CHANNELING THE FLOOD OF EMAIL
DO IT RIGHT
FROM THE START
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Records Management
Figure credit: 2008 AIIM • Written by
Bryant Duhon, Priscilla Emery, and
Jesse Wilkins • Illustrated by Mark
Leonard • Based on a design by
Rings Leighton Design Group
(Sammy the Slug added by UCSC)
Effective Email Storage
EMAIL IS A RECORD
Email is an electronic record and is increasingly our only way to capture business related correspondence. It is the individuals responsibility to apply the same management practices as paper correspondence records.
RETENTION
Knowing how long to retain a record can be a challenge. Organizing email according to the UC Records Retention Schedule is a good way to ensure compliance; http://
recordsretention.ucop.edu
Storing un‐managed email costs time and money. RECORDS MANAGEMENT
Responsible email management means that you discard non‐business related emails, identify and classify business related email, store inactive emails in a separate and accessible long term depository such as a server, and adhere to the UC Records Retention Schedule; http://recordsretention.ucop.edu. Just like its paper counterparts, un‐managed emails can present legal risk and expense to the University if it is stored beyond its retention period.
ARCHIVING
Email records that have enduring value to the business of the University should be centrally stored in a long term archive outside the email program and should be accessible by others who may need to carry out the business of the University in your absence. Extraction methods like printing to PDF, Google Takeout or other tools within an email client are the recommended way to ensure business continuity and adherence to retention policies.
Don’t postpone deleting junk mail Create a filing system
Sort business‐related email Consistently manage email records
1. Write for the front page. Emails are professional communications – ask yourself how your email would represent UCSC if it appeared on the front page of a newspaper.
2. Never send personally identifiable information(PII) in an email. Unless encrypted, its insecure, an invasion of privacy and against the law.
3. Double‐check the recipient email address. Ensure its accuracy. Sending to the wrong person is embarrassing but sending sensitive information where it doesn’t belong can be a crime. 4. Assign Action to recipients in the ‘To’ line only. Cc’d recipients don’t expect to receive an action item. 5. Copy only those who need to know. Don’t cc or bcc unnecessarily.
6. Limit the use of ‘reply to all’. Is your email really intended for everyone? Don’t send personal messages, or ones the whole group doesn’t need to read to everyone. 7. Use a meaningful subject line that clearly summarizes your message. Subject lines that wrap are inconvenient; ones that say ‘stuff’, or ‘read this’ or ‘today’ could trigger a spam filter. 8. Change the subject. When an email becomes a long thread of replies it may expand or turn to other topics. Ensure the subject line reflects what is actually being discussed. The messaging system will keep track of the message thread. 9. Limit the length. Users seldom read multi‐page emails ‐‐ attach a document to your email instead. 10. Trim content for responses. Excerpt only those points to which you are responding. 11. Simplify the signature line. Signatures longer than the message, containing political statements, or including pretty, shiny, blinking graphics are not professional. 12. Don’t include the entire thread every time. Send your contributory email including only the previous 2 or 3 thread items for context. RECORDS & INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
http://rimsvcs.ucsc.edu/