Mail Management Software
A mail management software is a mail server that can send messages from the employees of the company to clients outside the company. Likewise, it can also receive e-mails from clients and send them to the respective Inboxes of the employees. Thus, mail management software acts as a middleman between the company employees and the clients. The software does not just have this simple task to take care of: it has to do much more, and one needs to carefully consider which software suits one better.
When do I need a mail management software?
If you have at least three users in your organisation who cannot function effectively without frequent access to e-mail, you need a mail management software. Some other reasons for the need of a mail managementsoftware are:
You want to do away with the number of connections that you’re supporting at this time.
You’re keen on implementing a standard e-mail ID format across your organisation.
You’re not comfortable with the amount of time your people spend on the Internet to keep in touch with their e-mail.
You’re wondering whether people are using e-mail for personal purposes more than official.
You’re not sure whether your e-mail is being responded to on time.
There have been too many disruptions of your network due to virus infections; people outside are complaining of infected e-mail from your network.
Your administrator is troubleshooting e-mail related complaints all the time.
You feel your organisation is not making best use of e-mail.
Features To Look For
E-mail addressable folders: Each mail folder can be assigned a unique e-mail address. Users can cc or forward messages directly to the relevant mail folder.
Automatic profiling: Messages and attachments inherit the security and metadata settings from the matter folder in which they are being stored, virtually eliminating the need for manual entry of profile information.
Intelligent duplicate detection: Duplicate e-mails, if any, are detected automatically and deleted at the entry point. This eliminates redundancies and reduces storage requirements.
Comprehensive communications solution: This consists of features such as one e-mail account, unlimited e-mail IDs. Each employee can be provided his own unique e-mail ID. You can also provide standardised e-mail footers (disclaimers/ advertisements/contact details), auto e-mail routing, mail transfer scheduler, and account management.
Email monitoring: This reduces personal and unwanted e-mail traffic, and archives e-mails before the recipient downloads them to his computer.
Selective Internet access and comprehensive monitoring: This allows Internet access to be provided to selective users, and access to Web sites can be selectively blocked. Logging of Internet Web sites accessed with time stamps is also a useful feature.
Gateway level protection from Virus and Spam: An added feature of a good mail management solution is that it should be able to scan e-mails for viruses at the entry point. Spam filtering and control saves a lot of productive time of employees. The implementation of attachment control lets you specify the type and maximum size of attachments allowed. This saves the network from being clogged by unwanted traffic and also prevents users from sending personal e-mail attachments not related to work.
Offline e-mail archiving facility: The server generally connects to the Internet at fixed periods of time to reduce costs and for security. During the time it is disconnected from the Internet, mails sent by the users are accumulated on the server. When it connects to the Internet, all the mail is sent to the respective destinations. Also, all incoming mail is gathered and stored on the server. When the user logs in and looks for his mail, he receives it even when he is not connected to the Internet.
Intranet e-mail facility: Internal e-mails are distributed automatically within the network, even when Internet connectivity is down. This means more reliability, and also a reduction in Internet bandwidth usage.