slighted. Their loyalty, so it seemed, accounted for little reward.

To make up for it, the Times extended the discount to everyone who received the errant email, but only for part of a day. By the afternoon of their offer, they had put a halt to the discounted rates. This decision then led to a Twitter account called @NYTSpam that made fun of the error fully disclosing that it was a:

“Parody account. Not affiliated with @NYTimes or actual spammers — just sick of bad digital strategy.”

The account currently has over 200 followers.

The Times is not alone when it comes to paying the price for a bad email going public. These things actually happen all the time. But when it happens to a small business, we don’t really hear about it.

To keep the lid on scandals and humiliation that can be suffered due to email, it is important that you cover certain things with your employees.

Anyone who emails on behalf of the company should understand the following:

1. Never send an email when you are angry or emotional. This leads to things being said that you may want to take back.
2. Write, edit, send. Never type out an email and hit the send button without reading it over. Not only for spelling and grammar errors that could hurt your reputation, but also for the tone of the email. People read into things and if the tone is not what you intend it could lead to problems later.
3. Check your list. This ties in directly to the Times situation. Make sure that you are sending your email message to the right people. This becomes more important with so many organizations automatically populating the TO and CC fields as you type names. Make sure that you don’t rely simply on the names suggested to you. Be careful using the Reply to All as well.
4. Never punish or praise in an email message. Not only can the content of an email be misconstrued because of a lack of emotion, but it can also become evidence or public record. If you fail to follow human resources procedures, email can be a pretty solid form of documentation.
5. Don’t share company secrets via email. Whether they be financial, trade or even personal secrets they should never be relayed through an email message. It is far too easy for someone to accidentally, or purposefully, forward that message on to others.

Common Mistakes When Sending Emails

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Often Exchange administrators will receive escalated help desk tickets from users complaining that Exchange is “slow” and demanding resolution. These sorts of tickets (slow being at best a relative term, and never specific enough about what precisely is considered to be slow) can be extremely challenging to work, since the subjective nature of slowness is often combined with an inability to replicate the problem, or the problem is intermittent. The Exchange admin can take a look at the server(s) for high CPU utilization, low memory conditions, disk and network queue lengths exceeding the norm, and finding nothing, shrug it back off to the desktop support team as a client issue. While it is often a client issue, there are several places between Outlook and a user’s mailbox that can cause intermittent slowness, and are fair to call networking bottlenecks. In a six-part series of articles, we’ll look at how Exchange interacts on the network with various other services to help you identify network issues, and troubleshoot them when they occur.

In many cases, troubleshooting Exchange network bottlenecks will require a network trace, and may also require performance monitor counters. This series of articles will talk about both of those in general terms; how to use NetMon or Wireshark, and PerfMon are out of scope. In Part 2 of this series, we’re going to discuss how Exchange is dependent upon and interacts with Active Directory on the network.

Active Directory

There’s a ton of network interactions between Exchange servers and Active Directory, which is why you are required to have a Global Catalog server in every site in which you have an Exchange server. An Active Directory site is usually defined as a collection of subnets with sufficient bandwidth to support replication, and that can lead to sites spanning WAN links. While the WAN may have sufficient bandwidth and low enough latency to support Active Directory replication and authentication traffic, any AD client that is in a site may connect to, and query, and Domain Controller within that site. When the target of queries is across the WAN, the total latency of the WAN link can add up to noticeable delays. Understanding just how much goes on between your Exchange server and your Global Catalog server may be enough to make you change the word “site” to “subnet.” Exchange servers will bind to a randomly selected domain controller and global catalog server in the same site, to minimize WAN traffic. Ensure that there are redundant servers will keep WAN traffic to a minimum, and optimize Exchange performance.

Note: Read-Only domain controllers are not usable by Exchange. Exchange must access writable domain controllers.

Configuration information

The configuration partition in Active Directory contains critical data about the forest-wide configuration. Exchange configuration information can be found in a subfolder of the Services container in the Configuration partition. This includes:

1. Address lists
2. Address and display templates
3. Administrative groups
4. Client access settings
5. Connections
6. Messaging records management, mobile, and UM mailbox policies
7. Global settings
8. E-mail address policies
9. System policies
10. Transport settings

All Exchange server roles, except the Edge Transport Server, will query AD directly for this information. Here’s more specific information on how each role depends upon AD. You can also read more about that here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998561.aspx.

Hub Transport Server Role

The Hub Transport server must contact Active Directory to perform message categorization, necessary for recipient lookup and routing resolution. This will include the location of the recipient’s mailbox and any restrictions or permissions that may apply. It will also use LDAP queries to expand the membership of distribution lists to determine membership of a dynamic distribution list.

The Hub Transport Server will use cached information regarding the AD site topology to determine routing for message delivery between sites. If the Hub Transport server determines that a mailbox is in the same site, it will deliver the message directly to the Mailbox server, otherwise it will route the message to a Hub Transport server in the destination site.

The Hub Transport server uses the application partition of Active Directory to store and access configuration information, including transport rules, journal rules, and connectors.

Client Access Server Role

The Client Access server role services clients connecting from the Internet who want to use Outlook Web App, POP3, IMAP4, or ActiveSync. When a connection is received, the Client Access server authenticates the user against AD and then queries to determine the appropriate mailbox server. If the user’s mailbox is in the same site, the user is connected directly to their mailbox. If in a different site, the connection is redirected to a Client Access server in the remote site.

Unified Messaging Server Role

The Unified Messaging server queries Active Directory to retrieve global configuration information, such as dial plans, IP gateways, and hunt groups. When a message is received by the Unified Messaging server, it matches the telephone number to a recipient address, then the location of the user’s mailbox. It can then route the voicemail message to a Hub Transport server for delivery to the mailbox.

Mailbox Server Role

The Mailbox server also stores configuration information Active Directory, including agent configuration, address lists, and policies. The Mailbox server will use this to enforce mailbox policies and global settings.

Edge Transport Server Role

The Edge Transport server doesn’t access Active Directory. It stores it configuration in an instance of Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services. It uses an Edge Subscription to subscribe to a Hub Transport server in an Active Directory site, which will use the Microsoft Exchange EdgeSync service to synchronize Active Directory data to AD LDS.

Site definitions

There are two rules of thumb for Active Directory site design and how it impacts Exchange:

1. Make sure every single subnet that hosts an Exchange server belongs to a site
2. Don’t let any of those sites span the WAN, no matter how much bandwidth you have available.

If an Exchange server cannot determine its AD site because the subnet does not belong to a site, the MSExchangeDSA will fail with a 2114 and MSExchangeSA will fail with a 1005. In both cases it is because Exchange could not determine the AD site based on the subnet. Even the fastest WAN links have higher latency than the slowest LAN links, and that latency will have a cumulative and negative impact on Exchange performance as the server is waiting on responses from domain controllers if the DC is on the far side of the WAN from the Exchange server.

Troubleshooting Exchange interaction with Active Directory

Knowing how Exchange depends upon Active Directory will help you troubleshoot issues. The four main categories of problem are:

1. Network latency between the Exchange server and GC/DC
2. Firewall rules blocking connection attempts
3. Incorrect site configuration
4. Replication problems within AD

If you suspect Exchange is having a problem accessing Active Directory, first ensure that Exchange can communicate with a domain controller for each domain in the forest that has users with mailboxes, and that there is at least one domain controllers in the same site that is a global catalog server. Look for errors including 2114, 1005, and 1722.

Test connectivity between Exchange and Active Directory by using the PortQueryUI tool, and the response times to LDAP queries using LDP.EXE and a protocol analyzer. And of course, ensure that you have no replication problems with your Active Directory. A domain controller that stops replicating because of DNS islanding or other connectivity issues with the rest of the forest will directly impact AD. Changes in AD (like name, group membership, SMTP proxy addresses, etc.) must replicate to all domain controllers that Exchange relies upon before you can be sure that Exchange will pick up on/display the differences.

Performance will be enhanced by redundancy. When possible, ensure that there are multiple global catalog servers in the same site as every Exchange server, and that every domain in the forest with Exchange users is represented.

Performance of Exchange will also improve directly with the capabilities of those domain controllers. When the DC is able to cache the entire Active Directory in memory, response to queries from Exchange will be much faster. Look at implementing 64bit DCs with enough RAM to cache the entire database.

On a domain controller a quick way to check for replication problems is to run this command in an administrative command prompt

Repadmin /replsummary [enter]

Check for fails, servers that are down or unreachable, and larger times since the last replication event.

Coming up next

In Part 3, we will look at the connectivity requirements for Exchange as they relate to firewalls, and how to troubleshoot those problems. Here’s a rundown of the six parts in this series. We’ll update with live links as each part is published over the next several weeks:

1. Introduction and DNS
2. Active Directory
3. Firewalls
4. NICs
5. RPCs
6. Client side issues

Troubleshooting Exchange Networking: Active Directory (Part 2)

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I want you all to go grab your favourite marketing person and make them read this post. You know the ones I am talking about. The one that doesn’t understand why they have to take the 3600dpi 8GB PDF that could be blown up to the size of the Empire State Building without looking grainy, and reduce it for sending over email to a customer. The one who came in early last week to send an email blast to a 1000 person customer list that they bought from a guy they know, which resulted in your corporate network being placed on every RDNS blacklist on the planet. The one who doesn’t understand why when he sends an email, the customer doesn’t have it open to read before he lets goes of the mouse. The one whose laptop you secretly want to replace with an Etch-a-Sketch.

You know the one I am talking about… the one who just doesn’t “get” what you keep trying to tell him. I want you to share this blog post with him…maybe even forward it to him </wink>. This blog post is a list of seven things that non-technical folks should NOT do in email, unless of course, the objective is to lose customers and infuriate people.

1. Create form letters without testing them
   Here’s an example of something I got in my email today:
   
   And here’s the first thing I zoomed in on and clicked.
   
   If you are going to send out bulk email, either address it to “valued customer” so we’re at least honest about how impersonal it is, or test your program on your own personal account and a few of your cow-orkers before you fill your customers’ inboxes with junk.
2. Email an attachment that should have been the body of the email
   How many times have you gotten an email with an attachment and had to open the attachment to find that it either could have been incorporated in the body of the message, or left on a webserver and the email should have just included the link? That just wastes everyone’s time, and bandwidth, and also raises the chance your message will be blocked before the user even sees it.
3. Use a fixed width format that cannot be viewed on a mobile device
   If I have to scroll back and forth or pinch and zoom to read your message, I’ll probably just delete it unless it was something I specifically asked for. When you are trying to get your message out, make sure it can be received on any of the myriad devices your (potential) customers might use; full PC mail client, smartphone, e-reader, tablet, etc.
4. Use micro-fonts
   The saying is that 12 is the new 10. As devices get smaller, and as folks’ eyes get worse from staring at screens all day, one very bad thing you can do to people is make them squint to read your message. Yes, of course they can zoom in; but they could have also gone to your website instead of reading your email. Any extra effort or inconvenience is that much more reason for someone to delete you message unread.
5. Send read-receipt requested email
   If you want to know for a fact I got something, deliver it in person. Anything else is invasive and rude. When people do that to me internally, I make it a point to go over to their office and read the message out loud to them from my phone, asking for help with the big words. When sales people do it on unsolicited messages, I add them to the junk senders list.
6. Send an email to a large list of people where the only thing they have in common is that they’re in your address book or on your list
   It’s called BCC, and if you aren’t using it, you’re doing a huge disservice to your customers by exposing their information to people they’d just as soon not have their contact details. Hey admins? Why aren’t you limiting recipients per message to prevent the “mistakes” from happening?
7. Do not include your phone number in your email
   If you don’t want to take a customer call, you can always let it go into voice mail, but if you actually got our attention, and maybe we want to talk to you about what you’re selling, don’t make us hunt for your telephone number!

Readers, this is a chance for you to sound off about the things people do in email that drive you up a wall. Leave a comment (you don’t even have to register) and share your horror stories, pet peeves, or the worst affronts you’ve personally witnessed. Hello Internet, I’m listening.

How to Lose Customers and Infuriate People

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When starting out, many small businesses set up their email using one of the free accounts available to them. Services like Gmail by Google, Hotmail from Microsoft or Yahoo!’s mail service, provide a working email address with almost no maintenance for a business just getting its feet wet.

However this may not be the best way to make a first impression with your potential customers.

Listed below are seven reasons why you need to ditch the yourcompany@freeemail.com and go with an address that better reflects the image you want your company to have.

1. Free email looks less professional

People associate free email services like Gmail or Hotmail as a personal accounts. Businesses, on the other hand, should have an email address that looks more professional. In fact, a study by Visible Logic in Amsterdam found that 70 percent of people view email messages coming from free email services as less professional when used by a business.

2. Free email looks spammy

Over the years, people have been burned so often by spam that they have become very adept at spotting shady looking emails in their inbox. One way to spot an email that may have malicious intent is by looking at the address. If you email address doesn’t look legitimate, your messages may be overlooked by overly cautious recipients.

3. Free email looks cheap

When people receive an email from your company and it has the @freeemail.com trailing it, your company looks cheap. For less than five bucks a month, you can set up an email address with your company’s domain. Sometimes you can even get a few of these for free when you host your company’s website. Customers who see that you are unwilling to spend a few dollars on this are often left to wonder what else your company may be skimping on.

4. You lose credibility when you use free email

A legitimate, professional looking email address tells your customers that you are here to stay.

Not only that, but having multiple email addresses such as: info@yourcompany.com, sales@yourcompany.com or service@yourcompany.com shows others that you are a well structured organization. The impression one gets when there is one, free email as the sole contact is that one person is handling everything for a company. This may scare larger clients away for fear that the company cannot handle their needs.

In today’s business atmosphere, trust is everything. Especially when it comes to online sales. Every little thing your company can do to establish trust and credibility will help your business grow.

5. Free email is less secure

Remember the old saying: there is no such thing as a free lunch? Well that applies to email as well.

True, Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and the other free email providers do everything they can to make sure that their email services are as secure as possible, but things can slip through the cracks.

To pay for “free” email, users are subject to advertisements. While these help pay for the servers and storage space, they also have been linked to spam and hijacking. There have been several cases where businesses have had bank accounts and other confidential information compromised by cyber criminals who intercept email messages of companies that use free email services.

6. Free email may put you out of compliance

Nowadays, there are regulations and laws that govern so many industries and their record keeping that many large companies have entire legal teams dedicated to just compliance related issues.

But smaller companies are not immune to compliance. Companies of all sizes need to be aware of HIPPA when it comes to healthcare, PCI DSS when dealing with credit cards, and CAN-SPAM Act when it comes to marketing.

Free email likely does not offer you the tools required to be in compliance with any of these, or the many other, laws or regulations for email use.

7. You miss out on marketing your brand

Having your website’s domain name in every email you send out gives you the opportunity to build your company’s brand. Info@yourcompany.com puts your web site address in the minds of your customers. They know where to turn to when they need your services because they are so used to seeing your domain in every communication from you.

7 Reasons to Ditch That Free Email Address

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BYOD can give administrators a headache.

More and more organizations are finding their employees using personal devices to access company data. Without some measure of control, those workers can create serious security problems for their employers.

As much as some administrators would like to block the use of personal devices in the workplace, that’s unlikely to happen for a number of reasons. For example, many employees are already using their own devices at work, as a recent survey by IDC shows. That poll found that 95 percent of workers use one personally purchased device on the job.

In addition, businesses are demanding more and more productivity from their workers, and that’s what they can get by allowing employees to use their own gadgets for work. One study by iPass, for instance, showed that employees using personal devices worked 240 more hours a year.

Not many companies would want to part with that kind of productivity, and they’re not going to, according to a Gartner analysis. To do so, that report noted, corporations will be embracing the practice by placing their apps on their workers’ devices. In fact, by 2014 Gartner predicts that 90 percent of all employee-owned devices will have corporate apps running on them.

Other cultural and technology trends are also making opposition to the Bring Your Own Device futile. Hardware makers are finding they need to produce products with a consumer bent if they want to stay in business.

Virtualization and cloud computing encourage access to corporate technology resources whenever worker wants to access them and with whatever they want to access them with.

Meanwhile, as the line between work and non-work becomes more and more obscure, the case for creating a clear line of demarcation between work and home devices becomes weaker and weaker.

To address issues created by the use of personal devices in the workplace, companies have begun to adopt BYOD policies. Before adopting such a policy, here are some questions an organization might want to consider.

• Should data be classified to determine what can and can’t be downloaded by personal devices?
• What happens to company data on a personal device when an employee leaves the company?
• What happens if a personal device is lost or stolen?
• Do personal devices need to be configured in any special way?
• How can an acceptable password policy be implemented on a personal device?
• What forms of encryption should be acceptable?
• What personal devices are acceptable for use with corporate resources?
• Should employees be allowed to jailbreak or root their devices, as doing that may make the device more susceptible to security risks.
• Should employees be required to sign the BYOD policy before they’re granted access to the company’s network?

Some of those questions were considered by Unisys when it formulated its BYOD policy. Among the requirements of that policy is that Unisys has the right to confiscate a device if it’s needed for litigation purposes.

That policy requires employees to accept a digital certificate to be installed on their personal device. It authenticates the device to Unisys’s systems, and it allows the company to analyze access behavior. Knowledge of that behavior can be used to identify abuse of access privileges.

The certificate gives an employee access to email and calendar functions on the system. Access to other functions can require additional authentication.

Another requirement of the policy, and one most administrators will find desirable, is the installation of a program on the device that enables all data to be remotely wiped on a unit that is lost or stolen.

What should be in your BYOD policy?

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You may have read the stories about how Atos Origin, a French IT services company, is looking to make their offices an email-free workplace by the year 2013 to eliminate what they call email pollution.

By turning to collaborative social medial tools, such as the Atos Wiki, employees have already seen a 20% reduction in “email pollution” six months after this initiative went into practice.

Volkswagen has also attempted to cut back on after hour’s emails being sent to and from employees Blackberrys in a similar effort. However, while cutting back on emails like Atos is trying to do may seem trend setting, it hardly seems to be a realistic goal.

Not only because of how many workplaces have become reliant on emails to get work done, but rather how these people use email to get work done.

As we all know, emails are not only used to deliver electronic messages. People in office buildings all over the world have found ways to “hack” their email accounts to do much more than send and receive messages.

Let’s take a look at some of the most creative, but common, ways email is used for things other than email.

Instant Messaging

Instant messaging is still taboo in many corporate settings. For some reason, IMs still conjure up images of the old AOL chat rooms in the eyes of most managerial types. So instead of embracing the technology, it becomes banned in the workplace.

Creative employees have learned that they can send a quick message to a coworker using the subject line alone. For example, sending a message with a subject that reads I have the research for your project EOM tells the recipient everything they need to know and lets them know that your subject line is the entire message (that is what the EOM, or End of Message, means).

Online/Portable Storage

There is hardly a person with an office job who hasn’t found themselves working on something that they needed to take home to complete. When they reach for that trusty USB portable hard drive they remember it is sitting on their desk at home still plugged into their laptop.

Email becomes a quick replacement as you can simply attach the document, spread sheet, etc to an email message and send it to yourself. Problem solved. Of course you would want to be extra careful when doing this with content that is considered sensitive or confidential.

File Transfer

Sending files to other people, or even yourself, can be tricky in the workplace.

Many companies block executable files from being attached to email messages to prevent malware from being spread via email.

However many employees have realized that they can get around this by changing the file extension from .exe to something that is permitted, like .docx. The recipient then needs to simply rename the file extension when they download it.

Setting Reminders

While most email clients have some sort of calendar that allows us to set reminders, we don’t always have access to them.  We may remember something late at night that we need to remind ourselves to do when we get to the office in the morning. If you can’t get to your calendar, you can always send a reminder to your work email. That way, when you are sifting through your morning emails you will remember what it is you have to do.

The same can be done in reverse.

Saving Hyperlinks

Bookmarking interesting or useful websites is great if you only use one computer. Using a solution like Evernote or Thirsty solves this, if your company allows these services through the firewall that is.

Then there are those who copy links and paste them into an email message. Sending this email to themselves almost assures them of the fact that they will be able to find these web sites at another time.

This little email hack is applied to just about anything found online. Sites, videos, presentations, etc. are all saved by cutting and pasting into email messages.

Of course, all of these tricks just add to the scourge of email pollution that companies like Atos are trying to get rid of. But hey, if they make your employees work easier, and better, and they don’t violate any acceptable use policies, is there really any harm?

5 Creative Uses For Email

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Recently we wrote about how workers in the United Kingdom felt compelled to check their email at all times, even during holidays like Christmas. Those same kinds of pressures are felt across the Channel, too, in Germany, but some employers over there are relieving those pressures by turning off the email spigot.

The latest employer to do that is auto maker Volkswagen. The Kaiser of Fahrvergnügen cut a deal with its unions recently to shut-off outbound mail from its Blackberry servers to rank-and-file workers from one half hour after close of business to one half hour before office hours begin each day. The agreement doesn’t apply to managers and executives at the company.

At the height of their popularity, Blackberry smartphones were known as “crackberries” because of the addictive behavior of their users. They had to constantly get their email “fix”. Apparently, Volkswagen sees “crackberry” as more than just a jocular metaphor as far as the health of its workforce is concerned.

At the German consumer goods maker Henkel, a more short-term solution was adopted for the holiday season. It has declared the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day “Blackberry Free Week”—unless there is an emergency. Declared CEO Kasper Rorsted to the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung:

“I don’t want to have to read emails just because someone is bored somewhere and wants to show he’s busy.”

Last year, a similar tack was taken by the top brass at Deutsche Telekom, which owns T-Mobile in the United States. It instituted a “smart devices policy” for its workers. The policy calls for employees to claim some time off from their devices. Management also pledged not to call workers or expect them to read email after business hours.

Such a policy, though, doesn’t seem destined for success. After all, most UK workers aren’t required to check email, either. That doesn’t stop them from doing it. If a company is serious about creating a healthy separation between work and home, then shutting off email, as Volkswagen is doing, is a more effective approach.

It’s evident that these German companies are reacting to two worldwide trends. First, there’s the growing use of smartphones, which are far more addictive than conventional cellphones—and not just because you can check email more easily with them. A typical smartphone user loads their device up with apps that continually beckon them to check their phone.

The other trend is the rising amount of burnout among workers. In Germany alone it’s estimated that 10 million sick days a year can be attributed to employee burnout.

While the relentless pressure to do more with less, which was rampant before the great economic collapse and has become worse since, is a significant contributor to burn-out, so, too, is the inability to cut the cord to the office. One recent poll showed that 88 percent of German workers make themselves available after office hours to bosses, colleagues and clients. That’s a 15 percent increase over what it was two years ago.

Today, email administrators concentrate much of their time on making sure mail arrives where it should in a timely manner. In the future, they may have to make sure it doesn’t arrive at all during some hours.

Will shutting off email be the next big employee perk?

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Despite the claims of one CEO of a major global high tech company, many workers believe their internal email is important enough to scrutinize when they should be kicking back and being jolly during the holiday season.

In a poll of some 1000 people with full-time jobs in the United Kingdom, surveyors found that nearly half of the workers (46 percent) intend to check their office email either frequently (15 percent) or intermittently (31 percent) during yuletide. About a third of the sample (34 percent) said they’d totally resist the temptation to check their email during their stay at home during the festive period.

Younger workers (18-24 year olds) were more likely to check their email during the holidays that older ones (50 years old or older), according to the survey conducted by OnePoll and sponsored by SecurEnvoy, a firm specializing in two-factor authentication without tokens.

While 21 percent of the respondents said that there was no expectation or compulsion by their employers to have them check emails while at home, 20 percent felt they’d be at a competitive disadvantage at the office if they failed to do so. Nevertheless, nearly half (46 percent) of the respondents told the pollsters that if they were contacted by their employer during the holidays, they’d be “very angry” (28 percent) or “really annoyed” (18 percent).

No doubt, along with any office nuggets in their inboxes, employees will find one of these scams making the rounds right now:

• Offers for free screen savers never seem to lose their appeal to scammers or their allure to victims, who want to give their computer displays a festive look during the holidays.
• Gift cards have become popular with gift givers, as well as with Net grifters. Typically, they’ll offer a gift card from a popular store at a discount. That’s because the card has been stolen or is bogus. Gift cards are best purchased directly from the store that issues them.
• An assortment of deals, special offers and discounts tied to the season. While these may have the appearance of legitimacy—scammers have become very adept at mimicking the official mail of banks, retailers and such—these missives usually contain malicious links aimed at conning personal information from a target or infecting their computer or smartphone with malware.

While many workers are thinking of checking email during the holiday out of a concern, either real or imagined, for keeping their jobs, few are thinking about protecting themselves or their companies from cyber criminals. Nearly half (46 percent) of the survey sample polled by OnePoll admitted that they don’t use any kind of security on their mobile phones, not even a simple personal information number (PIN), even though they acknowledged that they’d be reading emails on them that could include sensitive information and unencrypted documents.

“If you’re accessing the corporate network to retrieve emails, using a password or hardware token that’s left next to your PC just isn’t adequate,” warned SecurEnvoy CTO Andy Kemshall. “Should Santa, his elves or someone a little more sinister drop by and liberate you of your token or copy your password, they could be stealing vast amounts of critical company data,”

Cell phones can be a great alternative to passwords and custom tokens for accessing corporate systems because unlike custom tokens, most people always keep their phones with them and are diligent about keeping tabs on them. They’re even a better alternative if access to them is protected by a PIN or password.

Santa's checking his list for Christmas, everyone else their email

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For those of you who haven’t heard of Loggly, Loggly is cloud based service for complete application intelligence for app developers.  Loggly uses log data to collect, analyze, troubleshoot and monitor your applications. They are a heavy user of Amazon’s Web Service hosting, and recently experienced a truly stellar outage of massive proportions. You can read about that on a Loggly blog post here which I encourage you to do. However, I am not here to talk about lessons learned about hosting and availability, and putting eggs in consolidated baskets. Nor am I planning to talk about on premise versus hosted, and the perceived dangers of the cloud. It’s what happened to Loggly and how they went unaware of the impending freight train heading their way that I want to discuss, because there are some great lessons to learn from that little subset of their blog post.

Here’s the bit that prompted this post:

Originally we stated we had not received reboot notices from Amazon, but the truth is that (4) of the staff here, myself included, received two separate vague notices, one from about 10 days ago, and another from 3 days ago, which stated ‘some or all’ of our instances were scheduled to be rebooted.  These notices were found in our spam folders on Gmail, placed there with a very large red notice reading: “Warning: This message may not be from whom it claims to be. Beware of following any links in it or of providing the sender with any personal information.”

In summary, AWS did send notice in advance, but those notices went unread. One of my favourite John Wayne movies is “Big Jake” and one of my favourite quotes comes from that movie. It is quite appropriate here, if somewhat shortened for context.

Anything goes wrong, anything at all…your fault, my fault, nobody’s fault…it won’t matter

And the fact is that it won’t matter at all that AWS notifications to Loggly got flagged as spam and therefore filed in the next best thing to the bit bucket. It doesn’t matter that Loggly is using Gmail, which strikes me as somewhat strange for a business, though perhaps they meant Gmail for Domains. It also doesn’t matter at all that whatever AWS sent in those email notifications, it caused some spam filter somewhere to flag the messages as spam, and even worse, as a potential phishing message. What matters is notice of reboots were sent, they weren’t read, and full outage resulted. Oops.

So here’s where I think the fix lies. With Amazon. NOT THE BLAME, just the fix, and this is the lesson I want us all to take away from what happened to Loggly and with the perspective that as a service provider, we should do better for our customers.

1. Establish a single email address to send out service notifications from.
2. Ensure it is monitored and checked regularly for replies, NDRs, etc.
3. Encourage customers to use a D/L for our notifications that helps ensure key personnel within our customers’ orgs receive all notifications.
4. Monitor the popular DNSBL services to make sure we’re not listed by mistake.
5. Follow up on any NDRs to make sure customers are able to receive notifications.
6. Test that by making new customers receive and acknowledge they have received a test notification email.
7. Make sure that the email address is properly formatted and from your domain.
8. Use valid SPF and DKIM and ensure that alert emails are sent from a compliant system.
9. PGP or GPG sign all messages sent from this account to provide further authenticity.
10. Keep links and additional content that could be misinterpreted as spam to a minimum.
    Okay the above make a lot of sense, and are probably already being done by most of you, but here’s where we as service providers should take things to the next level.
11. Maintain an email account on the popular services (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, etc.) and send notifications to those accounts regularly to test for deliverability.

That last step is where I think Amazon should take a closer look, and any of us who are service providers should too. I like Gmail, and I trust Gmail, and if they find something in an email that makes them flag it as a phishing message (indicated by the Loggly blog post when they copied the “Warning: This message may not be from whom it claims to be. Beware of following any links in it or of providing the sender with any personal information”) then there is something in that email that set off all the alarms, failed the sniff tests, and was probably just a bad idea not really adding any value to the notification. Maybe the source address was different from the reply to (and in a different domain) or maybe the notification had links to a number of obsfucated URLs. Whatever the reason is, if I had seen a message in my spam folder that was flagged like that, I would have ignored it too.

When we, as service providers, need to notify our users of important things, like maintenance windows, changes to our terms of service, our outages, we need to make darn sure that users get them.

What about you? Have you ever missed a key notification because it fell victim to a false positive, or do you have any better ways to keep communications open with your customers?

Lessons Learned from the Loggly Outage

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You might have heard by now that Exchange 2010 SP2 has been released, and if you are looking to migrate some or all of your on-premise email to hosted email from Microsoft’s Office 365, two of the best things about SP2 are the New Hybrid Configuration Wizard and the Manage Hybrid Configuration Wizard.

The New Hybrid Configuration Wizard is designed to make establishing a hybrid coexistence relationship between your on premise Exchange organization and another Exchange organization as easy as possible. Scenarios where you would need to establish a hybrid deployment can include Office 365 or another cloud provider, where you will have some mailboxes on premise and others in the cloud either in the short term during migrations, or permanently when you want to keep some mailboxes on premise and move others to the cloud. Hybrid deployments let you:

• Share an SMTP namespace
• Share a unified GAL
• Share free/busy
• Centralize mailflow
• Use a single OWA URL
• Securely route mail between on premise and cloud mailboxes
• Move mailboxes between on premise and cloud with automatic Outlook configuration,
• and more.

Whether you want to move all of your email services to the cloud, or just a subset, one thing you should understand up front is that this will not be a point and click operation. Email is complicated, and email coexistence can be even more so, but SP2’s new Hybrid Configuration Wizard takes the approximately 50 manual steps required to set up hybrid configuration, and boils them down to a simple and wizard driven process.

The Hybrid Configuration Wizard has three main pieces:

1. A new wizard in the Exchange Management Console that provides step by step guidance through the entire hybrid deployment process.
2. New Exchange Management Shell cmdlets which are executed in the background by the wizard, but also available to you for administration and scripting.
3. Better and simplified management of many of the hybrid features.

When you run the wizard to establish a hybrid configuration, the wizard will handle many of the testing and verification steps that used to be manual processes, including:

1. Verified all prerequisites for hybrid deployment.
2. Creates the federation trust between your on premise environment and Office 365.
3. Creates the mutual organization relationships between your on premise Exchange and Office 365.
4. Makes the necessary email address policy modifications needed for moving mailboxes from an on premise server to Office 365.
5. Takes care of both mailtips and free/busy calendar sharing, as well as message tracking for easy interaction between on premise and cloud users.
6. Sets up the secure mail flow (TLS) between your on premise and Office 365, and configures mail routing to meet your requirements in case you have on premise DLP or other services.
7. Enables online archiving for on premise mailboxes if you have subscribed to that feature.

The Exchange 2010 SP2 Manage Hybrid Configuration Wizard enables you to manage this hybrid deployment easily, making your Exchange organization seem like a single management entity, even though some of your mailboxes are in the on premise infrastructure, and others are in the cloud at Office 365 datacenters. With a hybrid deployment, users won’t notice (or care) whether another user within the company has their mailbox on premise or in the cloud; they all look like they are a part of a unified Exchange organization. Mailbox moves between on premise and cloud are easy and can be done with minimum interruption to the user. If they are using Outlook 2010, they can even stay connected to their mailbox until the last few moments of a move, and will only need to close and restart Outlook to connect to their mailbox; no client reconfiguration, no download of a new OST.

If you are considering Office 365 as a part of your email service offering, be sure to look at the benefits of the SP2 Hybrid wizards. Managing email won’t become an end user task, but these wizards will sure make our lives easier!

First Look At The SP2 Hybrid Configuration Wizards

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Or is it? In a move that will have technology professionals first aghast, and then scratching their head, and finally a little jealous, Thierry Breton, the Chief Executive Office of the French information technology company ATOS has enacted a policy of “zero email”, in essence, banning internal email.

With more than 74,000 employees in 42 countries and 2010 revenues of $11.5 billion, this is not a small statement or a simple change in corporate culture.

Stating that his company’s employees receive on average two hundred emails per day, Thierry estimates that only twenty could be considered useful, thirty-six are considered spam messages, and the rest are so much noise generated internally that could as easily be handled using an Intranet portal, instant message, or phone call. ATOS is increasing its internal use of instant messaging applications, and the use of an internal “Facebook-like” portal.

Breton is no stranger to being a stranger to email. The former French finance minister took over as head of ATOS, and has not sent an email, since he started in November 2008. In a statement announcing the policy in February, Thierry said

“We are producing data on a massive scale that is fast polluting our working environments and also encroaching into our personal lives”. “At [Atos] we are taking action now to reverse this trend, just as organizations took measures to reduce environmental pollution after the industrial revolution”.

ATOS expects that by 2013, more than half of all digital content will come from updates to existing content.

ATOS uses Microsoft Corporation’s Office Communicator for instant messaging, which enables user to user and multi-party instant messaging, video conferencing and application sharing. They also use a wiki type approach to information sharing, easily enabling all users to create or contribute data online to their internal portal.

A statement from ATOS spokesperson Caroline Crouch to ABC News emphasized that this policy is focused on internal emails, and that external email with customers and partners will continue as normal.

Considering the amount of time I personally spend on email every day, and how much of that is “broadcast” type data that could be placed on the intranet home page, I am starting to see a certain appeal to this. Even with the widespread deployment of SharePoint, too many users still look at email as a file transfer system, forwarding Word docs to me even after I put them in a document library and send them a link to view and edit the file within SharePoint. We use Microsoft Lync (the latest version of Office Communicator) and a WordPress theme called P2 for a lot of our internal communications, but they are currently enhancements to, rather than replacements for, email. Certain teams (following IT’s example) are using private Twitter accounts for some team communications and manager-to-team broadcasts, and we’re always looking at other means to improve communications, but we’ve never looked at eliminating email (and, as an email admin, I hope we never do!)

Of course, there are security considerations to take into account, especially when using external services, and we’re also trying to narrow down on platforms to reduce the number of different systems we have to maintain. So far, we have a lot of interest, but no clear direction one way or the other.

ATOS’ new policy does have a certain appeal to it, if you can change the cultural approach to email, and provide enough guidance to uses about when to go to email, or when to go to other technologies for internal communications. I’d envision the following:

• File sharing of any type: SharePoint
• Simple question and answer, informal updates, dialogs that are in near real time but do not require a “paper trail:” Instant Messaging
• Short broadcast type updates: Private Twitter feeds (or SMS)
• Longer broadcast type updates: Blog posts on SharePoint
• Collaborative discussions: WordPress with P2 or SharePoint wiki
• Formal internal communications, more involved questions, private updates: email
• External communications: email

What about you? Do you see any appeal in reducing the volume of email internally? Do you use any other type of communications internally already, like instant messaging, wikis, etc.? What works for you, and what tips can you share with the other readers?

No Email at Work? Inconceivable!

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Estimates show Twitter to have over 300 million users. Facebook is close to 1 billion and Google+ keeps growing every day.

Add to the mix all of the smaller, niche social networks and those numbers continue to climb.

Take into account that all of these platforms offer some type of messaging client you can see why some people can so confidently make the claim that email is dead.

But despite the popularity of instant messaging through social networks, text messages and Tweets, email remains a powerful force. Powerful enough that VisibleGains, a video marketing company, confidently makes the claim that email is here to stay in a recent infographic that they created.

Talking the Talk and Walking the Walk

So Facebook has 750,000,000 friends chatting back and forth over walls and instant messages to the tune of 60,000,000 every day, and Twitter boasts 300,000,000 users sending out communiqués via 140 character blurbs 140,000,000 times every day.

And as for email? Email can stake a claim of 2,900,000,000 accounts sending upwards of 188,000,000,000 messages every day. That’s right, there are three times more email accounts than there are Facebook accounts.

Numbers too big to wrap your head around? Let’s look at these figures on a more personal level:

• The average number of Twitter updates for each account is .47 a day
• Facebook accounts average .08 updates in a 24 hour period
• The average email user sends 64.8 messages per day.

So not only are there more email accounts, but the use of these accounts far outshines the use Twitter and Facebook. In reality, the comparative use numbers aren’t even close enough to present any meaningful threat at this point.

But the big social networks are growing at such a rapid pace that it won’t be too long before one of them passes up email as the primary means of online communication, right?

Not so fast. While no one can argue that using social media for communication is booming, email is still growing as well. In fact, the number of email messages sent in 2010 was up 19% from 2009.

And as for spam taking up a large percentage of email messages, that is something that should definitely be taken into account. Spam does skew the numbers a bit, but considering spam sent via email is at an all time low as scammers and online criminals focus more on deploying spam over the various social channels, this argument may just reinforce the claim that email use is more alive and well than ever before.

Moving Forward

According to their inforgraphic, VisibleGains makes the claim that by the year 2014 there will be 3.8 billion email accounts worldwide and close to half of them, 47%, will be located in Asia and the Pacific.

But when we talk about the future of email, those who will be using it in the future should be consulted shouldn’t they? After all, teens detest email right? To them text speak and Facebook pokes are much more meaningful methods of communication than a long, drawn out email. At least that is what some will have you believe.

Yet when teenagers were asked the question, “will email live on?” only 15% believe that email is dead. 41% didn’t know (or didn’t care) but 44% agreed that email will in fact live on.

Analyzing the Numbers

Even with so many different options for communication out there that are much easier to use, email remains supreme because it is viewed as a professional medium; and in the world of business, projecting a professional image still trumps ease of use.

Yet one aspect of business may be the one thing that moves social communication closer to emails numbers, and that is marketing.

As filters effectively separate junk marketing emails from the inbox the social platforms become more attractive to marketers. Spreading their messages over these networks has increased tremendously over the years and looks to continue to expand as search engine algorithms make social metrics more and more important to their results. Even still, email still has little to worry about.

Should We Say Goodbye To Email?

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Some $87 billion in wasted time a year could be saved in the United Kingdom alone simply by enforcing  better email management by corporate directors and senior managers.

That’s the conclusion reached by a U.K.-based training company after its surveyors discovered that directors and managers waste an hour a day on their jobs because they manage their email poorly.

The estimate from the study conducted by training company Emailogic is based on an average director making $140,000 a year and there being some 4.5 million private companies in the United Kingdom.

An hour may not sound like much, but that’s 20 hours a month, or half a work week, that could be used to increase a highly paid individual’s productivity and further fatten a company’s bottom line.

“This is highly significant because it is 20 hours per month of senior executive time—this is key personnel time being lost every day and will be having real impact on business productivity,” Emailogic Managing Director Marc Powell.

The survey was based on a study of 115 senior managers, directors and partners from a variety of industries—pharmaceuticals, banking, law and retail. Based on a comparison between the time spent by the executives on email before and after they completed their email management training, the surveyors found that they saved 59 minutes a day from their email regimen.

One of the tips that email management trainers give their students is to avoid checking their inboxes every time a new message arrives. Doing that, they contend, creates productivity leaching interruptions. They recommend turning off all audio alarms—no more “You’ve got mail!”­—and checking mail at defined intervals.

From Emailogic’s survey findings, the study participants took that tip to heart because, as a whole, they were checking their inboxes 39 percent less often after finishing their training.

More advice offered to the execs was to let people know when they send you a copy of information that you don’t need and to write clear and meaningful subject lines.

That advice, too, appears to have been embraced by the execs because they told surveyors that irrelevant emails in their inboxes had been reduced by 22.5 percent and the amount of email in those inboxes had fallen by 33 percent.

An added benefit of those reductions in email, the surveyors maintained, was the ability by the execs to keep the list of messages in their inbox confined to a single screen. That gave them a feeling of greater control of their inboxes and changed their attitudes toward email which, prior to taking the management training, they described in a number of unflattering ways, including irritating, love/hate, frustrating, overwhelming and horribly addictive.

While the training may have made the execs more efficient in using email, it may have encouraged inefficiencies in other areas. For instance, the execs reported that they were using their phones more often. That doesn’t sound like a more efficient use of time to many of us.

Without a doubt, Emailogic’s survey is self-serving—after all, they’re in the business of email management training—but that doesn’t make their findings any less revealing or recommendations less useful. If execs want to take their email management training to the next level, however, they may want to rethink their view of email, from looking at it as merely a communication tool and transforming it into a productivity tool, as Jeff Orloff outlined in his blog item here last month.

Better email management can save companies $87 billion a year in wasted time

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Spam is a serious problem for anyone who is tasked with managing an organization’s email services.

Annually, spam costs US businesses between $42 million and $50 million in lost productivity and other costs. And it’s not just large corporations that feel the sting when it comes to spam. It is estimated that a company with five employees will lose $16,180.40 and 8.125 work days of pro­duc­tiv­ity per year because of spam. A com­pany with 25 employees could stand to lose $80,902.00 and 40.62 work days per year due to having to deal with spam.

Anti-spam software and appliances are certainly a necessary part of keeping inboxes as spam free as possible. Unfortunately, convincing senior management to spend money on spam filtering solutions can be difficult, especially when budgets have tightened up.

Training your fellow employees on how to recognize and deal with spam is another tactic that should be used in the fight against spam. For the most part, education helps keep the after effects of spam at bay however it is up to your co-workers to apply the knowledge passed on to them. Dollars and time can be spent building a solid knowledge base, but if what is taught isn’t put into practice then it may have all been for naught.

While both tactics mentioned here should be the foundation of any anti-spam solution, there is one area that is often overlooked when it comes to keeping email systems free of spam and viruses, and that is your company’s website.

Coordinating With Your Web Development Team

For many smaller companies, the same people who manage the corporate web presence are the same people who handle the email systems, networking, security and all other IT tasks. For anyone in this situation, the steps listed below can be much easier to implement.

Unfortunately, for those who work in larger organizations, a bit of salesmanship may need to accompany any suggestions when it comes to changing the company website, even if it means a reduction in spam.

These tips, and the support provided, should help any email administrator convince the web development team and management that changes need to be made to have better success in keeping user email boxes spam-free.

Remove text based email address from your website

No one will argue that a company’s web presence needs to have the necessary contact information so that people can easily get in touch with your company.

Unfortunately, posting email addresses as text on your website will invariably lead to those inboxes being spammed. A simple script run by spammers scans websites for email addresses and adds them their database for future mailings.

The solution? Turn your text into an image. Using an image on your site listing your contact information makes it easy for your visitors to see, but keeps it hidden to automated harvesting tools. Not only does it keep email addresses safer, but phone numbers and mailing addresses as well.

Use a verification tool on your contact form

Using a verification tool isn’t new. Many websites use a CAPTCHA system on their websites. CAPTCHA, however, poses two problems. The first is that spammers have tools that can read CAPTCHA code with a high rate of success. The second is that your visitors often have trouble reading the same codes at the same rate of success.

Using other forms of verification, such as puzzles or simple mathematical problems, have much higher success rates at not only stopping spam, but also at allowing your visitors to easily contact you without the frustration of having to re-type CAPTCHA codes that they can’t read.

Keep comment spam to a minimum

Most companies have seen the benefits of a corporate blog. And those who have one in place have certainly seen the spam that quickly builds up in the comment section.

To fight comment spam, most blogging software uses the rel=”nofollow” attribute so that spammers don’t get any benefit when it comes to the search engines from the comments left on other’s blogs. However not every blog uses these applications.

Other techniques that can help keep the levels of comment spam lower would be to use the Akismet plugin if your blog runs on WordPress or to use a verification tool for anyone leaving a comment.

And how does this help fight email spam? Because it is another step you can take to keep your company’s website off of the radar when it comes to spammers.

Is Your Website a Magnet for Email Spam?

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You’ve probably seen this before. A user opens a help desk ticket because every time they try to send an email to someone, it bounces. That someone could be a co-worker using the same email system, or it could be a customer on an external email system – it doesn’t matter. When the user replies to an email sent from the other person, the reply is delivered flawlessly. But when the user tries to create a new email, it bounces.

You try to send an email to the remote person and it is delivered correctly. You use message tracking to try to run down the problem with the email, and you might not even find it (if you are searching on the recipient address that is…which is a hint).  It’s not until you have the users actually showing you what they are doing that you realize they have a bad address in their nickname cache.

The nickname cache, which provides Outlook’s handy auto-completion when you start to type a name or an email address into the TO: or CC: or BCC: boxes in a new email, is used both to perform automatic name checking and to perform auto-completion. It is also lets you start to type “Cas…” into the TO: box and pulls up casper.manes@example.com so you don’t have to type out the complete email address. The problem comes up when a recipient’s address is wrong, or changes, and your client holds old or bad information.

To fix this, you can remove entries one at a time, or you can purge the cache completely. If you have recently changed your internal addressing standard, or migrated to a new system, I tend to just purge the whole thing so folks have to go to the GAL for fresh information. They will rebuild their cache soon enough, but if it is just a one or two addressee issue, removing individual entrees is easy enough.

To remove a single entry:

1. Start typing the email address, until autocomplete provides choices, like shown below.
   
2. Click the X to the right of the name to delete it from the cache.

To completely remove the cache:

1. Click File, Options
2. Select the Mail tab
3. Scroll down to “Send messages” and click the “Empty Auto-Complete List” button.
   

Alternatively, you can launch Outlook from the Run dialog using
Outlook.exe /CleanAutoCompleteCache

Protip: using that cmd line in a login script is a convenient way to clear all users’ caches after a migration.

Removing bad entries will force the user to go to the GAL, or use a personal contact, or just type the email address in longhand, which will update the nickname cache with the proper email address, and that means a problem solved.

Troubleshooting Outlook Auto-complete

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As the end of November draws near, anticipation is building that Service Pack 2 for Exchange 2010, which was announced in May, will finally be released. Given Microsoft’s track record with the last two roll-up updates for the software, you really can’t blame Redmond for being extra careful with this service pack.

Although originally expected to make it out the door at the end of October, it appears that the new deadline for the service pack is sometime next week, if Microsoft’s general manager for Exchange, Kevin Allison is to be believed.

At a trade show earlier this month, Allison fudged the issue of the missed deadline by saying that Microsoft had always intended to release SP2 for Exchange sometime in the fourth quarter. Of course, that gives the company all the way to December 31 to let the update into the wild, but he appeared confident that release would come by early December at the latest.

Allison told show attendees that Microsoft considered it critical that SP2 be as bug free as possible, and it was paying particular attention to quality with this release. That sort of begs the question, though, are there updates where the company doesn’t pay particular attention to quality?

Certainly flaws in quality control came to light during the embarrassing releases of two Roll-Up Updates earlier this year, RU3 and RU4. As might be expected, much of Microsoft’s quality control is automated. For example, the code for Exchange is subjected to a suite of well over 100,000 automated tests. In addition to those tests, there’s some manual validation. None of that testing, though, caught the bugs in the two Roll-Ups.

Those muffs could leave a casual observer scratching their heads. In RU3, for example, Blackberry smartphone users found themselves receiving an extra copy of their messages. Even if a flaw like that bypassed the automated tests, you’d think that one of the manual testers with a Blackberry would have discovered the problem. Maybe all the testers were using only handsets running Windows Mobile 7.

The RU4 gaffe was equally puzzling. When users moved or copied a public folder, they found the contents of folder had disappeared. In fact, the contents hadn’t disappeared. It had merely be shipped to the Recoverable Items folder. While it’s well known that Microsoft frowns on the use of public folders, still, not one tester tried to copy or move such a folder during the testing regimen?

Service Pack 2 for Exchange 2010 will have some nice new features. Corporate users without a smartphone will find accessing Outlook via a web easier with OWA Mini. Double logins to OWA will be eliminated for some users with cross-site silent redirections. Hybrid configurations that support local and cloud deployments can be set up. And segmented address books, which can be managed directly from the Exchange Management Console, will be added to the software.

Nevertheless, it remains to be seen what effect past missteps by Microsoft will have on how rapidly SP2 is adopted by the Exchange 2010 community. Despite Redmond’s pledge that it has beefed up its quality assurance on this update, there’s no substitute for testing, testing, and more testing before any organizations fully deploys the update.

Microsoft Exchange 2010 SP2 is coming…coming…soon

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Microsoft Exchange 2010 was first introduced two years ago. While adoption was initially slow, despite Microsoft’s aggressive efforts to spur rapid adoption, it seems that companies are finally starting to see the benefits of the software and ready to migrate to it in a big way.

According to a recent independent survey of some 500 IT decision makers, more than three-quarters of them (77 percent) said they expected to migrate to Exchange 2010 or Office 365 in the next two years. If that happens, that means hundreds of thousands of businesses will be embracing the software in the next 24 months.

There are many reasons why the migration to Exchange 2010 has become a stampede. Two of the top rationales are new features (57 percent), which includes better support for mobile devices, and easier administration (50 percent). Also high on the list of migration motivators were security (49 percent), larger mailboxes (49 percent), improved storage options (48 percent), and improved web access (46 percent), the survey said.

Also, to some extent  companies’ enthusiasm to migrate is being fired by a recognition of the increased role email is playing to business success. Not only does Exchange 2010 offer better handling of email while imposing less of a burden on harried IT personnel, but it can do it at a lower cost.

According to a recent report in The Independent, email is far more effective in converting eyeballs into cash than any other web medium. 25 percent of people who open an email in a sales campaign will be converted into a buyer, the publication reported. That’s far and away higher than conversions from clicking on links (10 percent) and website visitations (2 percent).

As important as email is to a successful business, it can be costly to store and archive, which must be done for compliance as well as business reasons. Companies that have clung to older versions of Exchange are finding that the storage options offered by Exchange 2010—most notably the ability to swap out expensive SAN architecture for low cost SATA drives—can save them barrels of money. For instance, storage and archiving costs for an Exchange 2003 deployment can be 40 percent higher compared to what they cost with Exchange 2010.

There are productivity costs associated with older Exchange deployments too, especially because they don’t have the robust support of Exchange 2010 for the web and mobile platforms, the independent reported.

Another factor contributing to the step-up in Exchange 2010 adoption is its unique position as a bridge to the cloud. As the high-tech research firm Gartner has pointed out in the past,

“Exchange 2010 represents both the beginning of the end of the premises-based email era, and the dawn of the cloud-based email era.”

The strategy adopted by Microsoft for Exchange 2010 could pay off big for the company as it faces a growing number of competitors trying to capture a piece of its Exchange business.

“With several low-cost competitors snapping at its heels,” observed one technology commentator, “Microsoft’s hybrid strategy is a win-win one as it allows the company to protect its customer base in the on-premise model—while simultaneously giving customers the choice to migrate to a new cloud-based model.”

Migration to Exchange 2010 becoming stampede

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