Module 2 Email Tasks

Email

1. What information about a user’s email, the origin of a message, and the path it took, can you glean from an email message?

Emails contain a lot of different data that can be gleaned from them for example.

Consist of: username@domain.

The username is that for which the person is using on the domain server.

Mail leaves your system the first thing the network looks for is what domain will it be sending to, and then the username directs it to the user that is involved with the sending process.The username@domain is similar to the address in local Australia Post Mail, it has to be on the email or the email will simply either reject and bounce back to you and come up as a mail delivery system error.

The vital component in email is definitely the username without it; your computer will reject sending the mail via alerting you something is wrong. With the wrong user name and only a domain name you could accidentally send email to someone who you never meant to send to who was in your contacts at the same provider.

So in all, the most vital component the user name and then the domain.

By going file properties on the email that you have received you can gain in depth knowledge with regards to the path that the email has taken.

For example this is what a email header looks like all digital information has been altered:-

Return-Path: <billclinton @yahoo.com>

Received: from web32003.mail.mud.yahoo.com (web32003.mail.mud.yahoo.com [68.142.207.100]) by mail18.syd.optusnet.com.au (8.13.1/8.13.1) with SMTP id m5ABNXUq014299 for <johdam@optusnet.com.au>; Tue, 10 Jun 2008 21:23:35 +1000Received: (qmail 66193 invoked by uid 60001); 10 Jun 2008 11:23:31 -0000DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws;  s=s1024; d=yahoo.com; h=Received:X-Mailer:Date:From:Reply-To:Subject:To:In-Reply-To:MIME-Version:Content-Type:Message-ID;  Received: from [68.186.22.15] by web32003.mail.mud.yahoo.com via HTTP; Tue, 10 Jun 2008 04:23:31 PDTX-Mailer: YahooMailWebService/0.7.199

Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2008 04:23:31 -0700 (PDT)

From: BillClinton<Bill_Clinton@yahoo.com>

Reply-To: Billclinton@yahoo.com

Subject: maxwell

To: JohDam<JohDam@optusnet.com.au>

In-Reply-To: <AA62CF1784FB4BCCBA9E5B5876C71D15@RavenClaws>

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=”0-1848670995-1213097011=:66101″

Message-ID: 826003.66101.qm@web32003.mail.mud.yahoo.com

A few different sorts of information can be obtained from this email message header.

A) The Usernames BillClinton@yahoo.com and Johdam@optusnet.com.au

B) The Mail Server names :- web32003.mail.mud.yahoo.com and the IP address.

                                          Mail18.syd.optusnet.com.au and IP address

C) Date and time of the email arriving.

 

2. In what cases would you find it useful to use the ‘cc’, ‘bcc’    and ‘reply all functions of email?

When sending emails there are a variety of tools available to you as a user, but these are the main keypad to your successful sending and receiving of email.

Create Mail allows you to create your mail, ensuring that you have the email address of the sender; you then can create and send emails online.

If you wish resend to the exact same users/group that you have been communicating to reply all will allow you to send to the whole group involved with the email.

This is where email as a tools is a more viable component than just ordinary Australia Post mail, because we not only have the function of being able to send to one person at one time, or then hit reply all and respond to multiple people at once time, emails gives vastly more benefits in saving time than just ordinary mail.

Reply All also works when receiving email from one person who has posted to a list of people, you may then click on reply all in the tool box to achieve a multiple reply towards all on the list and will also include yourself in that reply.

CC: – Is good enough for me to use in majority of my emails. CC is known as carbon copy it allows you to send either a copy onto another machine or another account, or like myself I use it when I email my American friends so that in one key stroke I can stay in touch with them.

Bcc: – A Bcc (blind carbon copy) is a copy of an email message sent to a recipient whose email address does not appear in the message.

Every recipient of the message can see all the To and Cc recipients, but does not know about Bcc recipients.

Remembering, learn how to use these functions correctly the functions be so careful on how you use them or it will result in a personal dilemma for you.

These functions work well in group activities, be sure to use them well as they can often lead to mix ups,  I was stupid enough once to hit reply all and tell one person’s group listing how much I hated her images that she sent me of certain stuff, the person was not to impressed.

3. In what ways can you ensure that an attachment you send will be easily opened by the receiver?

When sending attachments, have a clear understanding of  friends and associates computers, understand do they have the capabilities of being able to receive attachments and process them on there computers. Using appropriate attachments will lead to higher success rate of being able to send and also receive attachments.

In summary:

A) Most Internet Service Providers in Australia have a limitation on what you can send via email of around 5meg to 10meg depending on how there mail server handles the traffic, Hotmail and Yahoo can receive bigger files.

B) To ensure your receiver can open the attachment correctly, you would first have to ensure they understands how to use that attachment correctly therefore it would have to be in a familiar format depending on.

C) Ensure that the attachment can be easily downloaded and that the users machine can take attachments, as some email settings not set correctly.

D) Ensure that you send the attachment using a generic file format that they are familar, often pdf,rtf can be easily downloaded as attachments.

E) Compression maybe used if the files are larger files in order to shrink the size so  you can furfill your isp requirements.

F) Communication with the receiver of your email is a vital and key component in sending, if they have no clue on what they are doing to download the file, you will need to carefully explain to them which will take up some time, sometimes often include in your email what program you need in order to get the file downloaded correctly.

         

4. What sorts of filters or rules do you have set up, and for what purpose?

  

At the moment I don’t have any filters or rule set up for my inbox, but when I was in business on eBay I relied on them to. Filters are designed to allow you with the ease of email that your inbox does not get clogged up with to much emails over time. You can specifically set a file structure in your inbox that allows you to store specific emails from friends or businesses or such sites as eBay that you can specifically go to these folders instead of your in box.There are a variety of rules that you can set up, and then the action of the rule be applied to the email address or email list.

 

5. How have you organized the folder structure of your email and why?

 

My folder structure is generic, I really have not much use in filing as I keep the folders down to a limited amount so that there is not much to control. I like a KISS approach because really email is simply that email, you read it and delete it.

I do see the viable method of having a controlling structure that is similar to that of a filing cabinet, only if it is viable. To me I get messages from friends I deal with the messages straight away.  With my emails there is no need to create a filing structure via rules because the majority of my emails get deleted within 24hrs.

Organizing rules and your folder structure is very important when running a business because you can basically get the computer to do the work for  you, just like the old days when secretaries did the paper work, computers have create the virtual office so they can ease the problems for you.

Folder structure is important, but having the right rules that control the data in the folder structure is most important, you don’t want emails to get lost that are very important.

Also inbox overflow is a common problem with most businesses, and that rules to control this are quite essential part of computer in today’s IT field.