Three more non-obvious features of the Zimbra Collaboration Suite that will help improve employee productivity
Our last story about the hidden features of Zimbra, which can be useful for users of the web client was quite warmly received by our readers. In this regard, we will continue to acquaint you with the not very obvious, but extremely useful features of the Zimbra web client, which can help you and employees in your enterprises to increase productivity, and also greatly simplify communication within the company.
One of the most important functions of any collaboration system is the business calendar and diary, which are used for scheduling and setting appointments and meetings. However, despite the rich functionality of Zimbra in terms of managing business calendars, often many orders come to managers the old-fashioned way, in the form of an e-mail with an order to do something or appear in the office at the designated time. To prevent this assignment from being lost, it would be most reasonable to add it to your schedule immediately after receipt. But is it possible to do this quickly, so as not to open the second tab and not switch between them in attempts to copy the text of the letter into the form to create a meeting or task?
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Especially for this, in Zimbra there are functions “Create a meeting” and “Create a task”, which can be found in the pop-up menu of any email. After clicking on the “Create a meeting” item, a meeting will be automatically created with the name completely repeating the subject of the letter. Also, all participants of the correspondence will be added to this meeting, and the description of the meeting will be automatically filled in with the text of the selected letter. Thus, the employee will only have to specify the place and time of the meeting, and also, if desired, slightly change its description and name if the subject and text of the letter are not suitable for these purposes. If there were attachments in the letter, they are also automatically attached to the created meeting. Approximately the same thing will happen when creating a task. Its name and description will be automatically filled in based on the subject and text of the letter, and the user will only have to fill in the empty columns. As a result, the task will appear in the diary of the user who created it, regardless of how many people participate in the correspondence.
Thanks to this technique, an employee gets the opportunity to optimize the time spent on creating meetings and tasks, which means he will have time to do more work during the working day.
Many managers, by the nature of their activities, often have to look through numerous informational tapes in order to keep abreast of various events and news, be it world, federal, regional or even corporate news. However, if an employee opens several tabs in the browser for this task and will constantly switch between them in search of useful information, then he most likely will not be able to view the news properly or work normally? What to do in such cases?
In such cases, good old RSS feeds, which, as a rule, contain all the necessary information and do not contain pictures and advertisements, will be a great help. Due to this, RSS feeds are much easier to perceive and allow employees who are forced to follow the flow of information to work more efficiently. Another significant advantage of RSS is that they can be added directly to the Zimbra web client and due to this you can view the feeds without interrupting your work email.
To add an RSS feed to Zimbra, click on the gear icon in the Mail Folders item and select the New Folder item in the pop-up menu. There you need to put a tick in the item “Subscribe to RSS / ATOM feed” and indicate the link on which the RSS you need is located. After that, you have a folder with the created RSS-feed, in which each news item is displayed as a separate e-mail.
In recent years, the display of electronic correspondence in the form of chains has become for email clients. Due to this, all business correspondence looks very succinctly and there is no sensation of mess when viewing it. In addition, a similar structure of correspondence allows you to maximally conveniently get acquainted with its contents and quickly refresh the conversation history. However, when a dialogue is conducted between three or more people, situations often arise when the dialogues become quite branchy and to find a separate letter in such correspondence becomes extremely problematic.
In such situations, switching to the classic view of the correspondence display, in which the entire correspondence is displayed as separate messages, ordered by the date of receipt, can help. Often, it is much easier to find the right letter in this type of displaying dialogs, which implies a significant time saving for the employee who searches for it. Also for many users, the display of correspondence in the form of individual messages can be much more convenient and familiar than the display in the form of conversations.
Switching between these two types of display is carried out in the drop-down menu "View" in the upper right corner of incoming mail. Here you can not only assign the type of displaying “By Conversations” and “By Messages”, but also configure other display options for incoming mail. For example, you can sort messages by size, subject, attachments, and so on. It can also help improve employee email performance.
We hope that these functions will help to increase productivity and your employees too!
Creating a meeting based on the received letter
One of the most important functions of any collaboration system is the business calendar and diary, which are used for scheduling and setting appointments and meetings. However, despite the rich functionality of Zimbra in terms of managing business calendars, often many orders come to managers the old-fashioned way, in the form of an e-mail with an order to do something or appear in the office at the designated time. To prevent this assignment from being lost, it would be most reasonable to add it to your schedule immediately after receipt. But is it possible to do this quickly, so as not to open the second tab and not switch between them in attempts to copy the text of the letter into the form to create a meeting or task?
')
Especially for this, in Zimbra there are functions “Create a meeting” and “Create a task”, which can be found in the pop-up menu of any email. After clicking on the “Create a meeting” item, a meeting will be automatically created with the name completely repeating the subject of the letter. Also, all participants of the correspondence will be added to this meeting, and the description of the meeting will be automatically filled in with the text of the selected letter. Thus, the employee will only have to specify the place and time of the meeting, and also, if desired, slightly change its description and name if the subject and text of the letter are not suitable for these purposes. If there were attachments in the letter, they are also automatically attached to the created meeting. Approximately the same thing will happen when creating a task. Its name and description will be automatically filled in based on the subject and text of the letter, and the user will only have to fill in the empty columns. As a result, the task will appear in the diary of the user who created it, regardless of how many people participate in the correspondence.
Thanks to this technique, an employee gets the opportunity to optimize the time spent on creating meetings and tasks, which means he will have time to do more work during the working day.
Adding RSS feeds to Zimbra
Many managers, by the nature of their activities, often have to look through numerous informational tapes in order to keep abreast of various events and news, be it world, federal, regional or even corporate news. However, if an employee opens several tabs in the browser for this task and will constantly switch between them in search of useful information, then he most likely will not be able to view the news properly or work normally? What to do in such cases?
In such cases, good old RSS feeds, which, as a rule, contain all the necessary information and do not contain pictures and advertisements, will be a great help. Due to this, RSS feeds are much easier to perceive and allow employees who are forced to follow the flow of information to work more efficiently. Another significant advantage of RSS is that they can be added directly to the Zimbra web client and due to this you can view the feeds without interrupting your work email.
To add an RSS feed to Zimbra, click on the gear icon in the Mail Folders item and select the New Folder item in the pop-up menu. There you need to put a tick in the item “Subscribe to RSS / ATOM feed” and indicate the link on which the RSS you need is located. After that, you have a folder with the created RSS-feed, in which each news item is displayed as a separate e-mail.
Toggle chat view
In recent years, the display of electronic correspondence in the form of chains has become for email clients. Due to this, all business correspondence looks very succinctly and there is no sensation of mess when viewing it. In addition, a similar structure of correspondence allows you to maximally conveniently get acquainted with its contents and quickly refresh the conversation history. However, when a dialogue is conducted between three or more people, situations often arise when the dialogues become quite branchy and to find a separate letter in such correspondence becomes extremely problematic.
In such situations, switching to the classic view of the correspondence display, in which the entire correspondence is displayed as separate messages, ordered by the date of receipt, can help. Often, it is much easier to find the right letter in this type of displaying dialogs, which implies a significant time saving for the employee who searches for it. Also for many users, the display of correspondence in the form of individual messages can be much more convenient and familiar than the display in the form of conversations.
Switching between these two types of display is carried out in the drop-down menu "View" in the upper right corner of incoming mail. Here you can not only assign the type of displaying “By Conversations” and “By Messages”, but also configure other display options for incoming mail. For example, you can sort messages by size, subject, attachments, and so on. It can also help improve employee email performance.
We hope that these functions will help to increase productivity and your employees too!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/450686/
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