Helpful Hints
From help.officedesktop.com
When to use a Search or a View
Searches and Views are similar ways of showing information across folders. While they perform similar functions, and may seem interchangeable, there are actually several differences among them.
Searches allow you to find information in one or multiple folders. For example, if you are looking for all Contacts in your Directory that work for a specific company, you can enter the company name as a keyword.
In the Messages and Documents sections, you can also create Advanced Searches that allow you to go into greater detail of what you are looking for.
If you find yourself performing search with the same criteria often, you may want to create a View so that you do not have to continually specify them.
Views, which are only available in the Messages and Documents sections, are like permanent Advanced Searches. Views always take into consideration information stored in all your personal folders. Some Views are system-defined, but you can also create Personal Views based on your own criteria and exceptions. Views are easily accessible from a menu to the left of the Messages or Documents windows.
When to create an Event or a Task
Events and Tasks are ways of marking time on your Calendar, and while you can often use them similarly, it is best to understand the differences among them so that you can take full advantage of your Online Office’s capabilities.
You should use an Event for situations that involve more than two people and require a degree of planning, from a meeting or conference call to the annual holiday party. Creating Events allows you to keep track of who will attend, and any changes made to the Event can be sent to all invitees.
A Task is an electronic To Do List that functions best when only one or two people are responsible for a project. You can delegate Tasks to others and Tasks can be assigned to you. Tasks also allow you to send and receive Status Reports regarding the completion of the Task.
The difference between Groups and Distribution Lists
Groups and Distribution Lists are intuitive methods of combining your Contacts so that you can more efficiently send out information and organize your workload.
Distribution Lists are tied to one specific email address, and are designed to send messages to multiple addresses at once. For example, you can create a Distribution List comprised of email addresses of everybody on your project team, and when you want to send them an email, you only need to select the Distribution List instead of each person's email addresses.
You would create a Group if you needed to give permissions to a folder to multiple people. For example, when you want to give permissions to a folder to to everyone from Your Team, instead of selecting each person individually, you can just create a group called Your Team and assign permissions to this group. This way, as your group gains or loses members, you only need to add or subtract them from the Group in your Contacts, and the changes are made accordingly throughout the system. You do not need to add/remove permissions to each folder for each new member.
Using Personal, Public, and Shared Folders
All information in your online workspace is stored in folders. This allows you to organize your material by project, much like you can do on your hard drive. It also makes it easier to share your information, as by sharing a folder, others have access to all items inside the folder.
Personal Folders are those which only you can access. Any private or confidential material should be stored in these. You can, however, grant specific users rights (read, edit, create, and delete) to a Personal Folder by clicking the Permissions link from the Folders pop-up window. Personal Folders to which you have granted access to others are known as Shared Folders.
Public Folders do not belong to a particular user. Rather, they contain Messages and Documents that everyone with the appropriate permissions can access. The permissions are Read Only, Read/Create, Read/Create/Edit, Read/Create/Edit/Delete, Read/Create/Edit/Delete/Manage. Public Folders are created by Administrators or users with appropriate permissions.
External Email Account vs. MX Record Mapping
To look and feel professional, your company should own a domain, which allows for creating email addresses such as "name@company.com". This also allows to create generic email addresses, such as sales@yourcompany.com, info@yourcompany.com. Emails sent to those addresses can be accessed in Public Message Folders or forwarded to a specific user. Contact your System Administrator to set this up.
If your company owns a domain, you probably have an email address name@yourcompany.com and use it to send and receive work-related emails. However in your online office you can also send and receive emails from your personal email addresses, such as Yahoo, AOL or GMail. You would do that using POP3 settings. You can even set up multiple POP3 accounts. For more information on how to set this up, go to External Email Accounts.
Advanced Search: Using Criteria and Exceptions
When creating an Advanced Search or a Personal View, you will be asked to define your terms as either criteria or exceptions. You should use criteria to include items and exceptions to exclude items within those criteria that do not meet your needs. Exceptions will always take precedence over the criteria.
For example, if you wanted to look for documents in all folders created yesterday, but not the spreadsheets, you would create an Advanced Search. Select criteria, then Created Date. Click Add and select yesterday from the drop-down list. Select exceptions, then Types. Check the box for spreadsheets, and click OK .
Advanced Search: The difference between All and Any
When creating an Advanced Search or Personal View, you will be prompted on whether you are looking for all or any criteria and/or exceptions. Selecting all will include items that meet every one of the criteria and exceptions specified. Selecting any will include those items that meet at least one of the criteria and exceptions specified.
For example, if you create an Advanced Search for presentations created within the last month, you need to select all from the criteria drop-down list. If you select any, you will see every document created in the last month as well as every presentation, regardless of when it was created.
