All.organize email.how to guide

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/intern

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

• https://help.github.com/en/categories/receiving-notifications-about-activity-on-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