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Folders vs. Tags For Shared Email Accounts?
binarybum writes "I run a student organization with a 10-member 'board of directors.' We hardly ever all have time to attend meetings and a large part of how we interact with the student body is through email. We have a shared email account (accessible by the 10 of us on the board) right now that is typically accessed through an outlook web-access portal. We've been attempting to keep things organized in the account through a complex collection of folders that have been tacked on ad libum. It's turned into a complete mess. I have the onerous task of restructuring the folder system in hopes of achieving sustainable organization, but I'm wondering if I should just switch us over to a tagging system — perhaps Gmail. Has anyone used tags for a multi-user account successfully or does it end up being just as messy?"
The only way it's going to work well is if no one uses the group account directly, but rather all of the email it receives is forwarded to the individual accounts of the members. Then each member can organize the mail however he or she sees fit.
This sounds like an ideal application for a Google or Yahoo groups account. You would have a private group for the board. All of the e-mail would be available in a central location, with individual messages accessible by search, and each board member could forward each mail to their own personal account or not, as they see fit.