2.1.) E-mail communication

a.) Within the e-mail header one can see from whom the e-mail was sent and a what time. This is important is e-mail is a good example of asynchronous communication, when the mail can be sent much earlier then read. If the e-mail is resent by sender previous senders of the e-mail can be seen within the body of the e-mail.

b.) The cc function of e-mail is useful if somebody else should be informed additionally. This can be to comply with convention, e.g. the boss is included in cc so he or she is not passed by or one might signal to the receiver of the e-mail that other people are informed also, for example an request to do something should not be ignored. Furthermore if other people need to become active in respect of a certain job cc might be useful as kind of request of their support. BCC is normally rather used for documentation that information has been send out, to give an example, when the boss asks the employee to sent out a quote for an order and the employee wants to document his action for the boss.

The received function is similar as it documents that the addressee of a mail really has received it. This is helpful where time critical activities should be initiated by the mail or there is a semi official situation where some form of documentation of receipt is required.

c.) To ensure that attachements can be read sending them in a standard format like rich text or RFT is helpful. Even better to read are attachements sent in ASCII format. Good practise sending attachements is to refer to them by citing the program used to create them like Excel or Word.

d.) The set up of e-mail filters can help to categorize e-mails in certain groups but also to prevent the receipt of junk or spam mail. A good example here for is an e-mail filter I created for Lotus Notes when my mail boxes was floated with e-mails offering all kind of medical support. I was able to stop most of these e-mails by creating a filter blocking all e-mails containing the word Viagra.

e.) I organised my e-mail folders according to major topics and persons and sort my e-mails by date. Effectively sorting my e-mail by person is very similar as by topic as certain persons would fall very much always in one topic category, for example most of my mates could be assigned also to leisure time. Sorting by date helps to deal with oldest stuff first.