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Beyond simply mining the data in a single user's in-box, e-mail could become more manageable, Brezina suggested, if clients added ways for users within an organization to share information with each other more easily. For example, many e-mails are sent to request contact information such as phone numbers. The messages may be redundant, since multiple people within an organization might request the same information. If there was a way to pool contact information, attachments, and other similar pieces of data, Brezina said, it could reduce the amount of e-mail being sent.
Sharing information stored in in-boxes is tricky, however, because people like the way e-mail allows them to control which of their contacts see what information, said Alexander Moore, cofounder of Baydin, a company that makes an Outlook plug-in that searches for files on a computer's desktop and shared network drives relevant to the content of a piece of e-mail. Moore shares Brezina's view that it's important to find ways to share more data from in-boxes, but suggested that techniques borrowed from social sites like Facebook could encourage users to share when it's appropriate for them to do so.
E-mail could have a "like" button, Moore suggested. That way, if one company employee sends out a helpful set of instructions, the recipient could signal the sender that the information should be reposted publicly.
One of the powerful things about sites like Twitter, Moore added, is that they become repositories of publicly searchable data. While people wouldn't want their in-boxes to be publicly searchable, Moore envisions e-mail clients that could extract and summarize data from e-mail exchanges and store those items publicly. Searching the resulting database might provide clues, for example, to who in an organization was the last to deal with the copy machine repairman.
Enhancing the features around e-mail by mining it for social data and pulling in external information is a promising approach, Microsoft's Cheng noted. But she warned that any such effort would come with thorny privacy concerns. For example, a corporation might feel justified storing data mined on its own employees, but what about frequently e-mailed contacts from other companies?
User interfaces are another tricky concern, she said, adding that "e-mail is attention-demanding. Getting the right information on screen is a really hard design problem." And getting a design almost right isn't good enough for an important application like e-mail. "It's brutal to use an e-mail client that's not completely functioning," Cheng said.
Finally, she said, the whole purpose of making changes to e-mail is to improve productivity and collaboration, but these are hard things to measure: "How do you know if this stuff is actually helping, or if it's just adding to the noise at work and making it worse?"
Distinguishing between e-mails that require action and the rest of the e-mail flood is easily accomplished today in a growing number of large and mid-size enterprises that rely on Microsoft Outlook for e-mail. However, basic e-mail does not distinguish between regular e-mail and e-mail initiated to launch a human-centric process that needs to be managed, visible to those involved, support accountability, and provide an audit trail for future audit purposes if needed.
There is howeever a commercial software solution to this problem that has been developed by a Microsoft Partner. The solution tightly integrates with Microsoft Outlook and Word. It also employs Microsoft Excel reporting services, and for management reporting and dashboards it integrates with Microsoft SharePoint Server.
This Enterprise Class E-mail operates within Outlook and is utilized when Human-Centric Action Items need to be managed. These Enterprise Action Oriented E-mails are managed within a user's Enterprise E-mail Folder(s) that reside within Outlook alongside regular e-mail folders. This Enterprise E-mail takes the traditional flood of individual e-mails normally associated with an action item that may involve multiple participants and reduces it to a single line item to be managed in the Enterprise Action Oriented E-mail folder. Enterprise E-mails may have a time-line associated with them as well as automatic reminders for both sender and recipients. Data is stored in a Microsoft SQL Server database, so audit-ability and accountability are maintained.
More complex human-centric processes involving multiple action items are also easily managed with a Enterprise Action Oriented Document created in Microsoft Word with integrated tools provided in this Microsoft Partner solution. These Human-Centric Process Documents are managed and visible right from within Outlook and live right alongside of Enterpise Action E-mails. Within the Action Document, Action Items are identified and delivered to the responsible party/parties as Enterprise Action E-mail while the complete Action Document is "published" and delivered to those solution users that require visibility into the complete process defined within the Action Document. Action Documents are relied upon to manage a wide variety of human-centric processes across the silos of various types of enterprises where missed deadlines or information falling between the cracks could result in regulatory fines or sanctions, or compromised workgroup performance/results. Action Items can be delivered to responsible parties using any e-mail client when participants outside the enterprise (suppliers, customers, consultants, etc.) are involved. This Microsoft Partner Solution provides enterprise class tools and control in a familiar Microsoft Outlook environment. When traditional e-mail is insufficient, when Business Process Management (BPM) tools are too rigid and I.T. dependent, when traditional Project Management tools are too onerous, and when social networking tools don't meet enterprise requirements, there is another tool to investigatge that integrates seamlessly into Microsoft Office / Outlook.
A growing number of Fortune 1000 companies and other enterprises have successfully adopted the solution. It's used in financial services, utilities, oil and gas, manufacturing, telecom, university, healthcare, military, and other enterprise environments.
This solution is available in many parts of the world including the USA, Canada, Western Europe, Israel, Singapore, and South Africa. The Microsoft Partner that developed the solution plans for wider distribution in the future.
I've refrained from identifying the software solution by name since the policy of Technology Review is not to promote specific products via this blog. Should anyone want specific information regarding this solution, you can send me a message via TechnologyReview.com, or e-mail me at jshoolman@tech-works.com with your contact information. I'll be happy to respond.
Jonathan Shoolman
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3 Comments
Google Wave?
Ms Naone should have included Google Wave into the article. From what I can tell, it's trying to do some of the very things the speakers at the convention were saying. Was there a speaker from Google at Denver?
Reply