Rackspace Email & Apps Blog

Recent Posts in the ‘Tips & Advice’ Category

Why Philosophy Matters (for business and you)

Nov 6th, 2009 in Tips & Advice by Michael Ferranti

Philosophy is important. It changes history because big ideas lead to big actions. Some of the most transformative political movements in history started as a purely philosophical project.

The closest thing to philosophy in business is a company’s mission statement. These statements lay out a vision of what the company wants to be, not just what it is. One can use a firm’s mission statement to learn about the company and its competencies beyond what’s contained in its product offering.

Flying high?

Compare the mission statements of Delta and Southwest Airlines. First Delta:

We—Delta’s employees, customers, and community partners together form a force for positive local and global change, dedicated to bettering standards of living and the environment where we and our customers live and work.

Now Southwest:

The mission of Southwest Airlines is dedication to the highest quality of Customer Service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and Company Spirit.

Everyone knows that Southwest is widely regarded as a great U.S. airline; Delta is not. Could one deduce this from their mission statements? Of course! What the heck does “bettering standards of living and the environment” have to do with an airline? In short, nothing. It’s a noble goal and I applaud any company that embraces social responsibility among their goals. But as the central theme of their mission? How does that win customers and build enterprise value? This mission statement shows a lack of focus that might partially explain why Delta is in the financial trouble it is.

Southwest’s mission on the other hand is clear, to the point and makes sense in the context of their industry. One normally does not think of low-cost carriers as great service companies, but Southwest’s “disruptive technology” was service—so focusing on that element, rather than simply on cost or speed of service is reasonable, and differentiating.

Try before you buy

The take-away from this brief comparison is that, as a customer, an easy way to “try before you buy” is to look at the company’s mission statement. Does the statement provide a clear picture of how the business creates value? If the company does everything it says it will do, will you win? If the answer to these questions is not “yes,” then you may need to think about going with a different company. When the philosophy is not compelling, can you expect big actions are a result?

At Rackspace, we take philosophy seriously. It’s a part of everything we do here and drives our decision making process every day. So what’s our mission here at Rackspace? To state it simply — our mission is to be recognized as one of the world’s greatest service companies.

Learn more about how we are delivering on our mission at Rackspace.

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Scheduling Meetings in Outlook with Rackspace Email

Oct 20th, 2009 in Tips & Advice by Rex Card

With the smell of freshly brewed coffee in the air, I open up Microsoft Outlook and head straight to my calendar to start scheduling meetings. Being a technical project manager, part of my job includes scheduling meetings—and in any given session, I easily schedule 5+ meetings for 15+ folks.

When scheduling a meeting, it is, of course, important to find a time when everyone can meet. Microsoft Exchange customers are already familiar with using Outlook to schedule a meeting based on others’ schedules. But, did you know that Rackspace Email customers can use Outlook to do that, too?

With Sync for Outlook, I can easily sync my co-workers’ 65+ calendars, adding them to my Outlook. And because I use Automatic Sync, I don’t even need to push a button—it automatically syncs the data in the background, so I can go on with my work. Since my Outlook calendar data is kept up-to-date, I’m always ready whenever I need to schedule a meeting that will work for everyone.

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[Email Tip] Where did that URL go again?

Oct 5th, 2009 in Tips & Advice by Korey Mercier

There’s nothing more non-productive than digging through emails looking for that all-important link that someone sent you a while back, when you actually need it now. That’s what Bookmarks are for, right? But what if you’re not at your own computer, or you’re like me and you use several computers with multiple browsers? As it turns out, Rackspace Email solves this problem. If you have a Rackspace Email account and you use the Webmail interface, you’re all set. Just use Tasks! Tasks?

Yes, within Webmail there’s a tab called Tasks which allows you to manage multiple lists of items you want to track, ostensibly for things like groceries, books you intend to read, to-do items, or episodes of the West Wing you somehow missed. Personally I created a list called “My Bookmarks” where I store items like “#Rackspace Email & Apps – http://www.rackspace.com/email_hosting“. This is the cool part. Once my “bookmark” gets added to the list, the URL in it becomes a live link! To top it off, if I need to remember some obscure login for the site that I entered, I can put that information in the Notes section of the Task so it will appear when I rollover the little “note” icon on the left. I now have an always-available, fully functional, private Bookmarks list, complete with necessary authentication information.

As if all that wasn’t enough, I use Sync for BlacksBerry to put my Calendar, Contacts, and Tasks on my phone where I usually need them. Now when I use the Tasks application that came with my Blackberry Bold I can see a complete list of my Bookmarks (easily identified by a ‘#’ prefix) and even follow them using my mobile browser!

Are you using our Rackspace Email & Apps products in strange and productive ways? We want to hear about it! Tell us using the comments section below.

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Launch: Auto Delete Invitations

Sep 22nd, 2009 in Product Enhancements, Tips & Advice by Matt Pfeil

I receive several event invitations a week—sometimes even several a day. Every time I get an invitation, I either accept or decline, and then I delete the email. The way I see it, if I can’t attend the event, I don’t need to keep the invitation. And if I accept the invitation, the event information is transferred to my calendar.

So, for people like me, Rackspace Email has released a new webmail calendar feature that saves me a few valuable seconds. With the new “Autodelete Invites” option, I can automatically delete the invitation email as soon as I’ve accepted or declined the invitation.

To check it out, just log into Rackspace Email and select Settings / General Settings / Calendar.

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[Email Tip] Don’t Send Stupid Stuff

Sep 14th, 2009 in Tips & Advice by Rex Card

Oh no! I can’t believe I forgot to attach the file I spent so much time describing in that email. Guess I’ll have to send a follow-up “here is the file…” email.

Ever happened to you? Ever sent an email and forgot to include a team member? Or, send a message and leave out a key piece of information? How about sending a meeting invitation with the same details missing? Worse yet, after hitting send, realizing that you’ve sent that invitation to the wrong group of people? If you’ve done these things you are not alone. I am with you.

Being a technical project manager at Rackspace, I am constantly looking for ways to improve everyday things. If I can fix the small things that annoy and frustrate me, I can get back a few minutes each day and spend that time on what matters most. For example, the act of not attaching a file wastes a lot of time. For example, let’s say I send an email without an attachment on Monday morning. Monday afternoon I get a reply saying I left off the attachment. I then resend the attachment. My recipient gets it later that afternoon or evening. So instead of getting the email and reading the attachment mid-day Monday and dealing with it, we are now dealing with it on Tuesday. Imagine if I sent that email without the attachment the day before my month long vacation.

The bottom line is that it wastes time. In a fast-paced environment, this creates a bottleneck.

To avoid that bottleneck, I devised a quick solution. It is as simple as delay sending. When I hit send, the email sits in the outbox for a preset amount of time before actually taking off. This short period of time helped me catch countless mistakes and leads to a better experience for those who receive my emails.

Here’s how to set up delay sending in Outlook 2007:

Select Tools > Rules and Alerts
Select New Rule
Select “Check messages after sending” > Next
Check “on this machine only” > Next
Check “defer delivery by a number of minutes” and Select “a number of” and set your delay (mine is set at 3 minutes) > Next
Finish

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[Email Tip] Save Time by Sending Email Blind

Jul 15th, 2009 in Tips & Advice by Ben Hubbard

BCC, blind carbon copy, is a tool to send an email to someone and share it with a third person without the primary contact knowing it.

Have you ever been copied on an email, the contents of which were sent to you just as an FYI? Then before you know it, you’ve received 5 or 10 more emails that are follow up questions or debates that don’t affect you? With BCC, when the recipient hits reply, it only goes back to the original sender saving everyone time.

If you send an email to a list, just address the email to yourself and put the recipient’s email in the BCC field. This prevents the swarm of emails that may arise if the recipient clicks “reply all”.

This practice also protects the recipient’s email addresses in case one of them forwards the email beyond.

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iPhone Now Natively Supports iCal for Calendar

Jun 24th, 2009 in Tips & Advice by Katherine Reed

iPhone versions 3.0 now allows you to access your Rackspace Email calendar through an iCal feed on your iPhone. This new feature will allow you to stay up-to-date by taking your calendar on the move with you wherever you go.

If you need help setting this feature up on your iPhone you can visit our Support Site for setup instructions.

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How We Manage Large Datasets with Hadoop

Jun 22nd, 2009 in Tips & Advice by Cameron Nouri

A few weeks ago Robert Scoble stopped by our Blacksburg office and got a chance to interview Stu Hood for Building43.com. Stu has become one of the leading experts on using Hadoop and his use case here at Rackspace was recently published in the new O’Reilly book “Hadoop: The Definitive Guide”. During the interview Stu explains what Hadoop is and how it can be used to help manage large datasets.

Check out the video below to learn more:

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Is your Browser Ready for Retirement?

Jun 16th, 2009 in Tips & Advice by Melissa Mancuso

When you reach out for support regarding something on your computer, one of the first troubleshooting steps is confirming you have the latest browser version. You’re asked this because there are countless symptoms and effects on your computer from using an outdated browser.

Here are just a few reasons to keep up with the curve:

Internet Use: Believe it or not, most websites are built and maintained based on the latest internet standards and latest version of browsers. The symptoms could be as benign as a logo not showing up or as aggressive as the site not functioning at all.

Backwards compatibility: Not all tech companies pride themselves on taking the time to make sure their product is backwards compatible with other browsers. At Rackspace, our developers spend hours making sure customers can use our product to its full capacity in a variety of browsers. Imagine all the cool features developers could be working on if everyone kept their browsers up to date.

Are you convinced yet? If so, here are links to the latest browser versions for the most popular browsers. Or, you can download them from the “Help” tab in your browser and periodically check for updates.

Firefox: 3.0.11

Internet Explorer: 8

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[Email Tip] Managing Your Inbox with Flags

Jun 3rd, 2009 in Tips & Advice by Ben Hubbard

When I receive an email, I do one of three things:

Nothing. If it’s an FYI email that requires no action, I read it and leave it.
Take action. I do what is requested in the email or delegate to someone else.
Flag for follow up. This option puts a colored flag beside messages that need further attention.

Most email clients, including Rackspace Email, allow you to easily sort by flags. Flagging the email serves as a visual reminder and a sorting factor. In my inbox, all flagged messages are at the very top. After I’ve completed the action, I un-flag the email and it is removed from the top of the list.

To sort by flags in most email clients, just click on the white flag above the list of emails (in the same line where “From,” “Subject,” “Sent,” and “Size” are).

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