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The Rackspace Business Productivity Rx: Pursue a Smooth Migration
At some point, your business will probably encounter one of these scenarios . . .
- Switching from an in-house email system to a hosted email service
- Switching from one hosted email service to another
- Changing your company name and, as a result, changing your associated email domain
And when that time comes, you may need to move (or “migrate”) email from one set of email servers to another.
Email migrations are designed to be a seamless transition that happens behind the scenes, so that your business email can keep flowing. There are, however, several important things that you and your employees can do to help ensure a smooth email migration:
- Identify POP users. Employees who use a POP connection to access email probably don’t need to be included in the migration, since POP users store their email on their individual computer and not on the email server.
- Create new mailboxes first. Before starting a migration, be sure that you’ve created identical mailboxes, group lists, and aliases on the new email system. This way, email will be delivered seamlessly to the new system after the migration.
- Gather all user names and passwords. Make note of all mailbox names and passwords—for both the old (source) system and the new (destination) system. You’ll need this information in order to perform the migration.
- Avoid password changes. When preparing for a migration, ask your employees to avoid making changes to their email passwords. After the migration has been completed, however, you may want to encourage employees to change their passwords, as a security best practice.
- Purge email clutter. Ask your employees to delete unnecessary email (such as spam, mailing list emails, personal email, etc.). This can drastically improve the speed of your migration.
- Prepare for app adjustments. Employees who use an email app, such as Microsoft Outlook, will need to make a few changes to the app settings after the migration (so that they can begin receiving email from the new email server). You may want to instruct employees in advance.
- Make room. Be sure that the new mailboxes are at least 30% bigger than the old mailboxes, so that storage capacity issues don’t slow down your migration.
- Test first. Always run a test migration on a single mailbox before running the full migration, to identify any potential issues.
- Don’t cancel your old service too soon. Keep your old email service until you have confirmed that all email has been migrated successfully, and email is now being delivered properly through the new email service.
- Schedule your migration strategically. Schedule your migration for a time when email activity is typically light for your business, such as during the weekend and/or in the evening.
With a little effort, you can help create a smooth migration that flows seamlessly, behind the scenes, so your employees and your business can keep running productively.
Centralized Contact Sharing for Exchange Hybrid
Our customers continue to rave about our Exchange Hybrid offering. It gives them the flexibility to purchase Microsoft Exchange mailboxes for power users, while purchasing budget-friendly Rackspace Email mailboxes for everyone else—all on a single domain.
And now our customers have yet another reason to love our Hybrid . . .
Hybrid Contacts
Our cross-platform contact sharing feature for Exchange Hybrid customers.
With Hybrid Contacts, your business’ employees can easily retrieve contact information for each member of your company directory—across your domain and regardless of platform.
With our Hybrid Contacts and Hybrid Calendar Sharing features, Rackspace provides the cross-platform integration that business users require in a hybrid. And a recent publication by Tier1 Research confirms that our cross-platform initiatives are, indeed, making us the leader in the hybrid market:
“Hybrid email continues to emerge in the market. However, not all hybrid email comes in the same shapes and sizes. Rackspace has clearly moved to the front of the pack with the depth of integration between the two email platforms it offers.”
-Philbert Shih, Analyst at Tier1 Research
Email administrators, please follow the links below for instructions on how to create a centralized contact sharing solution for all of your hybrid users:
Join us for our Virtual SharePoint Summit
Calling all SharePoint customers, and everyone interested in learning more about Microsoft SharePoint. Please join us for . . .
Virtual SharePoint Summit 2010
September 21, 2010
10 AM – 2 PM (CDT)
Rackspace has lined up SharePoint experts from across the industry for this jam-packed, all-day summit. We will cover topics such as:
- Using SharePoint in a collaborative and fast-changing world
- Overcoming communication and collaboration challenges
- Building an effective team site
- Enhancing your existing SharePoint sites
You can attend the entire all-day summit, or just the specific presentations you’re interested in. Please mark your calendars and help us spread the word!
For complete information, check out our Virtual SharePoint Summit site.
Rackspace Business Productivity Rx: Composing Better Email
Emails that get to the point are much more effective than poorly worded emails that lack focus. Constructing your emails for maximum efficiency is one more way you can increase productivity. Here’s a section-by-section primer to get you started.
Crafting Subject Lines
A straight-forward subject line is a great way to increase the effectiveness of your emails. A vague subject line, like “Another Question” could easily get lost in the email shuffle. However, a subject line like, “Question about the Health Fair – Need Response by 8/19” lets the recipient know the context of your question and the urgency at a glance. Most email clients include features to mark messages as “urgent” or “reply requested” to make your messages stand out further when needed.
Choosing Recipients
Don’t send messages to large groups when only a few recipients need the information. Before you hit send, think about who really needs the information. For those whom the information is not essential, post it on a system like SharePoint or Cloud Drive for casual consumption.
Greeting Recipients
The greeting should mirror that of a business letter even though it’s not on your fancy letterhead. Match your greeting to your relationship with the recipients. If you’re sending to multiple recipients, be sure your greeting addresses them all. A “Hey” may be fine for your office mates, but comes off as unprofessional when addressing a VP.
If you’re CC’ing your message, don’t specifically address all of the copied recipients, only the primary recipients in the send line.
To avoid any semblance of sexist language, avoid gender-based greetings, like “Good Morning Ladies” or “Hello Guys.”
Focusing the Message
Your email body should be concise and action-oriented. If there’s a request included, put it near the top. Burying the request to explain the why, what, and when, can cause a reader to drop out of your email before getting to what you need. Make your request in the first few lines and use the rest of your email to divulge supporting information.
When your message includes a specific request, address it to the one person you expect to complete it. Addressing a request to multiple parties, may cause recipients to assume that the “other guy” will take on the task.
Review your email to ensure you’ve answered any questions that may lead to unnecessary emails. For example, a co-worker emails you asking when tomorrow’s meeting starts; the next logical question might be where the meeting is located, so include that information also.
Succinct paragraphs and bullet points make your message more scannable. Many are hesitant or delay reading what looks like “a wall of words.” Break out major points into bullets and create short, sweet paragraphs to give readers cues about where to focus their attention.
Watch attachment sizes in consideration of your recipients’ mailbox capacity and attachment limitations. Your one huge email attachment could prevent recipients from receiving any other messages. If you have a large file to transmit, consider posting it to a file sharing systems, like Cloud Drive or SharePoint, and giving recipients a link to view it.
Closing Professionally
Think of your closing as the end to a pleasant phone call. Your closing should match your greeting. If you’re addressing a group of VPs and colleagues in the same email, and you open with a formal greeting, don’t close with something extremely informal, like “Later.” The closing of your message is the last thing readers see. You’d hate to diminish your well-written email with a sloppy closing.
Before You Hit Send
- Spell check it! Taking a few extra seconds to spell check can save you the embarrassment of misspellings. Most email clients include a spell checker. However, if yours doesn’t, take the time to copy and paste your email text into a word processing program to check it out. Then copy and paste the corrected text back into your email.
- While spell check can catch gross misspellings, you’ll need to don your editors hat to catch more nuanced grammatical faux pas and homophones, like there, their, or they’re.
- Confirm that any deliverables promised in the email are present. If you state there’s an attachment, make sure you’ve attached it. If you state that something is located in a certain location, make sure it’s available before you send the email.
Rackspace Business Productivity Rx: Have Your Own Backup Plan
What would you do if you lost the draft of that novel you’ve been working on? How much time would it take to re-type? Can you ever re-take that picture of your son smiling in the bathtub when he was 6 months old? Never. If you have to take work home and lose that “do or die” spreadsheet, what ramifications would you suffer? Scared yet? Good. This productivity tip will not only save you time, but also save you money and anxiety in the event your computer crashes or your laptop is lost or stolen.
Naturally, your company has a backup plan for your work files, but do you have one for your personal files? Every week 140,000 hard drives crash. Make sure your files are safe. Here are two techniques you can use to protect your personal files:
| Online Backup | Disk or USB Device | ||
| What's the difference? | Works by automatically copying your files to a secure data center via the Internet. In the event you lose access to your computer, you can login to any computer anywhere and access your files via the Internet. | Physically moves data off of your computer by copying files to disk or USB device. So, even if your computer burns to the ground, you can go to any computer with your disk(s) or USB and access your information. | |
| Pros | Most services offer so much storage; you won’t have to worry about space as you would on a hard drive, USB, or DVD. Plus, data is securely housed so you don’t have to worry about keeping tracking of disks. Online backup and storage systems are also a great solution for those who work on multiple computers and need to access files on multiple machines. | Most new PCs include backup software to walk you through amassing and transferring your files and they can even maintain your folder structure. | |
| Cons | Be careful who you trust with your data. Free services give you what you pay for. Know a service’s policy on migrating and/or destroying data if you change or discontinue service. | If you have a lot of data, you’ll have a lot of disks and/or multiple USB devices floating around. Don’t lose them. You’ll also need to remind yourself to do the backup task periodically; otherwise you’ll be restoring old data because it’s been six months since you did you last backup. |
So, to avoid the possibility of ever losing that picture of my sons in the tub at six months old, I keep all the files on my desktop computer synced with my laptop that’s backed up to an online file backup service. So, regardless of what machine I create a file on, I can put my hands on it from any computer. Here at Rackspace we offer business-grade file storage and backup services for your work computer and/or server(s), known as Rackspace Cloud Drive and Rackspace Server Backup.
Rackspace Business Productivity Rx: Organize Your Inbox with Email Filters
The problem: I recently gave in and joined Facebook. Nearly all of my friends, family, and co-workers were already avid users. Right away, I was flooded with emails from Facebook letting me know someone requested me as a friend, accepted my offer to be a friend, commented on my wall, or did anything connected to my account. I received hundreds of messages within the first 24 hours.
The solution: I created a folder (named “Facebook”) and a mail filter (supported by most email clients, including the Rackspace Webmail interface).
Now, when I get an email about my Facebook account it bypasses the inbox and goes straight to the “Facebook” folder. This saves me time because I can avoid investing time in emails that aren’t urgent.
I filter email from co-workers into specific folders for the exact opposite reason. The filter allows me to deal with those emails first. If the boss emails me, it goes to a folder and I know to check that first. Setting up filters only takes a few minutes but saves me hours of wasted time manually sorting through messages.
View step-by-step instructions for setting up filters with Rackspace Email accounts. Find instructions to create filtering rules in Outlook.
Business Email Usage Statistics | Email Usage Graph by State and Region
Ever wonder which states work the longest hours or the oddest hours? Here is an interesting graph showing work behavior broken down by Regions and States. The data were compiled based on Rackspace business email usage trends in the United States. The results are quite amazing.
*Artwork by Klaus Shmidheiser
Copy the code below to embed this infographic:
Three-Column View: Now in Rackspace Webmail
With monitors getting wider and laptops/netbooks becoming more prevalent, we’re excited to introduce our latest Rackspace Webmail feature: Three-Column View. Now, users with limited vertical space can quickly read more of their email messages without scrolling. This new feature is LIVE now – so give it a try.
To enable Three-Column View:
> Navigate to your Settings
> Your first tab is General Settings
> Email Options > Set “Preview Pane: Right.
If you’re not a Rackspace Email customer, or Web Apps user, you can try our 1-click demo.
Outlook 2010: Top 5 New Features
Microsoft has released the new Outlook 2010, and it is loaded with new features and improvements that will make managing your email, calendar, and social connections a breeze. Look at what’s new:
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Multiple Accounts
Now you can send and receive through multiple accounts including Hotmail, Gmail, or just about any provider. It even supports multiple Exchange accounts.
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Easy Scheduling
With just one click, schedule a meeting based on the email that you are viewing. Sharing calendars and requesting a shared calendar are simple tasks with new collaboration options. You can compare busy/free times at a glance with the new Schedule View that displays multiple calendars horizontally.
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Conversation View
Easily structure your overwhelming inbox into categories and subject based email chains. With one click, you can review all the emails, whether sent or received, on any subject topic.
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Social Network Connections
You can stop switching between a ton of different social networking clients and websites. Outlook can now be connected directly to multiple social accounts, including Facebook and LinkedIn.
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User Summaries
By clicking on the picture or icon of a user from within an email, you can rapidly review emails and attachments that they have sent you and meetings they have with you.
To learn more, check out these features in action.
Rackspace Business Productivity Rx: Best Practices for Data Security
If you’re like most modern businesses, a data breach or an email outage can bring productivity to a standstill. Often, the careless or unwitting actions of users are the root cause. At Rackspace, we take a no-compromises approach to our customers’ email security--but end users should also employ certain best practices, to help keep data secure at the source.
Here are ten easy steps that you and your employees can take. . .
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Review your password policy: An outdated password policy is a prime security threat.
Best Practice: Review your policy to ensure that password protection, best practices adherence, and retention policies reflect current practices. Update requirements for password complexity and password reuse rules.
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Do not open unsolicited attachments: Attachments are a primary vehicle for viruses. Users shouldn’t open unsolicited attachments or messages from unknown senders. Certain attachment types, like .exe, .asp, and .cmd, are more likely to carry malware.
Best Practice: Encourage users to report messages that include unsolicited attachments or other suspicious messages.
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Never distribute sensitive information—like payroll or customer lists—via email. It takes just one unwitting employee to “Forward” this info into the wrong hands.
Best Practice: Store sensitive information and lists on a server that employees can access securely (SharePoint is a great option).
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Be mindful of where users check email. Employees checking email from public computers—such as libraries, hotel business centers, or airport kiosks—can fall victim to keystroke logging and prying eyes.
Best Practice: Use company-approved/provided mobile devices and laptops when you’re on the road, and always be sure to use your email provider’s secure SSL login. Also, protect the information on the device itself by using access passwords, in case your device is ever lost or stolen.
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Turn off HTML viewing: Allowing receipt of HTML emails significantly increases your chances of letting in viruses and malware. The same scripts that make words appear bold and scroll on a web page are the same ones that can provide a vector for malware and other email exploits.
Best Practice: In your email app, adjust your email viewing preferences, so that images and/or HTML are hidden.
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Delete “email chain letters” before opening them. Some of those “fun” emails actually contain links to malware, which can infect your computer, steal user data, and possibly compromise sensitive business information.
Best Practice: Establish strict guidelines about which kind of email content (and web content) is appropriate for business accounts and devices.
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Be phishing savvy. Phishing attempts (i.e., emails that appear to be from a trustworthy source, but are actually from thieves trying to gain access to your accounts) are becoming more sophisticated and difficult to identify.
Best Practice: Make sure you and your employees are educated about how to avoid falling prey to phishing, and have a plan in place in case an account is compromised.
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Remove (or protect) old mailboxes: Your domain may contain a few test accounts or inactive email addresses. Many of those old or test accounts are created with easy-to-guess passwords to make accessing the mailbox simpler or pre-date current password policies. Those easy passwords can open the door for a savvy hacker to guess a password and infiltrate your system.
Best Practice: Clean up email addresses that aren’t needed or beef up passwords on those accounts to make them hacker-proof.
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Do not use personal email accounts for business purposes. Consumer-level email services are typically not as secure as those designed for business use.
Best Practice: If your employees need off-site access, be sure they have a secure login to their business email account, as well as a secure mobile device or laptop.
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Educate your users: Average users aren’t always aware of the things they can do to keep their email (and your sensitive business information) safe.
Best Practice: Start an awareness program. Prominently post basic tips like attachment vigilance, handling strange emails, and password protection, to keep employees conscious of the dangers they may encounter in their inbox.
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