The Living in Outlook series is about sharing tips and workflows around real-world scenarios. We;ll start the conversation with a topic – you can add to it by posting your tips and workflows in the comments!
After having sent apparently one too many “nag mails” about a seemingly forgotten work item, a colleague of mine asked me what my secret was for tracking open issues. I will now attempt to answer his question while publicly professing my love for the Outlook feature that made it all possible: “tracked conversations”.
One of the things that I love about working on Outlook is that I;m helping to build a tool that is an integral part of my own workflow. Specifically, there are relatively few issues that I deal with that aren;t at some point and in some way discussed over e-mail. This means that closely integrating my issue tracking with my e-mail workflow is critical. For this I use e-mail flagging, which allows me to pick a target completion date for a given issue, and the Task List in my To-Do Bar, which tells me how well I;m keeping up with those completion dates. The feature that brings it all together for me, though, is “tracked conversations”.
Three Steps to “Never Dropping the Ball” using Tracked Conversations
Step 1:
Flag E-mail for Follow-Up with an Appropriate Due Date
You can flag e-mail that you;re about to send, flag e-mail that you;ve received, you can even “cheat” by either sending yourself a piece of mail or creating a special-purpose task for those issues that didn;t originate over e-mail. If an e-mail relates to a particularly important issue, consider adding a custom flag with descriptive text and/or a reminder.
Step 2:
Update Flags Upon Receiving New Messages in “Tracked Conversations”
When I receive a new message that is in the same conversation as a message that I previously flagged I see an InfoBar message that tells me that the new message is an update to a “tracked conversation”:
By clicking on the InfoBar I am presented with these two options:
The “Find related messages” option will bring up a new window that displays all of the other messages that were part of the same conversation. However, in most cases, all I really care about is the message that I originally flagged, which I can open immediately by choosing “Open Original Flagged Message”.
For me, updating the flag might mean:
- Clearing the flag: The issue is now resolved!
- Updating the due time: The new message provided a more accurate ETA.
- “Moving” the flag to the current message: The new message provided more context and I;d like to refer back to the new message instead of the original when I deal with this issue in the future.
Step 3:
Once a Day Take Some Action on Each Overdue Flag in My To-Do Bar
For me, this usually means one of the following:
- Sending out a reminder mail or asking for status
- Updating the due time to a later date
- Taking care of the task myself!
My Most Common Flagging Workflows
Here are some of my more common workflows that involve message flagging and tracked conversations. Hopefully you;ll find something below that maps well to the types of issues you have a tendency to forget (and feel free to add more in your comments).
· Delegating Issues - Melissa MacBeth gave a nice high-level overview of one of the primary “on-ramps” for tracked conversations in this post about a feature we call “Send-and-Track” on her Tasks and Time Management in Outlook blog. The idea is simple: when I ask someone to do something important over e-mail, I flag the draft message for myself so that I remember to follow up after the message has been sent and ensure that the action I requested was completed. The recipient of the message never knows that I have it flagged (at least they didn;t until they read this blog post…).
· Making a Commitment – Since I believe in the Golden Rule, I use “Send-and-Track” not just when I ask others to do something but also when I commit to getting something done. In other words, if I send you a message that says “I;ll get to this next week”, chances are that I flagged that message for “Next Week” before hitting send (whether I actually get to it before the end of next week is a different issue…).
· Ensuring Follow-up – I monitor a lot of e-mail aliases that receive support questions about Outlook. When it comes to support mail, I don;t really care who answers the question (so delegation doesn;t make sense), nor do I necessarily want to be the one who answers every question (so making a commitment doesn;t make sense), but I do want to make sure that someone does something about any important issue that I see. Therefore, I flag all “interesting” support questions with a due date of “Today” and only clear those flags if/when someone takes ownership of the issue and/or resolves it. At the end of the day, if no ownership/resolution has occurred, I will decide how to best proceed with each issue.
Well, that;s the basic idea. Now,
Office 2007 Professional, if you;ll excuse me, I have to go and clear the flagged piece of e-mail that I sent to my colleague in which I committed to explaining how I track issues…
Alon Brown
Outlook Development Engineer
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