Gmail and IT Training

Gmail, Email Etiquette,

Yahoo groups & NMO specific signature

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Special thanks to Yassen Tcholakov for allowing us to use his Gmail presentation and IT training. Thank you also to Agostinho Sousa and his team from Portugal for allowing us to use their resource. Without the two of you, this document would not exist. !

Table of content!GMAIL 1 EMAIL ACCOUNTS 1 SIGNATURES 2 LABELS 3 FILTERS 3 LABS 4

EMAIL ETIQUETTE 5 EMAIL STRUCTURE 5 FIELDS 6 TIMELY REPLY 7 GRAMMAR AND SPELLING 7 PROFESSIONAL VS PERSONNAL ADDRESS 7

NMO SPECIFIC SIGNATURES 9

YAHOO GROUPS 11

REFERENCES 21

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1. Gmail a. Email Accounts

i. Forwarding

You can centralize all your emails under the Gmail interface. You only need to log in once to see all your accounts. This is what we call forwarding. All the new mail will be redirected to your main Gmail account. A message that is forwarded to you will still display the email address it was sent to in the «to:» field.

ii. Mail Fetcher Another way to centralize all your emails on the same account and still have the mail coming into the original account is by setting up Mail fetcher. This will allow you to open your emails in one place and still have them unread in the other place.i

iii. Send from many address You can also use the same account to send mail from different email addresses. When writing an email in your main Gmail account, a menu will be present at the “from” field and will allow you to switch what email is sending it.

How to do it yourself? – From Gmail Log into the account you want to forward, the account you do not want to log ever again after all the mail is forwarded. Settings -> « Forwarding and POP/IMAP » -> click on « Add a forwarding address »

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How to do it yourself? – From Hotmail Options -> More options -> Forwarding!

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When you have many, choosing the one that you use the most often as your default will put this account as sending address of a new email.

a. Signatures Gmail allows you to have a different signature for every account that you added to be able to send email. That means that upon creating a new email, by choosing the email address you are sending it from, the respective signature is added automatically at the bottom.

How to do it yourself? Go into Settings -> « Accounts and Import » -> click on « Add another email address you own They ask for the password of the account you are adding and may ask for a confirmation code that you receive on the other account.

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Cool - Now, if you have forwarded an account and added this address to send emails, you never need to go back to the other account. You can send email and received them from the two different accounts without logging in and out!

How to do it yourself? Go into Settings -> « General» -> in the signature section, edit account per account the different signatures you want to have.

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Cool - In your signature, you can put a photo/logo, you can hyperlink your website, your twitter feed, along with all the relevant information for people to contact you!

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b. Labels Using the labels is one of the best organizing solution Gmail has to offer. They are basically a tag that can be associated to email conversations of the same nature, related to the same issues. The advantage is that after creating these labels and putting emails in the appropriate category, you can use the left side menu to go to a sub-selection of your mail that only has this label. Label is applied to the conversation of email, meaning all the emails with the same title that were replies, forward and replies. You can have many labels on one conversation.

c. Filters Filters are the complement of the labels. If you don’t want to have to manually choose a label for every email you receive, filters are there for you. A filter will recognize anything from a sender’s address to an email subject and will automatically label these email with the label you have chosen. The same filter can also do more that just labelling it, it can archive it. Archiving means it will be in under your label and will be unread but will not be listed in your inbox. If you want to avoid to be flooded by a particular thing like Facebook email notifications, you just set up a filter that puts them directly into the label ‘’FB’’ and archives them. You can also mark them as important, star them and delete them. If you realize that your filter has a too broad selection, you can refine it by putting a word/many words concerning emails you don’t want to be included in the ‘‘doesn’t have’’ field.

How to do it yourself? Select the email you want to label -> click on -> Create new

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How to do it yourself? Select an email representing the emails you want to filter -> click on “More” -> “Filter messages like this” and then play with the selection criteria to include and not include whatever you want. You can set up many filters for the same label. For example, one filter per family member redirecting the emails to your “Family” label.

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d. Labs You can find the list of the Labs under Setting->labs. They are new features being experimented on an opt-in/opt-out basis. One of best labs and highly recommended is ‘’Signature tweaks’’ which places your signature before the quoted text in a reply, and removes the "--" line that appears before signatures. There is also ‘’undo send’’ that allows you to stop messages from being sent for a few seconds after hitting the send button. The last one that I would suggest you to enable is “Sender Time Zone” that allows you to see the time zone that the email was written and what time it was.

Cool - By always putting your filters with the “archive it” option, you end up creating many different inboxes and can decide to work only on one theme without having random emails related to other spheres of your life.

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2. E-mail etiquette a. Email structure

It is important to respect a certain structure when writing an email. It is not because they are quick and easy that they should be neglected. Remember that the person you are sending it to is building her opinion on what she sees, that is your emails. Remember also that you may be representing an association or a committee and that is even delicate than representing your own self.

Greeting “Hi …”, “Dear …”, etc.

Introduction paragraph

Who you are and why are you writing to this

person now.

I am Yassen Tcholakov, president of IFMSA-Québec (the Québec branch of the International Federation of Medical Students’ Organisations). I am writing to you because I would like to discuss the exchanges offered to the students from University Z through IFMSA.

Core of the message

Structure your ideas. Make short

paragraphs that are to the point. Be

precise and clearly state what you want

from the other person

I would like us to set up a meeting in the course of the month of September in order to discuss the exchanges offered by IFMSA. I am free on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 9:00AM to 4:00PM and everyday of the week from 6:00PM to 8:00PM. Please contact me to tell me what time suits you best. I propose to discuss the following topics at the meeting:

• IFMSA-Québec and IFMSA • Exchanges in University Y • The exchange experience of students

going abroad If you would like to add any topics to the above-mentioned list, please inform me so that I can prepare the necessary documentation.

Salutation Finish off in a smooth and polite way.

Thank you for your time,

Signature

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b. Fields You probably are all familiar with these as they are no-brainers but it is important to cover them for the sake of clarity.

From See 2 e – Official vs. Personal address

To The person you are directing your message at (the same one that you greet usually)

Cc (Carbon copy or Copie Conforme) People that need to be aware of the conversation without necessarily needing to be part of it.

Bcc (Blind carbon copy) Cci (Copie conforme invisible)

This is usefully only when sending to a large group of people without the desire to share their personal addresses between them

Subject Briefly describe the topic of the email.

Attachment

Always describe the attachment in the body. Be aware of attachment size limits. Use formats that are popular and common .pdf, .doc, Name your files in an easy way for the recipients to know which one to use for which.

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c. Timely reply In today’s digitalized world, checking emails once every two days is a minimum. If you think about it, you check your mail everyday; the same should go for your emails. Once you read an email, it must become your priority to reply. If that email requires more time and you do not have it at that moment, a simple acknowledgement of reception as well as an expected date for reply is usually well perceived. This should be done within at most 72 hours of the moment the message was sent. Also check your Spam folder once in a while to make sure nothing was identified as spam but was really intended to you.

d. Grammar and spelling

This is self-explanatory; no matter whom you are writing to, you should make an effort to write in a proper language without grammar and spelling mistakes. Worst case you can use Gmail’s spelling check feature or any word processor’s spelling and grammar check to back it up.

e. Professional address vs. personal address If you have an official email address, use it. Your official address makes it more professional. People will get a clue what you are writing to them about depending on the address from which comes the email. Also, people in contact with you will automatically continue sending emails to the right address at the end of your term so the handover will be easier. Your personal email address is the one you give to your friends and family. It might sound silly but making use of different email addresses for different topics helps you draw the line between your work and your personal life. If you have a university address, use it for all academic related stuff.

Cool – If you want to be efficient with your email reading and have a clean inbox, answer the email right after you read it. If you don’t answer it right away, Star it and it will come at the top of your inbox. When a conversation is over, archive it.

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The other way around is also true. If you are writing to someone on matters pertaining to their occupation/position within an organization, use the corresponding email address.

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3. NMO specific signature

Text for the copy-paste and apply the modifications on the next page. Votre Nom Étudiant en médecine - Medical Student Vice-président aux affaires externes - IFMSA-Québec - VP External +1.438.884.3193 | Skype: olivier-gagne

Image "Pour qu'être un médecin soit plus qu'un titre, mais un engagement social'' 630 rue Sherbrooke O., bureau 510 Montréal, Québec, H3A 1E4 Fax: (514)-282-0471

How to do it yourself? Settings -> General -> Signature Choose the address ‘’@ifmsa.qc.ca’’ Insert the following box, hyperlink the different component, add the image and adapt the font settings. Do it for the different accounts that you own.

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Modifications that needs to be done:

Here is a breakdown if the links If you need them for the hyperlink.

• Site web o http://www.ifmsa.qc.ca

• Image o http://i.imgur.com/Pc5lf.png

Size : Normal Font : Sans Serif Bold

Size : Normal Font : Sans Serif !

Size : Normal Font : Sans Serif Bold

Size : Small Font : Sans Serif !

Insert image and paste this link in the field: http://i.imgur.com/Pc5lf.png Choose ‘’Medium’’

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4. Yahoo groups

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5. References Gmail support

o http://mail.google.com/support/ Gmail Tips: The Complete Collection

o http://www.g04.com/misc/GmailTipsComplete.html Google search

o http://www.google.ca/search?q=gmail+tips Email Etiquette 101

o http://www.netmanners.com/email-etiquette/email-etiquette-101/ Readers Respond: What Email Etiquette Hint Do You Wish Others Would

Follow? o http://email.about.com/u/ua/emailnetiquette/What_Email_Etiquette_Hint_

Do_You_Wish_Others_Would_Follow.01.htm !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!i!http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=21288!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Last modified 06/10/2012Olivier Gagné