Taming the Email Beast

You Don't Have To Tag

One question that comes up quite often when we describe Taglocity is the reaction of 'I don't want to have to tag things - sounds like more work'. We've thought about this a lot during the development of Taglocity and some of the concepts that aren't obvious is that we actually have quite a few ways in which you don't have to tag things yourself. Here's some ideas and guidelines:

- Taglocity has a great 'Auto Assign' feature, where you can right mouse-button click on an email in your inbox and just say 'Anything from this person, or about this subject, or about these things then please put these tags on automatically'. After a few Auto Assignments have been set up then you'll really find a lot of things happening automatically, i.e. no work.

- If you tag any new messages as you write them, or replies to existing threads, then you'll find a dramatic increase in your productivity. Taglocity has the concept where the tags (with your permission) can travel with the message - this means all your replies and long threads are tagged automatically for you. This also has a 'network effect' of helping others, especially where you choose 'group tags' that you all might share. The majority of email you get will probably be in a team of people, and here the 'traveling tags' can really save you and other people a lot time. You may just want to use the tags in your group of people you work with, and tags like projects, or clients or statuses can really help get across the 'context' of your message (and let the recipients automate their filing/handing too).

- We use the concept of Taglocity Groups as a place where you can send email to and then let the recipients decide how they want to see it - sort of a smart alternative to the dreaded Reply All or growing CC list. Some members of the group will want everything forwarded as you send it to the group, while others might be a happy with the Daily Digest summary or perhaps specific RSS feeds based on narrow queries. The main point here though is that others can choose their 'email flow' and for those emails that arrive they are already tagged.

- Finally, it's worth mentioning that not everything has to be tagged. The delete button is still sometimes the best way to go, and the usefulness of the tags should be considered with your chances of ever wanting to quickly find that information ever again.

We're also currently working on some new 'Tag Suggestion' technologies, so please do stay tuned for that or leave some ideas at http://feedback.taglocity.com.

I hope though that the above list helps get across the concept of that in a typical work day you'll find you have to tag a lot less than you think you will.

Taglocity in Action

Yesterday was pretty exciting, with some great press and a huge number of new Taglocity users.

One thing I did want to point out is that we have some excellent screencast videos that help explain how to get the best out of Taglocity. They can be found here, so please do check them out:

http://www.taglocity.com/videos.html

If you want to offer feedback or a have a suggestion on how we could add or improve a feature then please do take a look here:

http://feedback.taglocity.com  

Thanks again to all for making it a great launch day.