During our training sessions we mention, and I often reiterate or hear repeated to me, the comment "there are so many ways to do the same thing in your software". It is true. The reason why was just reinforced yet again when I was working with other software -- that software was designed based on the way people work, or the way most people work, or the way the designers thought most people worked, but woe be you if you yourself don't work that same way.
The specific example was finding email from a particular Contact in your CRM + Email system.
In MRSware, at least 3 ways include:
- Pull up the Contact's card and look at their Activity list, which shows all the touch points you had with the contact, including their emails.
- Use the Search menu, type in the contact's name or email address and find all the related emails.
- Click on a folder and use one of the Search or Filter options in the list to find that contact.
The key here is that all but that last method will search the entire system, no matter where you might have hidden that email or no matter how many sub-folders-down it is buried.
The offending app, but just one of a handful that I have used that do this, was Windows 10 Mail. I like what they are doing, and it's free, so it gets a spot on my Windows Taskbar and setup to download my emails via IMAP from the MRSware servers (and my personal accounts too). They too have 3 ways to find those emails for a Contact:
- Open up the Contacts App, Search for your contact and look at their activity list for emails.
- Use the Search bar at the top of the page to look for emails by Name or Email Address.
- When clicked on an email from a specific person, you can then click on that contact's image-button to get a list of related emails.
Their options in Windows 10 Mail are strikingly similar to our own, but there is a catch. Their email client doesn't automatically download all your emails from all your folders... So, the usage the designers might have designed to see is one promoted by email clients like GMail, where the design encourages the user to keep all their emails in the Inbox and not use sub-folders.
If you work by that pattern, then you are all set and happy. However, if you like to use folders, and certainly lots and lots of people do, then your Search is out-of-luck! There is a work-around, but those who use lots of folders aren't going to like it -- to include sub-folders in your search results, click on each sub-folder of interest to download the emails for that folder. Oh, how the many-sub-folder organizers are forgotten!
The take home? It's great to have options. It's better if (crucial that?) those options line up with the way you work. If you didn't have multiple ways to do the same thing, chances are you wouldn't have any way to do that thing that met your need.
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