Days go by

Tuesday - Traveled to Arch Ford Co-op for the monthly Specialists/Tech meetings and mini training sessions.  Bob Cochenour and I did a session on things you can do in Google Mail.  I had WAY too many things on the agenda, so we hit about half of those.  We may do another session down the road some time.

Wednesday - The techs had a work day to figure out our grant proposals and the state tech plan.  The meeting was held back at Arch Ford, but I attended over videoconference and Jana from Camden joined me here rather than drive all the way to Plumerville (2.5 hours+ drive each way).

Thursday - I've been working on my ISA server and looking at which servers can finally be put to rest.  So far, I shut down two.  I will move some resources from one of the servers and then either shut it down or consolidate resources from other servers onto it.  I have spent any time not working on my servers helping Bradley with theirs.  They have some weird email issue going on and I have been troubleshooting it remotely.  I was supposed to go there today, but with my server acting a little off, I needed to kill two birds from one pond - or something like that.

There appears to be some kind of email spamming/blacklist issue, but they do not actually appear on any public blacklists. It's a mystery.

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For those interested, here are the rough notes of the Google Mail session:

Google Mail Tips and Tricks
Priority Messaging - Mail Settings > Inbox > Inbox Type (Classic, Important, Priority, etc)

Importance Markers - Mail Settings > Inbox > Show/Hide markers

Chat (Hide the Chat box) - Mail Settings > Chat > Chat: On or Chat: Off

Conversation View - Mail Settings > General > Conversation View: On or Conversation View: Off

Labels - Organize your email, can apply multiple labels to same message

Filters - Apply labels and perform other actions based on content, sender, etc (creating rules)

Use Labels, Filters and Archiving to organize your mail:
Create a label (Ex: Director)
Create a filter (Ex: Label all mail from boss as "Director" - from the previous step)
Skip Inbox (Do not show this message in the Inbox, but apply the label to show in labels list)

Archiving is *NOT* deleting!  Archiving just 'hides' the message from your Inbox. Archived messages will still show up in searches and in labels.

Google Labs
Bob demonstrated/discussed several handy Google Labs items for mail:

• Auto-Advance (automatically move to next message)
• Background Send
• Default "Reply to All"
• Multiple Inboxes
• Preview Pane
• Right-side Chat
• Other Labs were covered as well, but time limitations kept me from keeping notes!

The following items were *NOT* covered in the session due to time, but were on the agenda:
Advanced mail searching:

Use quotation marks-  "meeting agenda" will return mail with those exact words in that exact order

Subject
- subject:Google Calendar *or* subject:"Google Calendar"
-- The first will retrieve subjects with "Google" or "Calendar"
-- the second will retrieve subjects that contain "Google Calendar" together

From (To: works the same way)
- From:<name> or From:<email@address.com> (Can also use quotes!)
-- From:David Henderson (All messages from any "David" or "Henderson"
-- From:"David Henderson" (All messages from David Henderson)

Find UNREAD messages- is:unread
-- Returns all email that has not been read yet!

Labels (Can use quotes!)
- label:<label name> <keyword(s)>
-- label:0_Lindy "pay raise"
-- label:"Disaster Recovery" approval

Filename
- filename:<filename.extension> *OR* filename:<extension>
-- filename:test.doc (all emails with test.doc attached)
-- filename:pdf (all emails with PDF attachments)

Attachments
- has:attachment (can be used with other search terms)
-- from:cooptc has:attachment

Use "AND," "OR," "-"- label:cooptc -has:attachment (all mail from COOPTC without attachments)
- from:"David Henderson" and filename:pdf (all pdfs from David Henderson)

Use "anywhere" to search ALL mail (including spam, trash, inbox, etc)- in:anywhere
-- in:anywhere from:phoebe (Searches all mail, labels, etc for mail from phoebe)

Specify special folders (inbox, trash, etc)- in:inbox
-- in:inbox subject:meeting (finds messages ONLY in the Inbox with "meeting" in subject)

Combine search areas and terms- label:e-rate OR from:becky.smith@somewhere.gov (All E-rate labeled messages plus all mail from becky)
- subject:e-rate from:becky.smith@somewhere.gov OR belinda.jones@somewhere.gov (Subject is E-rate AND the mail is either from Becky or Belinda)