Dear friends,
Do you sometimes spend more time typing out emails than you would like?
Recently, I had the pleasure of working with a PMO Manager that was one of those special kinds of people that always had a new or interesting way of doing something cheaper, better, or faster. In a casual conversation over lunch, the subject of how best to use email came up. I am a big fan of avoiding email in favor of direct communications, but the discussion wasn't about that. Rather, it was simply how to deal with the volume of email that managers with employees need to send out and reply to.
When we got back to the office the PMO Manager showed me a technique, a feature within Outlook, that he makes use of that saves a great deal of time and, in fact, improves effectiveness. Many of you may already know and use this simple feature, but I must admit I was unaware of it. And, I was surprised at how useful it can be, especially in a project management and/or PMO context.
So what was this Microsoft Outlook feature..?
It is the "Auto Text" feature that is avaiable from the Outlook Toolbar when composing a message. Of course the out-of-the-box Auto Text picks are not that exciting. But what my good friend as manager of his PMO did that was kind of neat; he created about twenty customized Auto Text entries that were actually each a pre-canned email for such regular and predictable things as meeting follow up, status update, project review request, approval/deny replies, etc. You get the idea. Then he showed me how quickly and effectively the use of Auto Text works.
As someone who receives and replies to quite a bit of email each day, I have already found this simple feature of Outlook to be quite helpful and wanted to pass it along. Cheers.
PMI Team Member
