Inside BlackBerry » inbox

Own Your Inbox Part 3: Exploring Email Account Options, the Unsubscribe Sweep, and Custom Notifications

Luke Reimer — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 15:27:49 +0000

In this final post in the series I’m going to walk through a few more advanced tips for managing your mail and reducing headaches that come with a constant flow of messages. In “Own Your Inbox Part 1” I covered five ways that BlackBerry® device features help you get things done, which included a discussion on when to use email and when not to use it (hint: you’re using email too much). In “Own Your Inbox Part 2” I explored sorting and organizing email effectively. The tips included touched on using accurate subject lines for improving search, organizing mail into conversations, using follow-up flags and tasks, filing messages, the “two-minute rule”, and controlling the flow of email into your inbox.

In this final post in the series, I’m going to walk through a few more advanced tips for managing your mail and reducing headaches that come with a constant inflow of messages.

Exploring Email Account Options

Today let’s dig deeper by discussing a few more advanced tips, beginning with exploring the email account options on your device. You likely walked through the mail setup process when you first got ahold of your device, but let’s take a look at some of the more in-depth features that can make your communication even more of a breeze. On your BlackBerry® 7 or BlackBerry 6 smartphone, hit the “Setup” icon, or just type it into universal search to find it. You’ll see a screen like this:

Own Your Inbox Part 2: How to Organize and Sort Your Email Effectively

Luke Reimer — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 17:09:49 +0000

Most of us are using email the wrong way. And a lot of the time, we shouldn’t even be using email in the first place to get our message across. In my last blog post on owning your inbox, I walked through the emerging modes of communication that can be more appropriate than email and cause less stress, such as instant messaging, BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™), third-party apps, or even simply using the phone. Reducing email pile-up by using one of the many alternative methods of communication is a great step towards using technology effectively. The results are reduced stress, increased speed of communication and response, a more organized approach, and a lighter load on the mail servers.

This time, I’m going to focus on email itself. Let’s face it: Email is inescapable even if we do use other modes of communication. What’s important is using it effectively to handle what’s being thrown at you. Judging by a recent Twitter® poll from @BlackBerry4Biz, some of you deal with a lot of email in a day. Let’s look at ways that you can manage it more effectively using your BlackBerry® smartphone.

Top 3 BlackBerry Keyboard Shortcuts

Donny Halliwell — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 15:39:53 +0000

Regardless of who you are or where you live, the odds are good that you will find yourself pressed for time, grabbing your BlackBerry® device and trying to squeeze in some extra productivity. To BlackBerry users, productivity is the name of the game. While it would be great if we could slow down the pace of our lives, the reality is that we have to become more efficient instead. There are many simple shortcuts built into the BlackBerry® smartphone OS. Here are a few of my favorite shortcuts to help make your life a bit easier.

Let’s Rock n’ Scroll This!

Most of us have a ton of messages in our unified Inbox, and scrolling back to the top after reading through a hundred or so messages can be a huge investment (or waste) of time. If you need to scroll to the very top or very bottom of your Inbox, you simply tap the letter “t” for the top or the letter “b” for the bottom. This works in individual emails, as well, which comes in handy for those long email exchanges.

Mind your R’s and F’s

Responding to an email or need to forward an email to a friend? Typing the letter “r” for reply or “f” for forward on your QWERTY keyboard quickly produces the desired management of the email. Remember that to delete an email, use the DEL key!

Help! You Know I Need Somebody…

Holding down the ALT key plus the letter “h” brings up the Help screen in OS6 and older. Typing the word “help” from the home screen in OS 7 brings up the Help icon to launch the app. Singing Beatles songs, while enjoyable, unfortunately does not bring up the Help menu.

Bonus: Everyone needs a little space

Here’s a tip for those BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) addicts out there: To quickly jump between your Chats, Contacts and BBM Groups simply tap the “space” key. This will save you from having to scroll through all your open conversations, to access your countless BBM Contacts, you popular person, you.

There are a ton of other great keyboard shortcuts available to BlackBerry users and many that could help your fellow BlackBerry user, so don’t be shy — share your favorites in the comments below!

Own your inbox: Five ways BlackBerry features help you get things done

Luke Reimer — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 18:07:52 +0000

Use the right channels, the right tools, and leverage investments in mobility to communicate and collaborate effectively within your organization

We’re buried in email — it’s the simple truth. Many organizations and individuals default to email as the primary mode of communication, and it’s seen as the “work” channel. You might use text messages, instant messaging, and social media in your personal life, but “work email” is a familiar phrase and is used to describe how we get things done in the office. But technology has moved far beyond this, and what we should be doing is efficiently utilizing the appropriate modes of communication within our professional lives to reach the desired outcome with the lowest amount of effort, server load, and time. Utilizing your organization’s investment in mobility and collaboration technology can go a long way to solving this issue.

If I’m not watching my inbox like a hawk, I don’t feel like I’m working. If I leave my inbox unsupervised for even a short amount of time during the day, I feel like I’m neglecting my responsibilities. The other day I heard it referred to as “watching your inbox closer than you watch your kids”, and it hit home. The amount of time that we waste (yes, waste) checking, sending, and receiving email is astronomical. This doesn’t just strain your personal efficiency; it can also have implications on your company’s mail servers, particularly if you’re a heavy user of large attachments such as presentations.

Organizing your inbox’s main Messages list

BlackBerry — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 15:54:19 +0000

A little while ago, Ty talked about easy email setup tips for your BlackBerry® smartphone. Today, we’re going to go over some of the different options you have when organizing your main messages list on your BlackBerry smartphone.

If you have multiple email accounts on your BlackBerry smartphone, you have likely noticed two things:

Each email address account on your BlackBerry smartphone has a separate icon.
Emails from all your accounts also appear within the main messages list. If you are on a BlackBerry® Enterprise Server, these messages will also appear within this list, as will SMS/MMS texts and other notifications. This enables you to have all notifications accessible from one central messages list.

However, with BlackBerry® Device Software 5.0 or above, you have some options to help you customize what appears within the main message list. If you want to customize what is accessible from the main messages list, you can follow these simple steps:

Click any of your email icons.
Click the Full Menu (BlackBerry emblem) button.
Scroll down the menu and select Options.
Scroll to and click Inbox Settings.
Uncheck any accounts that you do not want to show in your main messages icon.

Note: If you uncheck everything, the only types of messages that will still show up in the main Messages icon are PIN messages and notifications from apps like BlackBerry® Messenger, Facebook®, Twitter®, or any other applications with an option to integrate with the main Messages list (sometimes referred to as Inbox integration).

Users with BlackBerry Device Software 5.0 or above also have a separate email icon specifically for accessing messages from an email account associated with a BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

If you don’t have BlackBerry Device Software 5.0 you can easily check for available updates for your device at www.blackberry.com/go/update

Let us know if you have other suggestions or questions on how to organize your messages!