Skip to content

Organize Email

Email

Mailing lists

  • @all is the mailing list with everybody at the company
  • @contributors is the mailing list with every open-source contributor

Organizing email flow

  • We receive tons of emails, and the inflow is going to keep increasing
  • At a large company you can get 10k emails per day (no kidding)
  • The goal is to read all the emails and always be on top of it
  • How can one do that?
  • As usual the answer is get organized
  • Filter emails in folders
  • Separate emails in folders based on the action that they require (e.g., ignore, just read and be aware of it, read and respond)
  • Read email and decide what to do about each of it:
    • No reply needed
    • Reply right away
    • Follow up later (e.g., to read, reply, think about it)
  • Use flags to distinguish what needs to be followed up later or if you are waiting for a response
  • A possible organization in folders is:
  • GitHub
    • Commits in all the repos (be aware of it)
    • Issue updates (read and respond)
    • PRs
    • Commits directly to master (read and review)
    • Commits into documents dir of master (read and review)
    • Emails generated by my GH activities (ignore and mark as read)
  • Asana
    • Daily activities assigned report
    • New comment/activity
    • New task assignment

Anatomy of email messages from infra

  • The goal is to classify emails so that we can filter email effectively

Filtering emails with Gmail

  • Personally (GP) I prefer an email client (Mozilla Thunderbird and more recently Apple Mail) rather than using Gmail web interface
  • People are able to use it
  • Personally I prefer to use filters on the Gmail (server) side
  • Pros
    • I don't get emails on my cell phone continuously
    • The emails are organized as they arrive
    • Folders are on the server side, so my client can simply sync
  • Cons
    • The Gmail interface for filtering emails is horrible
  • The web interface is https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#settings/filters
  • Note that Gmail distinguish different email accounts using different indices, e.g., https://mail.google.com/mail/u//#inbox

Notifications from GitHub

GitHub pull requests

  • These emails look like:

    Samarth KaPatel <notifications@github.com>
    to cryptokaizen/orange, Subscribed
    
    cryptokaizen/cmamp#4765
    - Refactoring amp_path on orange
    - PR in cmamp - cryptokaizen/cmamp#4788
    ________________________________________________________________
    
    You can view, comment on, or merge this pull request online at:
    https://github.com/cryptokaizen/orange/pull/411
    
    Commit Summary
    - B2b4940 orange fix
    - 850b2b2 amp
    
    File Changes (2 files)
    - M amp (2)
    - M dataflow_orange/system/Cx/test/test_master_pnl_real_time_observer_notebook.py (5)
    
    Patch Links:
    - Https://github.com/cryptokaizen/orange/pull/411.patch
    - Https://github.com/cryptokaizen/orange/pull/411.diff
    
  • These emails have the words: "You can view, comment on, or merge this pull request online at:" in the body of the email

GitHub issue activity

  • These emails look like:
    Samarth KaPatel <notifications@github.com>
    to Review, kaizen-ai/kaizenflow
    
    @samarth9008 requested your review on: #436 Update Signing_up_for_Kaizenflow.md.
    __
    Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe.
    You are receiving this because your review was requested.
    

or:

    Grigorii Pomazkin <notifications@github.com>
    to cryptokaizen/cmamp, Mention

    @PomazkinG commented on this pull request.
    ________________________________________________________________________

    In helpers/lib_tasks_pytest.py:

    > @@ -671,17 +671,25 @@ def run_coverage_report(  # type: ignore
         :param aws_profile: the AWS profile to use for publishing HTML report
         """
         # TODO(Grisha): allow user to specify which tests to run.
         ...
    obsolete, resolving
    __
    Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe.
    You are receiving this because you were mentioned.
  • These emails can be recognized by the fact that have the words "You are receiving this because" in the email body

Commits

  • These emails look like:

    Grigorii Pomazkin <notifications@github.com>
    to cryptokaizen/cmamp, Push
    
    @PomazkinG pushed 1 commit.
    - 65496bb Merge branch 'master' into CmTask4707_fix_coverage_test
    __
    View it on GitHub or unsubscribe.
    You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.
    
  • These emails can be recognized by the fact that have the words "pushed commit" in the email body

Gdocs

  • These emails have comments-noreply@docs.google.com or (Google Docs) in the "subject" field

TODO emails

  • These emails have TODO in the subject

Asana

  • These emails are received from no-reply@asana.com address
  • These emails may contain:
  • List of tasks assigned to you for today
  • New activities in the tasks assigned to you
  • New task assignment