Guidelines for CES email account

This account receives academic channel communications and IT channel communications.  Because there are many users checking this account for different channels of communication, here are some guidelines to ensure that no email goes unnoticed.

Increasing signal-to-noise ratio

We want to reduce the amount of meaningless email we receive at ces@fas.harvard.edu.  This mailbox is not an appropriate place for receiving automated messages such as newsletters or calls for applications.  Users who wish to receive these types of communications should subscribe at their own email addresses.  All IT-related notifications such as analytics or password changes should be redirected to ces-it@fas.harvard.edu.

Checking email

Responding and archiving

• Check the account at least three times a week. Other people may be waiting for you to address something.
• Do not delete any emails unless they are junk. Space is no longer a concern, but data loss it.
• If you are IT staff, leave academic emails marked as unread.
• If you are academic staff, leave IT emails marked as unread.
• If it is unclear which channel an email belongs to, or if it belongs to both, forward it to Peter Stevens and/or Vassilis Coutifaris, then archive it.
• Reply to emails using your personal address. If there are other people who need to see the correspondence, CC them. Do not carry on long correspondences in the ces@fas.harvard.edu account. This will just add noise to the mailbox.
• After replying to an email, archive it.
• If an email does not require any further action, archive it.
• If an email is loitering in the inbox without explanation, forward it to either Peter Stevens or Vassilis Coutifaris, then archive it. It is better to be too chatty than to assume someone else is taking care of it.

Subscriptions and spam

• If an email is an unsolicited marketing email, unsubscribe and mark as spam.
• If an email looks as though it may be phishing, forward it to phishing@harvard.edu.
• If an email has an "unsubscribe" link, click it.
• If an email is too important to unsubscribe from (e.g. account security notices), change the subscription to go either to your own email address or ces-it@fas.harvard.edu.
• If you do not have access to change the subscription, forward it to Peter Stevens
• If you are unsure if an email is too important to unsubscribe from, forward it to Peter Stevens.
• If an automated email does not have an "unsubscribe" link, it is usually because it contains non-marketing information such as order confirmations or account changes.  Change the email address for that account to be sent elsewhere.
• For all automated emails that cannot be sent elsewhere, create a forwarding rule that sends the email somewhere else and then archives it. This does not apply to End User Digests from HUIT.