With the maturation of texting and instant messaging platforms such as Slack, Google Chat or Microsoft Teams, folks have adapted, and continue to adapt their use of email. Keeping in mind that email platforms also have continued to improve, what does the communication landscape look like now?
First, let’s look at instant messaging. Teams and Chat are built into Microsoft 365 and Google Suite, respectively, and Slack still has a strong foothold. So the vast majority of corporate or government users have an easy way to IM their co-workers as well as colleagues in other organizations. Quick messages, sometimes not directly work-related, live in IM. This has really helped to clean up many inboxes.
Email is being used for communications that are deemed more “important” both within and outside of one’s own organization. Frankly, many folks still feel, rightfully so, that emails provide a better record that a communication has taken place. The “search” function in IM platforms continues to lag far behind similar functions in their email counterparts. Similarly, there isn’t a good way to organize individual messages into folders.
But annoying email behavior still exists. Chief among these is the overuse of the carbon copy (cc) function. Thankfully, there is no such function in IM, although it is possible to misuse a channel or team and unnecessarily include folks who don’t need to be part of the conversation.
The mostly annoying practice of cc’ing oneself also still appears. Again, with no equivalent in IM, this annoyance is limited to email. Back in the days before modern email systems, cc’ing oneself might have actually had some utility. But nowadays, cc’ing oneself belongs in the “‘you’re turning into your parents’ commercial.”
But there is one exception, which is mostly innocuous but sometimes also a “tell” that all is not what it seems. In the case of a shared mailbox used by a group of people, then cc’ing the group is virtually a requirement for all members of the group to see all replies. Otherwise, the outgoing messages from the group are only seen in the actual sender. A common example is for an accounting shared mailbox, such as ap@ example.com. Three to four accounting staff monitor this mailbox, and all of them send replies from that address. The only way to see all the replies is if ap@ example.com is cc’d.
Sometimes, however, it is the case where the shared mailbox is used for folks who don’t really exist. This may be a former staffer or even someone who’s never existed, such as joealoha@example.com. Not wanting to ’fess up that Joe doesn’t actually exist, the shared mailbox is monitored by staff who masquerade as Joe.
And, of course, there is the dreaded “reply all” with its associated response “please stop replying all” that can go on for days and days. Thankfully, this function has no equivalent in the IM world.
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John Agsalud is an IT expert with more than 25 years of information technology experience in Hawaii and around the world. He can be reached at jagsalud@live.com.
