A VC: Email Prioritization System

Email Prioritization System

Brad Feld has a good post on continuous partial attention. That sounds pretty much like what the Gotham Gal and my kids complain that I give them.

But in his post, Brad describes something I need (and might also address some of my continuous partial attention issues).

Brad calls it an "email prioritization system".

It's the next step for spam filters.

As Brad explains:

“email prioritization systems” (e.g. spam has priority=null, email from Amy or my mother has priority=immediate, email from my partners has priority=high) where the priorities are automatically tuned by my pci based on my behavior things become more interesting. Finally – add one more layer of abstraction – my pci knows when I am ready to received different priorities and presents them to me only when I’m ready (e.g. I always get interrupted by Amy or my mom, I sometimes get interrupted by my partners depending on the thing I’m working on, but it always comes at the top of the queue, etc.) – and you’re really getting into an interesting zone. Of course, delivering it one time on the appropriate device (computer, cell phone, television, carrier pigeon) in the right location is a key part of this.

I need this system immediately.

As this blog has grown I am getting ever more email. And its all good. And I try like hell to reply to all of it. In the process, I miss emails from my mom. It happened a couple weeks ago. I totally blew off my mom. Not cool.

So if I am totally blowing off your email, don't feel too bad. I am giving you the same priority I gave my mom.

I need one of these email prioritization systems badly. If you've got one, please let me know ASAP.

Comments

You might want to take a look at Eptica (eptica.com), a French start-up that specializes in "inbound email management" (with a small CRM coating).
Their products are more targeted towards managing huge volumes of email (such as those received on generic [email protected] adresses) adresses and making sure each email gets routed to the right person with the right priority.

Posted by: Keyvan N. | October 17, 2005 at 12:58 PM

Hi,
You might find interesting the article entitled "Considerate Computing" from the January 2005 issue of Scientific American. Deals with this topic exactly and it's new enough that it might suggest some actual products (although I can't remember for sure if it does.)

Posted by: Sean O'Hagan | October 17, 2005 at 01:15 PM

Hi:

There is a company called Iotum (www.iotum.com) based in Ottawa, Canada that is developing a system to prioritize calls that you get on your communication devices (cellular, landline, IM) based on its importance. Though, its a bit different from Emails, its still of the same concept and quite interesting.

Posted by: Vijay Anand | October 17, 2005 at 03:17 PM

You could achieve some of this using Smart Mailboxes in Apple's Mail.app in Tiger. (This obviously requires a Mac)

You'd create multiple mailboxes that match unread messages + X, where X is "Family", "Work", etc. You'd have to create "Family", "Work" and such as groups in the Address Book. Its not as intelligent as you want, but it would give you a way to break up your new message list into smaller groups that you care about.

Posted by: peter royal | October 17, 2005 at 04:00 PM

I'm curious whether you think ClearContext might fit the bill. They claim that you can "prioritize incoming email, assign categories to email conversations, and automate email filing with ClearContext Inbox Manager for Microsoft Outlook, the quick and easy way to take control of your Inbox."

Posted by: James | October 17, 2005 at 04:06 PM

Interesting software ideas, all. The low tech--and, for the foreseeable future, far less aggravating--answer is, of course, just to get a better secretary (with apologies to all of you early adopters!).

Posted by: Russ Pillar | October 17, 2005 at 04:36 PM

Fred,

This is what we do at ClearContext. We work especially well for individuals who often find themselves coming back from a conference, vacation, or a day of meetings to face an inbox filled with hundreds of emails. Right now we focus just on the Inbox, but are broadening our product offering to to extend beyond that, as well as address some of the more advanced functionality that Brad mentions.

Posted by: Deva Hazarika | October 17, 2005 at 04:49 PM

Gmail's filters could be used to set it up however you wanted.

Posted by: Dan | October 17, 2005 at 05:00 PM

I seem to remember you posting about this earlier this year. Scott Moody started a company about 5 years ago that was acquired that helped mine info and give context to email...forgetting what it was. And I just posted on interruptions and context here; email is a small part of it. I think email shouldn't have its own program. Email should be presented in a people centric, not email tech manner (ie, email as just one of many possible interactions). Man I'm tired--lame comment!

Posted by: Steve Fafel | October 17, 2005 at 05:17 PM

A low-priority email that has sat in my inbox for a month should evenutally become a high priority.

What I think we need is a sytem where each mail can be tagged with a "respond withing x days" field. People in your address book could be assigned these values automatically, so an email from Mom always get's a "respond within one week" while emails from a partner get a "respond within 2 hours". Ideally these reminders would be integrated with a calendar system.

Some day when I find a free moment I'll write a plugin for Thunderbird or Outlook to do this...

Posted by: Stan James | October 17, 2005 at 09:43 PM

To expand on the Gmail-filters suggestion:

One easy way to do this, albeit involving some cooperation from those concerned, is to use Gmail's "+" collapsing feature. [email protected] delivers to your Gmail inbox. You can then easily create filters and associate them to labels based on the To: header alone.

Even if you don't use the "+" collapsing feature, and if you know how to get fancy with Gmail's search syntax, you can probably catch your mom's Email and apply a Gmail label to it, making it easily accessible later.

I even use Gmail for informal TODOs. myname+todo and myname+notes work for me, for example. Now if I could only export that particular mail via RSS to others...

Posted by: Bosko | October 18, 2005 at 01:28 AM

Check out this entry of mine (personal blog) .

The idea is simple, as a part of the OMM(Outlook Mobile Manager) Microsoft has a priority engine built in, which gives people a rating based on various factors and habit learning(system), than it would be possible for people to track mails based on these ratings.

Posted by: Prashanth Rai | October 18, 2005 at 01:43 AM

I found both Brad's post and your post a bit puzzling. You can establish a rule in Outlook to accomplish this. Yes, its a bit cumbersome, and it certainly would be better if it could observe your behavior for some time, then start creating "auto-rules" or something of that sort. However, the basic functions you are looking for are quite simple to setup. (In fact, Stan - you can create a rule to change the flag on an email after a certain # of days - Then with a search folder, you'd have all those old emails pop up noticeably.)

Now, this may simply be something that's not available on Macs (which I suspect you use, but can't quite remember). In which case, the call for the feature seems quite necessary. But I use Outlook rules to sort priorities, set flags, assign categories (yes, they are a horrible attempt at real tagging - but they will work), and other functions.

I agree, its unyieldy at best, and a pain to maintain, but its there to be used.

Posted by: Craig | October 18, 2005 at 10:12 AM

Try Lotus Notes 6.5.x
The following features in it all allow you to manage your emails:
- Follow Up: This feature allows you to mark emails that need to be followed up. You establish the priority level, a quick note as to what you need to do, a deadline and alarm if you wish. It then gets put into your follow up list which you can display in a pane. Your calendar is also automatically updated with the entry (Calender can be sync'd with your phone/PDA;

- Colour coding: You can assign colours to specific people, that way when you get a mail from, say your Mom, it will be displayed with a selected colour behind it. Can make those emails stick out quite alot.

- Rules: This allows you to establish rules to manage your emails. For example, you can establish a rule to say move it to a special folder and change its importance to high.

I also use a 'database template' for my mail file groups emails by the sender (mail6collapse.nsf).
All new emails show up in red with a star next to them.

The calendar in Lotus notes also allows you to create 'To Do' lists, 'Reminders', etc with priorities and deadlines, alarms, etc that are also useful for time management. Again all this can be sync'd to your phone/PDA.

Posted by: David | October 18, 2005 at 10:46 AM

http://www.zimbra.com/

"...Self-Organizing Mailboxes
* Powerful, fast search (including messages and attachments)
* Saved searches across folders
* Conversation management across folders
* Tags for automatic and hand categorization of messages..."

There's a flash demo of some of the more useful features:
http://www.zimbra.com/flash_demo/flash_demo.html

The program is AJAX based and client-agnostic, with wireless device support coming in '06.

Benchmark, RedPoint and Accel are behind them.

Posted by: Robert | October 18, 2005 at 02:25 PM

Fred: I'll add my voice to the ClearContext voice here. Have just started using it and found it does just what it says on the tin. I am also a Getting Things Done fan and it works great with the GTD add-in too. Posted a couple of days about it if you want to hear more.

Posted by: Freddie Daniells | October 20, 2005 at 05:59 PM

I've studied up on clearcontext and it addresses the basic problem and has lots of good features, but why tie it to one application, this is such a big limitation, despite the number of users of outlook. I wish they had thought more freely about this problem rather tahn constraining it to this one insecure email client. There is a generic principal out there and I've thought of it I just can't share it yet.

Posted by: Richard | November 06, 2005 at 07:54 PM

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