Email etiquette
 

We have a guy at work, that addresses everybody by @Tom Smith in the body of emails, that links them to their email address.

WTF is with that?

I'm assuming he's on the younger side.

When using group oriented messaging solutions like Slack, Teams, Discord, etc... It is common to @ specific individuals so they get a notification that there is something in the thread directly related to them or is something they need to pay attention to.

It may just be habit that he is transferring to email where the only purpose it serves is to make it clear the content is specific to or requires response / action from Tom Smith.

Is he young? It's possible in many social networking type apps to tag someone so that it's not just their name, but something that notifies them that they were mentioned in a chat or correspondence.

I've seen that used in chats (even in house chats at work) and on facebook. I don't think I've ever seen it used in email.

So are you saying that it causes folks mentioned in this manner to be copied on an email that they weren't otherwise copied on?

Exactly. I've never seen it used in email. I'll test it at work to see if our email has that sort of functionality.

Yep, In a work email, I can @ someone and it adds them in the "To" field as well as providing a pointer to them in the email. Interesting. I may start using that.

On group emails, where 5-10 folks are copied. You can have an issue being discussed where you want to address comment A to a particular person, and comment B to someone else. The @ pointer to that person should help them focus on the stuff most related to them, and possibly keep them from missing stuff that is addressed to them.

eg, you've got an email talking about rebuilding an engine, and the email thread includes the parts guy (Bob), the mechanic doing the work (Zeke), and the machine shop guy (Jeff).

instead of

In the first email, the tags should get attention. In the second email (especially if it was a longer email with more detail info), the questions at the end probably won't be seen by the right people and may never get answered.

It actually depends on the email client being used to read it, though the email client used to send it will let you see it in-play during composition...

I do it at work when dealing with multiple people on one big task and we have all bit parts to do to make something happen.

Our ticketing system (Jira) also supports it, which gets a copy of the message sent to the user even if they aren't associated with teh ticket otherwise.

And of course, Teams and such all support it for things...

Interesting, I'll have to give that a shot.

At work we've got 3 or 4 chat clients. We're getting ready to lose Skype which is being replaced by Teams. Teams seems to have a ton of new functionality, but has lost a lot of the ease of use and intuitive use that previous clients have had. I assume by adding all of the new functionality is what has caused the UI to get more complicated and less intuitive. Skype was basically just a chat client, while Teams is a "collaboration" client (and collaboration seems to be a big buzz-word these days).

I just learned the Outlook client works with the "@" symbol and name in the email body as well!

Maybe should its own thready but just a heads up MS is going to force users of Outlook and Teams into Edge when opening links.


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Yep, I tested it @ work. :D

You can leave the "To:" field empty, and insert email addresses (including group/distro lists) into the body, and it creates a link in the body as well as automatically adding the email addresses into the "To:" field. You can manually delete the addresses from the "To:" field if you want and the link stays in the body.

I started the instant messenger trend at work 23 years ago with ICQ.... :D

TBH Teams works well, the ability to quick call, run it thru a browser, share docs/files, etc. all make it work well. Even better is if your IT group allows outside-of-your-enterprise contacts

Wonder what that will do on my Linux desktop when I WFH... I run Teams/Outlook locally via web interface/webmail

I suspect there's a way to override that, although I'm sure they are going to make it more difficult.

I would say he's about 32 or so.

If I have something specific to somebody in a work emai,, I'll write: Tom, where is my Porsche GT3RS?

And I'll do that for everybody as needed.

The @ symbol for work just seems too relaxed or social media related.*

I guess what really bothers me is, this guy is a total jackass, so everything he does grinds my gears. He's despised by everyone. 🙄

* NOW GET MY LAWN!

Yes, there is. Should of included the link in my post.

Scroll to the end.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/microsoft-decides-outlook-teams-will-only-open-links-using-edge


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LOL! Yep, 1999, we had Internet access, and about 100 people all working together providing technical support. Most of us had something like Trillian and was using it to access AIM, Yahoo IM, and ICQ. A smaller subset was also using MiRC on a server at work via CLI. As the years have progressed and I've moved from place to place, the amount of access to the 'Net has changed which eventually cut off all of those external clients. It took a bit for companies to start providing their own internal chats, but as long as I've been where I am now, we've always had at least 3 different chat clients (which have changed over the past 12 years). Our external access is very limited. Most of the conferencing apps (gotomeeting, webex, etc...) were very limited before covid. Now, we have a little more access (different roles have more or less access), but as a company we've adopted Zoom which is very surprising to me considering the whole China/non-trusted element.

That's how I've always done it. Of course, I wasn't aware that Outlook had this other option. I will probably start using this option in place of ^that^ old way.

LOL! And there's the real root of the issue. And I'm only laughing because I completely understand. I still haven't really embraced it, but many, many years ago, I had gotten laid off and while waiting to get back into my career, I took a job so far outside of my normal work that it may as well have been on another planet. And the folks that I worked with, I didn't particularly always like. But after several months of working there, it dawned on me that if I'm open to it, and I look for it, I can learn something from everyone that I come across. We all have different experience and knowledge, even folks that you wouldn't expect to have anything to offer. And in some cases, what you can learn may be as simple as "don't do what they do." But I think that in must cases, probably 75-90% of the time, there's probably some tidbit of knowledge that they have that you don't that you could learn.

It may take you paying far more attention to an asshat that you want, so you may miss it, and you may not mind, but that doesn't mean that it's not there for you if you want it.

On the GJ forum if you are mentioning a member's name and place the @ sign in front, it turns red and links to their profile.

Great a new pro-noun.

Learning from this guy? My distain for him is too great.

I was talking to our sales agent yesterday and she mentioned that a coworker in another city asked about Mr. Butthole. They both wondered if it was them and I said no, he treats everybody equally ****ty.