Email use
Back to Office Staff Manual Content
<< Previous Article | Next Article >>
Introduction
Any business email should be written in the same professional way as a business letter or a facsimile because it is still a showcase for Flashbay. In other words it should be properly addressed, well structured and written clearly using normal capitalisation and punctuation.
It should not use abbreviations, slang, humour or sarcasm unless you are sure that the recipient will understand this.
If an email contains 'guarantees' then, prior to sending, it should be authorised by a Director.
A check must be made that the email is not being inadvertently sent to the wrong addressee or the wrong address.
Do not create email congestion by sending trivial messages or unnecessarily copying emails to those who do not have a real need to see them.
Do not attempt to send attachments in excess of 10MB. If you have artwork files in excess of this size, it is very likely that it is in an incorrect format for use by our company and should be modified or re-requested from the customer in a suitable format before internal distribution.
Do not CC your own address on any messages that you send - this can cause a serious problem where some or all of the intended recipients will receive the message many times.
Email size
The system of Email was not designed for sending large amounts of data. Be careful never to send emails bigger than a few MB, and generally keep emails below 1MB where possible.
- 1MB email - a big email, by anyone's standard
- 5MB email - a huge email
- 10MB email- ridiculously big size email, many recipient servers will block such emails.
Because employees of Flashbay are often handling customer data, artwork and images, it is important that you have an appreciation of file sizes.
There is almost never a legitimate occasion to send an email over 10MB, if your email balloons over this size you are doing something wrong e.g. using wrong file format.
Email style/appearance
Be consistent with the format of your emails and pay special attention to this when cutting and pasting recycled content.
The font and colour you use should be standardised in every email unless for effect. The font settings you should use in Zimbra are standardised as:
- Font – Arial/Sans Serif
- Font Size – 12 poin
- Font Colour – Dark Gray.
Your Email signature should be setup for you when you arrive at the company. It is your responsibility to alert the IT team to any changes which may be required to the signature in future (such as change in job title, or phone number).
In Zimbra, the signature settings can be found in Preferences Tab - Signatures. You can generate your signature in this tool then cut and paste it into the Zimbra signature window
Email and Holiday
Before you go on Holiday you need to do three things. You can do all of these things in Zimbra yourself, and they are your responsibility to complete before your holiday. It's best to do them 1 working hour before you depart (so the day before your holiday in most cases)
1) Setup an 'Out of Office' Auto responder in Zimbra
2) Set the email address to which your email will be forwarded during your holiday (e.g. email address of your colleague who will be covering for you).
- Click on the 'Preferences Tab' -> 'Mail' -> 'Receiving Messages'.
- The auto responder text to use is standardised, you can the text from this page: Signature
3) Share your both your 'inbox' and 'sent' folders in Zimbra with the person who will cover for you so they can see your email history.
Share a folder by right clicking it, choose 'share', then enter the email address of the person who you wish to share the folder with. Set the role to 'viewer', the press OK. Check your colleague can see your shared folder after they have accepted the share invitation which will be automatically emailed to them.
Disclosure of emails
You must not set up your email system automatically to forward emails outside Flashbay, as this risks breaching our confidentiality obligations (for example, conflict checks for competitors and price sensitive information might be forwarded, which could be very damaging if in the wrong hands). Note that (where appropriate) emails may be passed on by the recipient to third parties. Please also be aware that, even if it is deleted from your Inbox, material remains on the system and may still be monitored by Flashbay.
