SoKy Local Business or "SoKybiz"

As my "little company" continues to grow, I and discovering a need to manage information more effectively. The volume information available to small business is somewhat overwhelming at times and getting a grip on it is like catching a greased pig in a mud pit. As a Microsoft Partner, I am allowed to install and review all sorts of software that is useful for small business and the latest one is Microsoft Office Outlook 2007.

I've been avoiding the change from Outlook 2000 because the new interface introduced in 2003 was exceptionally different than I was used to. Outlook 2003 came installed on the Dell computers we purchased at start up business in 2004 and everyone seemed to like it. With dozens of e-mail accounts and hundreds of daily e-mail, I was "afraid" of the upgrade process.

Last time I changed e-mail client software, I had to manually set up all accounts, all rules and all folders for organization. I thought it would take hours to migrate from 2000 to 2007 so I was waiting for the right conditions where I had plenty of time to make the move. I found out yesterday that my fears were unwarranted.

Techno Babble Explained: An "E-mail client" is the software used to fetch and send e-mail messages. An "account" would be the mailbox on the internet which the e-mail client uses to communicate with the world wide web. A "rule" is a processing condition that is used to automatically process incoming e-mail. (There are many ways to use rule which are not limited to incoming e-mail.) "Folders" are the standard and customized places to store sent and received e-mail.

Because of the many changes in my organization as well as a need to better manage e-mail, contacts, and appointments, I decided that a quiet Saturday was the right time I was waiting for. I found my Microsoft Office CD, inserted it in the drive, took a deep breath, hovered my mouse over the Outlook installation link, closed my eyes and clicked.

I don't know if it was because I was so reluctant to upgrade or my dread of all the things I will have to fix when this screwed up my accounts and rules, but it seemed like the little installation progress bar was moving in slow motion. In reality, it took about 15 minutes for the "installation complete" words to come up on my monitor.

Installation complete! I clicked okay and nothing happened. No blue screen, no lock up, nothing! It's looked like my same desktop as before except the old Outlook 2000 icon was missing. That's interesting. Looking in my "Quick Launch" box, I noticed a new icon so I clicked it.

Microsoft Outlook 2007 came up a little slowly, I assumed it was processing the rest of the installation, and though the screen was exceptionally different than the 2000 version, I could see that all of my e-mail was there (including the archive), they were in there proper folders and everything appeared to be just right.

Well that was too easy.
As I looked at everything on my screen, it seemed like everything was were it was supposed to be. Being skeptical, I clicked the "send and receive" button expecting it to fail. It didn't! As a matter of fact, it worked perfectly and seemed faster than before checking several accounts at once.

Found the glitch! My rules were not processing properly. For some reason, the new version didn't like my rules. Simply put, I have many rules that route e-mail to a custom folder depending on what account they are received from or which e-mail address the e-mail was sent to. I clicked on the rules button expecting a complicated and time consuming process of rewriting my rules but they were all there!

The rules interface us much better than before! Basically, it lists all of the rules and highlights the ones with problems. When you single click on the listed rule, a little preview box at the bottom shows the rule and allows you to select the condition with the problem. This is apposed to having to double click each rule to discover the issue and then backing out to the list.

Since the broken rule issue was related to "when received from account," all I did was click the account link, and then select the correct account all from the little preview window. It was simple and took about 3 minutes to modify 10 or more accounts. Not all had issues, but the ones with issues were clearly marked and easy to find.

There are many great things about this new version that I could highlight and probably will in the future. I love the new calendar and task lists! I love the new layout! I love the way signatures, themes and formatting are managed. I do however have one more feature that is indispensable and likely my favorite of all... the junk mail filter!

Getting rid of Spam.
As I mentioned, I have dozens of accounts and receive hundreds of e-mail every day. I would venture to say that most of the e-mail I receive is junk. I am so very careful not to publish my e-mail address online anywhere, almost to obsessive compulsive standards, yet some accounts have been discovered none the less and I am inundated with junk mail. It is exceptionally bothersome.

The way Outlook handles junk is wonderful! Even though I don't completely understand what is happening nor how Outlook decides which is junk and which is not, it seems to work very well. There are overrides so if a good e-mail is sent to junk, you can right click and select "not-junk" so that sender will be ignored in the future. Alternatively, junk that makes it through the filter can be flagged as such and sent directly to the place is belongs.

One other nice thing about Outlook is the fact you can select which way you want to display your received e-mail. On the topic of junk mail, I was exceptionally uncomfortable with the auto preview because of embedded graphics, pictures and other ways the spammers track they statistics. On the junk mail folder, I have removed the preview screen but still get a little text sample of the e-mail allowing me to troll through the folder looking for those e-mail that may have been junked inadvertently.

Yep, I'm happy I upgraded! I have lots of work to do because I will be installing a local Exchange Server as well as automating the process of publishing a public calendar to the web. One step at a time, the first step was installing Outlook 2007 on my own computer and testing it out, now I can move forward comfortable in my decision and start installing it on the other computers in the office.

Labels: change, Microsoft, Outlook, outlook 2007, small business

This was posted by SoKy : 10:14 AM