Managing Corporate Email
March 2007 (More monthly articles)
Not far in the distant past, email was considered a novelty. Today, email communication has become as mission-critical as your phone system. Some would argue that email is even more critical.
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Whether implementing an email system for the first time or working with a system that has been in place for years, one must carefully plan for all the components that it will entail. How will messages reach your mail server? Will you purchase your own server or will you pay a vendor to store your electronic messages on their server? Will any mailboxes be synchronized with a smart phone, such as a Blackberry or Treo? How will you access your mail? How will you restore mailboxes in the event the server crashes?
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To begin, a good corporate email policy should employ a domain name, such as jdoe@myassociation.org. Occasionally, I run across associations that still have email going to a generic address, such as aol.com, mindspring.com, or comcast.net. While these types of addresses might be fine for personal use, such mailboxes in a corporate setting probably indicate to your members and donors that you haven’t quite figured out how to utilize computer technology. If you already own a domain name, such as www.mysociety.org, you should be able to use the same domain for email at no additional charge.
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Once you have a domain name and a server for receiving your messages, you simply need to ask your Internet Service Provider (ISP) to create an entry in their DNS database so that when someone sends a message to a staff person at your organization, the message will find its way there. DNS, or Domain Name Server, is basically a directory for all the resources on the Internet. Think of it as a type of Directory Assistance, the 411 of the Internet. When you send an electronic message to someone or visit a website, you know the address by its name. The name is what you type into your web browser’s address bar or the To line of your email message. However, that location is not found by its name but rather by its IP address, a string of numbers and decimals up to 15 characters long. Think of the IP address as the phone number. Just like you need a phone book to know what number to dial, you need DNS to find the IP address associated with a website or email box. Clicking the Send button, for instance, sets off a chain of events whereby a DNS server is ultimately asked for the location of scott@mycharity.org. The DNS server responds with the IP address allowing the message to find its way to the mailbox.
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While we’re on the topic of DNS, you’ll want to make sure you follow the rules of DNS. Violation of the rules can result in email messages being rejected by the email systems of your members and donors. You may have experienced messages that you’ve sent to your constituents bounce back to you for reasons you don’t understand. This could indicate that your DNS entries have not been configured properly. To ensure that you follow the correct rules, ask an IT consultant to perform a DNS review for you.
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If you are contemplating whether to purchase a new email server or replace an existing one but can’t decide whether you can justify the expense, consider that a number of companies will host your email for a monthly fee. The cost usually runs between $10 and $15 per mailbox per month. The advantage to this approach is that it is very inexpensive for a small organization with less than ten staff members. You typically get spacious mailboxes, spam filtering, and a Public Folder for sharing group resources, such as a conference room calendar. For an additional fee, you can usually get email sent to your smart phone. In comparison, implementing your own email server will cost $10,000 or more for the hardware, software, training, and consultant time to set it up.
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One must consider what software will be used to retrieve email. Microsoft Outlook is a very common platform for managing an email box, yet even Outlook provides two options for where to deliver your mail. The first is to leave it on the server while option two is to download it to a personal folder. The advantage to option one is that you can typically get to your mail even when you are away from your computer as most mail servers allow you to retrieve email using a web browser. The main disadvantage to leaving all your mail on the server is that you usually have a size limit on your mailbox. A best practice strategy is to manage your mail while it’s on the server and to delete old messages or move them to a personal folder as the mailbox becomes full.
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Finally, whether you install your own email server or pay someone else to store your mail, make sure you can recover your mailboxes in the event of a disaster. Often, people don’t think of backing up their data until it’s unavailable. Having a backup and recovery strategy is a must for any enterprise email system. The initial cost of the hardware and software is pennies in comparison to the cost of trying to recover without these tools. Sooner or later, every business needs to restore something. Don’t be tempted to forgo this option with the expectation of saving money. An affordable backup plan can be designed for just about any budget. When backing up email, consider not only email that may be stored on the server but also email that may have been downloaded into personal folders.
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