Copies of letters or copies of letters. Useful phrases for business correspondence. Stupid email address
I recently got this working, so although I would share:
Sending all outgoing mail to Sent folders with postfix and cyrus imap.
Do postfix send copies of copies of all outgoing emails to a special "sent" email account. Use a sieve on this special account to redirect all emails to the Sent folder associated with the account.
Create an email user account for sent
The easiest way to do this is to create a new unix account for senders, setting the shell to /bin/false so that no one can log into:
Host$ sudo useradd sent host$ sudo chsh -s /bin/false sent
Configure imap for sent user
Using cyradm, we create a new mailbox (i.e. user) and let that user add access to all of our Sent Items imap folders:
Host$ $ cyradm -user cyrus localhost Password:
Create a sieve script for the submitted account
This script redirects all incoming email to the sent account, to the Sent folder in the senders inbox.
My script is called sent.sieve and looks something like this:
# Sieve script for sent. If outgoing email is bcc"ed to this account, # this sieve script will redirect it to the sender Sent folder require ["fileinto"]; if address:is:localpart "From" "userx" ( fileinto "user.userx.Sent "; ) elsif address:is:localpart "From" "usery" ( fileinto "user.usery.Sent"; ) elsif address:is:localpart "From" "userz" ( fileinto "user.userz.Sent"; )
You will need to enter an entry for each of your users (userx, usery, userz in the example above). I couldn't find a better way to do this. Suggestions are welcome [email protected]
Set up the sieve script like this:
Host$ sievshell localhost -user=sent -a=cyrus Password:
Configure bcc mapping for postfix
In the postfix directory (/etc/postfix on debian) create a file called bcc_map that looks like this:
# copy all locally sent mail to the sent account @yourdomain.com [email protected]
Compile this into a postfix hash file using:
Host$ sudo postmap bcc_map
Add the following configuration to the postfix main.cf configuration file:
Sender_bcc_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/bcc_map
And make postfix reload its configuration:
host $sudo/etc/init.d/postfix reload
Testing and Debugging
Send the email and check that it is copied to the Sent folder.
In case of problems you should check the cyrus and postfix logs (all logged to /var/log/syslog on my debian host). Typos and incorrect access permissions usually result in some hints being sent to logs.
What is email? In the modern business world this is:
- Your face. It is with the help of email that you can create a positive image in the eyes of the counterparty or spoil the first impression.
- Your working tool. A lot of communication with the outside world takes place via email. Therefore, if you are proficient in this instrument, you can make your life a lot easier.
- A powerful distraction. The outside world is trying to get at you, distract you and lead you astray through email.
From this perspective, let’s look at working with email. Let's start with something simple.
Formatting a letter
I use the Mozilla Thunderbird email client, so I will use it as an example. Let's create a new letter and go from top to bottom through the list of fields.
To whom. Copy. Hidden copy
Some may not know, but "To" in Mozilla can be changed to "Cc" or "Bcc".
- To whom: we write the main recipient or several recipients separated by a semicolon.
- Copy: we write to someone who should read the letter, but from whom we do not expect a reaction.
- Hidden copy: we are writing to someone who should read the letter, but should remain unknown to the other recipients of the letter. It is especially appropriate to use for mass mailing of business letters, such as notifications.
Wrong in mass mailings, indicate recipients using the “Copy” or “To” fields. Several times a year I receive letters that list 50–90 recipients in the “Cc” field. There is a violation of privacy. Not all of your recipients need to know who else you are working with on a similar topic. It’s good if these are people who know each other. What if there are competing companies on the list that don’t know about each other? At a minimum, you need to be prepared for unnecessary explanations, and at maximum, to terminate cooperation with one of them. Do not do it this way.
Letter subject
Professional mailing services often write (sometimes sensibly) about the importance of the email subject line on their corporate blogs. But most often we are talking about sales letters, where the subject of the letter solves the problem “the email should be opened.”
We are discussing daily business correspondence. Here the theme solves the problem “the letter and its author should be easily identified and then found.” Moreover, your diligence will return to you in the form of karma of numerous response letters, only with prefixes Re: or Fwd, among which you will have to look for the desired letter on the topic.
Twenty letters is the volume of one-day correspondence for a middle manager. I’m not talking about entrepreneurs and business owners at all; their number of letters sometimes goes off scale at 200 or more per day. Therefore once again: do not send emails with an empty subject.
So, how to formulate the subject line of an email correctly?
Mistake #1 : Only the company name in the subject. For example, “Sky” and that’s it. Firstly, you are probably not the only one from your company communicating with this counterparty. Secondly, such a topic does not bring any meaning, because the name of your company is already visible from the address. Thirdly, guess what your own mailbox will look like with this approach to correspondence? Something like this.
Is it convenient to search on such topics?
Mistake #2 : flashy, selling headline. It's great if you know how to write such headlines. But is it appropriate to use these skills in business correspondence? Remember the purpose of a business email subject line: not to sell, but to provide identification and search.
Text of the letter
There are many writing guides for different occasions. For example, Maxim Ilyakhov, Alexander Amzin and other masters of words have a lot of useful information. I advise you to read their articles, at least to improve general literacy and improve the overall style of written speech.
In the process of writing a letter, we must make several decisions sequentially.
A matter of politeness . At the beginning of the letter, you can blur into pleasantries or even tenderness in the spirit of “My dear Rodya, it’s been more than two months since I talked to you in writing, from which I myself suffered and even didn’t sleep some nights, thinking.” Very polite and very costly, both in terms of time to write such an introduction, and in terms of the interlocutor’s time to read it. Correspondence is business, remember? Not an essay in the epistolary genre for a competition or a letter to Raskolnikov’s mother, but business correspondence.
We respect our time and the recipient's!
It only makes sense to introduce yourself and recall the circumstances of your acquaintance in the first letter sent after a fleeting meeting at an exhibition. If this is a continuation of cooperation or ongoing correspondence, in the first letter of the day we write: “Hello, Ivan”, in the second and subsequent ones: “Ivan, ...”.
Appeal . I have always been concerned about the question of who to address in a letter if there are several recipients. Recently I wrote a letter addressed to three girls named Anna. Without any doubt, I wrote “Hello, Anna” and didn’t worry. But such luck is not always the case.
What if there are three or even seven recipients and they do not have the same name? You can list them by name: “Good afternoon, Rodion, Pulcheria, Avdotya and Pyotr Petrovich.” But it's long and takes time. You can write: “Hello, colleagues!”
For myself, I use the rule of addressing by name the person in the “To” field. And don’t contact those in the copy at all. This rule also allows you to more accurately determine (one!) the addressee of the letter and the purpose of this letter.
Citation . Often correspondence is a chain of letters with questions and answers - in a word, a dialogue. It is considered good practice not to delete the correspondence history and write your response at the top of the quoted text, so that when you return to this correspondence a week later, you can easily read the dialogue from top to bottom, descending by date.
For some reason, the default setting in Mozilla is “Place cursor after quoted text.” I recommend changing it in the “Tools” → “Account Options” → “Composing and Addressing” menu. It must be so.
Purpose of the letter . There are two types of business letters:
- when we simply inform the interlocutor (for example, a report on the work done for the month);
- and when we want something from the interlocutor. For example, so that he approves the attached invoice for payment.
As a rule, there are many times more encouraging letters than reporting letters. If we want to achieve something from the interlocutor, it is very important to say this in a letter in plain text. The call to action should be accompanied by a name and be the last sentence in the letter.
Wrong : “Porfiry Petrovich, I know who hacked the old woman to death.”
Right : “Porfiry Petrovich, it was I who hacked the old woman to death, please take measures to arrest me, I’m tired of suffering!”
Why should the correspondent think for you what to do with this letter? After all, he may make the wrong decision.
Signature in the text . She must be. Moreover, all email clients allow you to configure automatic signature substitution, for example the classic “Sincerely, …”. In Mozilla, this is done in the “Tools” → “Account Options” menu.
Whether or not to write contacts in the signature is a personal matter for everyone. But if you are in any way connected with sales, be sure to write. Even if the deal does not take place as a result of communication, in the future you will be easily found using the contacts from the signature.
Finally, one more feature of the letter body for those interlocutors who don’t like (can’t, don’t want, don’t have time) to answer your letters. Please indicate the default in the body of the letter. For example, “Porfiry Petrovich, if you don’t come to arrest me before 12:00 Friday, then I consider myself amnestied.” Of course, the deadline must be real (you shouldn’t send the text from the example on Friday at 11:50). The recipient must be physically able to read and act on your letter. Such “silence” relieves you of responsibility for the interlocutor’s failure to respond. As always, you need to approach the use of this feature wisely. If a person responds to your letters on time and regularly, such an ultimatum may, if not offend him, then stress him out a little or lead to a decision not to answer the letter right now, but to force you to wait until Friday.
Attachments
Letters often come with attachments: resumes, commercial proposals, estimates, schedules, scans of documents - a very convenient tool and at the same time a source of popular errors.
Error : huge investment size. I often receive emails with attachments up to 20 MB in size. As a rule, these are scans of some documents in TIFF format, with a resolution of 600dpi. The correspondent's email program will almost certainly freeze for several minutes in a futile attempt to load a preview of the attachment. And God forbid the recipient tries to read this letter on a smartphone...
Personally, I immediately delete such letters. Don't want your email to end up in the trash before it's read? Check the size of the investment. It is recommended that it be no more than 3 MB.
What to do if it exceeds?
- Try reconfiguring your scanner to a different format and resolution. For example, PDF and 300dpi produce quite readable scans.
- Think about programs such as WinRar or 7zip archiver. Some files compress perfectly.
- What to do if the attachment is huge and you can’t compress it? For example, an almost empty accounting database weighs 900 MB. Cloud information storages will come to the rescue: Dropbox, Google Drive and the like. Some services, such as Mail.ru, automatically convert huge attachments into links to cloud storage. But I prefer to manage my information stored in the cloud myself, so I don’t welcome automation from Mail.ru.
And one more not entirely obvious recommendation about investments - their Name . It must be understandable and acceptable to the recipient. Once we in the company were preparing a commercial proposal in the name of... let it be Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. I received a letter from the manager with a draft CP for approval, and the attachment included a file named “ForFedi.docx”. The manager who sent me this had a dialogue that went something like this:
Dear manager, are you personally ready to approach this respected man and call him Fedya to his face?
Somehow, no, he’s a respected man, everyone calls him by his first name and patronymic.
Why did you name the attachment “For Fedi”? If I send it to him right now, do you think he will buy axes from us using this CP?
I was going to rename it later...
Why prepare a time bomb - the refusal of a potential client - or create extra work for yourself by renaming the file? Why not immediately name the attachment correctly: “For Fyodor Mikhailovich.docx” or even better - “KP_Sky_Axes.docx”.
So, we have more or less sorted out email as a “person”. Let's move on to looking at email as a tool for effective work and talk about its distraction component.
Working with letters
Email is a powerful distraction. As with any distraction, email needs to be dealt with by tightening rules and introducing work schedules.
At a minimum, you need to turn off ALL notifications about mail arrivals. If the email client is configured by default, you will be notified with a sound signal, an icon next to the clock will blink, and a preview of the letter will be shown. In a word, they will do everything to first tear you away from painstaking work, and then plunge you into the abyss of unread letters and unviewed mailings - minus an hour or two from your life.
Some people have powerful willpower that allows them not to be distracted by notifications, but ordinary people are better off not tempting fate and turning them off. In Mozilla Thunderbird, this is done through the menu "Tools" → "Settings" → "General" → "When new messages appear."
If there are no notifications, how can you understand that a letter has arrived?
Very simple. You yourself, consciously, set aside time to sort through your mail, open your email client and see all the unread messages. This can be done twice a day, for example, at lunch and in the evening, or during forced downtime, for example, in traffic jams.
People often ask, what about response times and urgent letters? I answer: you do not have urgent letters in your mail. Unless you work in the customer support department (this department has its own rules for working with mail).
If there are urgent letters, the sender will notify you about this through other channels - telephone, SMS, Skype. Then you will consciously go into your email client and process urgent mail. All time management gurus (for example, Gleb Arkhangelsky with his “Time Drive”) declare a standard response to email within 24 hours. This is a normal rule of good manners - do not expect instant replies via email from your interlocutor. If there is an urgent letter, notify about it through faster communication channels.
So, we turned off notifications and now turn on the email client according to our schedule.
What to do when we go to the mail and engage in an activity called “sorting out email”? Where is the beginning and end of this work?
I've heard a lot about the zero inbox system, but, unfortunately, I haven't met a single person using it. I had to reinvent my wheel. There are articles on this topic on Lifehacker. For example, " ". Below I will talk about the zero inbox system in my interpretation. I would be grateful if GTD gurus would comment and add or improve the described system.
It is important to understand and accept that email is not a task scheduler or archive for your activities. Therefore, the Inbox folder should always be empty. Once you start sorting through your inbox, don't stop or be distracted by anything until you've emptied this folder.
What to do with emails in your inbox? You need to go through each letter sequentially and delete it. Yes, just highlight and press Delete on your keyboard. If you can’t bring yourself to delete the letter, you’ll have to decide what to do with it.
- Can you answer it in three minutes? Do I need to answer it? Yes, it is necessary, and the answer will take no more than three minutes, then answer immediately.
- You must answer, but preparing an answer will take more than three minutes. If you use a task scheduler that allows you to convert an email into a task, turn the email into a task and forget about it for a while. For example, I use the absolutely wonderful service Doit.im. It allows you to generate a personal email address: you forward the letter to it, and it turns into a task. But if you don’t have a task scheduler, move the letter to the “0_Run” subfolder.
- After quickly replying to a letter, turning it into a task, or simply reading it, you need to decide what to do with this message next: delete it or send it to one of the folders for long-term storage.
Here are the long-term storage folders I have.
- 0_Execute. I don’t have such a folder, but if you don’t have a planner, I repeat, you can put letters that require detailed work here. This folder also needs to be cleaned regularly, but with a thoughtful approach at a time specially allocated for this.
- 1_Ref. Here I put letters with background information: welcome letters with logins from various web services, tickets for upcoming flights, and so on.
- 2_Projects. An archive of correspondence on partners and projects with which there are current relationships is stored here. Naturally, a separate folder has been created for each project or partner. In the partner’s folder I put letters not only from his employees, but also letters from Neb employees related to this partner. Very convenient: if necessary, all correspondence on the project is at hand in a couple of clicks.
- 3_Museum. This is where I put those letters that it would be a pity to delete, and the benefit of them is not obvious. Also, folders with closed projects from “2_Projects” migrate here. In short, the “Museum” stores the first candidates for removal.
- 4_Documents. Here are letters with electronic samples of documents that may be useful in the future for accounting, for example, reconciliation reports from clients, tickets for trips taken. The folder has many similarities with the “2_Projects” and “1_Reference” folders, only accounting information is stored in it, and management information is stored in the “2_Projects” folder. In “4_Documents” there is dead information, and in “2_Projects” there is live information.
- 5_Knowledge. Here I only put really useful newsletters that I want to return to after a while for inspiration or to find solutions.
There are other email client settings that are important for the operation of this system. First, by default in Thunderbird there is a “Mark messages as read” checkbox. I prefer to do this consciously, so down with the flag! To do this, go to the menu “Tools” → “Settings” → “Advanced” → “Reading and Display”.
Secondly, we use filters . Previously, I actively used filters that automatically forwarded letters to the appropriate folders based on the sender's address. For example, letters from a lawyer were moved to the “Lawyer” folder. I abandoned this approach for several reasons. First: letters from a lawyer in 99% of cases relate to some project or partner, which means they must be moved to the folder of this partner or project. Second: I decided to add awareness. You yourself must decide where a specific letter should be stored, and it is more convenient to look for unprocessed messages in only one place - in the inbox. Now I use filters only for organizing automatic regular letters from various systems into folders, that is, letters that do not require me to make decisions. Filters in Mozilla Thunderbird are configured in the menu “Tools” → “Message Filters”.
So, with the right approach, email should take from 10 to 60 minutes a day, depending on the volume of correspondence.
Yes, and one more thing. Have you already turned off notifications about the arrival of new letters? ;)
In Microsoft Outlook, you can specify that for all messages you send, an automatic Bcc (Bcc) will be sent to other distribution lists or users.
One scenario in which this rule is useful is when all group members reply to incoming email messages, such as Help Center. When one group member replies to a message, other group members automatically receive a copy of the reply, keeping all outgoing messages up to date.
client rules
Create a rule
Now, every time you send a message, be it a new message, forward a message or reply, people or groups that are specified in the rule will be automatically added as copy recipients. The names of people or groups do not appear in the Cc line of the compose message, but those names will appear to all recipients of the message.
Disable a rule
In the Mail view, on the tab home click the button rules > Manage Rules and Alerts.
On the tab in the section Rule
Click the button OK.
Rules and Alerts.
Advice: For more information about how to quickly disable this rule for individual messages, see the next section ("").
Use a category to disable automatic CC for individual messages
If you want the flexibility to turn off automatic new copy rules based on a single message without having to navigate through the dialog box rules and alerts, you can use the categories feature in Outlook, along with a rule.
Advice:
First, you need to create a rule to automatically send blind carbon copy (CC) for all email messages you send.
This specific rule is called client rules. Client rules run only on the computer on which it is created and run only if Outlook is running. If you were to send an email using an email account on another computer, the rule would not run from that computer so that it would be generated on that computer. This same rule must be created on each computer that plans to use it.
Create a rule
Now every time you send a message, be it a new message, forward a message or reply, people or distribution lists specified in the rule will be automatically added as copy recipients. The names of people or distribution lists do not appear in the Cc line of the compose message, but those names will appear to everyone who receives the message.
Disable a rule
To prevent a copy from being sent automatically, you must first disable the rule.
In Mail in the menu Service click the button Rules and Alerts.
On the tab Email Rules In chapter Rule uncheck the box corresponding to the rule you created.
Click the button OK.
You can now send a message without automatically sending a copy to other people or mailing lists. The rule will be inactive until it is re-enabled in the dialog box Rules and Alerts.
Advice:
Use a category to disable automatic CC for individual messages
If you want to disable the new automatic Send CC rule for individual messages without calling the dialog box Rules and Alerts, you can set the rule to a category that is available in Office Outlook 2007.
Modify the rule you created earlier so that when you add the specified category to a message, the rule does not automatically send a copy.
Whenever you want to disable the auto-cc rule for a message, apply a category to it.
Advice: You can use a keyboard shortcut if you specified it when creating the category.
When you send a message, the auto-copy rule will not apply.
Most email clients, including Gmail, Yahoo, Mail.ru, Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, provide the ability to send one email to a large number of recipients. Usually you can do this using the function Copy(in English the abbreviation used to denote it is SS), or Hidden copy (CCB). When sending a message to Copies Recipients can see the email addresses of other people who also received the email. In the second case, the identity of additional recipients is hidden.
Adding a recipient's address
To specify the recipient(s) of the email, enter their email address in the field To whom (That):Some email clients allow you to simply enter your username into a field, which is then automatically filled in by the program.
If you use this field to send email to multiple people, each of them will be able to see the full list of other recipients.
How to create a copy of an email
Field CC or Copy used to exchange electronic messages in a more indirect way than the field To whom. If you are not directly addressing the person in your email, but would like that person to follow the conversation in the email thread or simply be aware of the topic, the field Copy would be a great option. The addressee, who is in Copies letters, receives an unread letter in his mailbox, just like the one who was placed in the box To whom; the only difference is who you address the letter to first in the body of your email. In the professional world, mailing to Copies is used very widely and serves to keep colleagues informed about various events and topics.You can list email recipients by simply entering a list of addresses in the field Copy, which is usually located immediately below the field To whom. Everyone in this chain of recipients will be able to see the names and email addresses of all other recipients:
How to BCC an Email
Every email client (Gmail, Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, Yahoo, etc.) allows the sender of an email to reach a large number of people without exposing their information to other users in the email chain. This function is called BCC or Hidden copy. You can hide recipients by entering their addresses in the field Hidden copy instead of using fields To whom And Copy:You can use this feature for both individual and group emails. This is especially useful if you want to keep your contacts private, protect them from spam and unwanted emails, or simply if you don't want your recipients to know who received the same message.
Field Hidden copy not always available by default for all email clients. For example, in Outlook You will need to go to Options to access settings; V Thunderbird you will need to select this function from the drop-down menu; V Gmail need to press a button Copy And Hidden copy; V Windows Live Mail You will need to press the keys simultaneously Alt + B.
Image: © Ruslan Nesterenko - 123RF.com
Question: Who is considered a wicked person (fasik) from the point of view of Islam?
Answer: A fasik (wicked person) is one who acts contrary to the commands of Allah Almighty, for whom committing sins and everything bad is a habit.
In Sharia terminology, the term “fasik” means leaving obedience to Allah and showing disobedience to Him.
In a broader sense, a fasiq is one who commits major sins or persists in minor ones, as well as one who neglects all or part of religious injunctions (Fakhruddin ar-Razi, Tafsirul-Kabir, II, 91; Raghib al-Isfahani, al-Mufredat, 572). Fisk can be divided into three categories:
1. Rarely committing sins, considering them disgusting.
2. Persistently committing the same sin.
3. Committing sins, considering them permissible. In this case, the person no longer has any connection with faith and religion.
In the Qur'an, the term fisk is mainly used to mean "kufr" (unbelief). However, in some verses the term fisk is mentioned in its absolute meaning (meaning wickedness). For example: fisk performed during the Hajj (al-Baqarah 2/197), or eating the meat of animals over which the name of Allah has not been pronounced (al-Anam 6/121), or fiscal defamation of a Muslim (an-Nur 24/4).
In all other verses the term fisk is used to mean disbelief:
(al-Baqarah 2/99).
“Let the people of the Injil (Gospel) judge according to what Allah has revealed in it. Those who do not make decisions in accordance with what Allah has revealed are wicked."(al-Maida 5/47).
“Thus the Word of your Lord has been confirmed that the wicked (fasiks) will not believe.”(Yunus 10/33).
“If they had believed in Allah, the Prophet and what was revealed to him, they would not have taken them as helpers and friends. But many of them are wicked."(al-Maida 5/81).
According to the Mu'tazilites, a fasik is neither a believer nor an unbeliever, but something in between. This view of theirs is at the same time one of the five fundamental principles of belief and is called “Manzilyu beynal-Manzilyatein.” In their opinion, if a fasik repents, he will return to faith, and if he dies without repentance, he will end up in Hell forever. According to the Kharijites, who believed that actions are one of the foundations of faith, any of the three above-mentioned manifestations of fisq is kufr (unbelief), and the fisq will go to Hell forever.
Fisk is a very dangerous position and every person should try to avoid it. All sins, both great and small, must be avoided, and persistence in committing small sins must also be avoided. Persistence in committing minor sins is one of the degrees of fiscus, as mentioned above.
It is necessary to pay attention to one very important point: no one can call another person a fasik. It is reported that on this occasion the Messenger of Allah (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) said: “No one has the right to call another person a fasik or a kaafir. If someone calls another person a fasik or a kaafir, and he is not one, then these words will return to the one who uttered them, and he himself will become a fasik or a kaafir.”(Mukhtasar Tajridus-Sarikh, XII, 137). At the same time, this hadith establishes a very important moral principle. Revealing a person's shortcomings, and especially condemning a person by attributing fiscus or unbelief to him, is immoral, and if these qualities are not actually inherent in that person, then they return to the one who said them.
