Keyword tags and email

In Q2, 2007 I changed companies, which also meant a change to Outlook email. The immediate frustration of Outlook was the inability to put an email message in more that one folder. (You can copy a message to multiple folders, but this duplicates messages). On top of that the Outlook 2003 search is anemic. Upgrading to outlook 2007 helped searching, but the problem of how to file email remained.

Then I discovered an Outlook add-in product called Taglocity which allows you to add keyword tags to messages. After using keyword tags for several months I realized that this approach actually woks better that filing messages in multiple folders. The reason is that you can search on multiple keyword tags. Its a bit like searching for a message that exists in multiple folders. Although that is something I never did with folders, I do it all the time with keyword tags and find it very useful. The only problem with Taglocity is that it is an add on to Outlook, which means that if I use the web interface, I don't have access to my keyword searching.

The interesting thing about using Outlook now for over two and a half years is that it is no better or worse that Notes email; just different. And that although the Exchange back end has been reliable, there are just as many calendar issues with Outlook as there were with Notes. It seems like the calendar is just a very difficult problem to solve.

Outlook 2007 Calendar Bug

As a long-time Notes user who now uses Outlook at work, I always keep an eye open for problems / differences etc. Here is one problem with Outlook 2007 where if you drag an HTML email to your calendar, you loose the formatting & images. See the before and after images.

The original email before dragging it to the calendar


The calendar entry created from the email

Security

I am amazed - it happens so often. A laptop gets stolen, complete with the personal information from thousands of people. Look at this article from the Chicago Tribune: "A Boeing Co. employee's laptop computer that contained Social Security numbers and other personal information for 161,000 current and former workers was stolen, the company said Friday. " And then they go on to say "had no evidence that any of the personnel information ... was accessed or misused." Wonderful. Because they don't know about it, it didn't happen!

But really - haven't these IT managers ever though of using Notes clients with local encryption turned on? That is a pretty watertight solution, and no casual thief is likely to have the tool to crack Notes security. If you use "in placed editing" in the Notes client, Notes will delete temp files, preserving your security (no comments on recovering deleted temp files).

What it really needs is a comprehensive look at the security of information traveling around on laptops, and a look at tools like Notes that transparently encrypt your data. However, what we have is a gaping hole with in organizational security. Remember, it's always you an me who pay the price. If an ID thief gets our data, we are the one who spend months sorting the problem out.