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Avoiding email overload

Editorial Type: Review     Date: 05-2014    Views: 5082   







The Construction industry can prepare for BIM and preempt email overload problems with Mail Manager from Oasys

That designers and architects are increasingly aware of the risks that email overload can present to their emerging BIM strategies has become clear to the customer-facing staff at Oasys Ltd, the people behind GSA suite and MassMotion pedestrian modelling, as well as a host of geotechnical software tools.

Equally clear is that these CAD users have been unwilling to impose another layer of IT change on their staff. Cue a growing interest in Oasys Mail Manager, an Outlook plug-in originally developed for use within Arup worldwide and now available commercially at licence rates that typically equate to less than an hour's charge-out rate for a designer or technician. Once deployed, Mail Manager immediately gets to work, saving multiple hours in time spent searching for lost email and attachments.

BIM champions, David Miller Architects is one of the most recent converts to Mail Manager, and has preempted the threat of email overload by installing the ingenious Outlook plug-in. Key to the decision to go ahead was the fact that Mail Manager is the perfect complement to the collaborative work processes that have underpinned the practice's creative and commercial success - and are indeed typical of the industry.

Based in Westminster, David Miller and his team have a heritage in the design and delivery of three dimensionally complex buildings. They combine 3D skills with new technology to enhance the design of everyday buildings and enable clients and stakeholders to experience how finished buildings will look from the outset.

Collaborative working has proved to be a key to unlocking ideas and enhancing the creativity of the team, and the practice is an enthusiastic adopter of BIM. It champions the Construction Industry Council's new London BIM Hub, works with the Government's BIM Task Group and, as part of the RIBA's Practice and Profession Committee, advises on BIM implementation throughout the construction industry.

Email has always been seen as an integral part of the BIM collaborative process, and was shared within the practice using drag and drop Outlook project folders. However, as the number of concurrent live projects grew, the time taken to file and retrieve emails came onto the radar as a potential future problem. At that time, a new member of the team who had used Oasys Mail Manager before and sorely missed it introduced the idea. Practice director Fiona Clark said: "It was a perfect fit, but seemed almost too good to be true. However, as it had been developed for Arup, a firm we know and trust, we had complete confidence in it."

Mail Manager automates email filing into system file folders and, because it learns user behaviour, filing emails and their attachments quickly becomes a prompted one-click operation. Emails are filed instantly in a place where they can be securely shared. "There is no time lag while people might get distracted by a phone call, meeting, or even wait until the end of the day," said Fiona. Filing errors are virtually eliminated, and will only occur if the user makes an error. However, even then, the amazing faceted search capabilities will enable team members to find messages in seconds.

"Good storage and retrieval is the platform on which automation and collaboration is based," said Fiona Clark. "We have complete confidence in our mail storage and our ability to retrieve it."

No vital information is 'hidden' in individual boxes and, once filed, emails can be searched by anyone authorised to access the folder, where they can look for messages and attachments no matter who sent them or who they were sent to. Filing of emails sent or received takes just a click of a mouse and searches take seconds - even when thousands of emails are stored and if only a string of words in the body of the message are known. The standard .msg file format ensures that the solution is future-proofed.

"With all email related to a specific case in a centralised folder, one that is easily backed up as part of a firm's normal procedures, email can really be trusted as the main means of communication. This helps give confidence to all staff that information is accessible to the right people should somebody not be available," said Rhys Lewis of Oasys Software.

"It is an inexpensive solution that is ideal for office and mobile users and, because we are committed to its continuing improvement, it is a sound long-term investment for any business," he added.

Originally developed for Arup engineers, Oasys Mail Manager is now used by thousands of firms, operating in varied sectors around the world. Mail Manager is available for download and as a 30 days free trial at: http://www.oasys-software.com/mailmanager

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