Holy cow, it's been a month since my last post.  Funny how time flies when you're boning up for MCP exams, huh?  On that note, I've completed two MCPs, I'm almost ready for a third (making me an MCAD) and then I'll be two tests from MCSD.  I'm hoping to have my MCSD by the end of April, at which time I'll start working on my upgrade exams to become an MCPD in Enterprise Applications.  Good times!

So Scott Hanselman posted again on something near and dear to my heart, Outlook Inbox organization.  He's apparently a big advocate of the Getting Things Done method, making use of a concept called Zero Email Bounce.  I freely admit, I don't know much about Getting Things Done, never having read it, but it sounds too focused to be something I'd make work.  I revel in a certain degree of chaos.  As I commented on Scott's blog, I actually drew some inspriration from Gmail in my Outlook Inbox handling routine.

As each message comes in, I make a decision: Action item or not an action item. If it's an action item, it (and its ensuing conversation thread, since I sort my Inbox by conversation rather than date) stays in the Inbox until complete.

If it is not an action item, then I have another decision to make: Is the message signal or noise? If it's noise, and of no possible future value, it gets deleted. If it's signal, then it gets moved into an "Archive" folder in my Exchange message store. I wrote an Outlook macro and assigned it to a toolbar button so I can archive the message with one click (again, ala Gmail). As action items are completed, they are assumed to be non-action signal items, and are archived.

Our organization has a ridiculously tight 85 MB mailbox limit, so I've got my auto-archive settings for the "Archive" folder set at a relatively short two weeks. If there is a "signal" item that I need to stay in my Exchange message store (so it's easily available on both my laptop in offline mode as well as my desktop), I drag it to a "Do Not Archive" folder until it can be moved to "Archive." An example of this is travel itineraries.

To keep my auto-archive file from consuming too much space on my tiny 40 GB workstation hard drive, I have it set to auto-delete after a year. I figure that's enough time for most items to lose relevance, and a year's worth of messages only consumes about 1.5 GB.

To find items, I use Windows Desktop Search (MSN Toolbar and Desktop Search without the toolbar). I really prefer Google Desktop, but it had trouble with my short auto-archive window, often expecting an item to be in my inbox when it was, in fact, in the auto-archive PST. Windows Desktop seems to handle that better.