Video 2 Intro: Mastering Microsoft 365: Advanced Outlook Automation Copilot for Email Productivity

Hi everyone, Randy Dean here. Welcome to video number 2 of the Mastering Microsoft 365 series. Um, I hope you found a lot of good tips in video 1. Uh, that was really a basics video. I wanted to really lay down why email matters, why email training matters, and why if you put time and effort into this, it could create so much time, not just for you, but for your entire organization. After we got through that intro sort of discussing this, then what I did was a really deep dive on the process. You'll remember my Taming Email decision tree.. And one of the things that was critical about this was the fact that we talked about how to stop looking at your emails 3 to 7 times like most other email users. And the key point with that was how to, instead of marking them unread or flagging them, to handle the quick stuff the first time you see it. Remember, only handle it once. And then take everything else and prioritize it by converting them to task and calendar items. And we even showed you the ways that Outlook software, both classic and new and web, allow you to easily and quickly do those conversions to task, calendar, and contact items. And I made the argument, why are you marking them unread or flagging them when you can do something that's going to help your inbox stay much cleaner and also, uh, help your more important stuff really pop. And then what we did following that was we went into a deep dive on discussing how you set up your files and your folders, including the different options and strategies for file and folder setup so that you can build a file cabinet that works for for you, which is really critical if you want to, uh, try to keep that inbox organized, clean, and not be a big daily distraction. Um, you know, we had that whole discussion about how you don't want to leave them in there if they're done for now, because most people will keep looking at them even if they are done for now. We even did a pretty detailed discussion on what I think is a critical but often underutilized tool in Classic, New, and Web Outlook, the categories, which, as you'll remember, I said call them labels. It makes more sense. And the whole concept of being able to label your emails before filing your emails to give you more confidence when you need to search and find those emails. Including the fact that you can add multiple labels to a single email, which may even help you have a little bit easier to understand, slightly smaller file cabinet, but still one that works really well for you in terms of being able to put your stuff away and confidently find that stuff later, thus reducing the distraction that that you get from an inbox full of clutter. We did a sidebar also on how to handle email and other inputs when you're dealing with a crisis. You remember, when you're dealing with a crisis, full focus, put out the fire, stop the FUD. And we discussed sort of that process of how to deal with an input stream in the moment of a crisis situation. But then how to switch back to normal processing mode once that fire has been put out, once that flood has been stopped. We even talked a little bit about the crises du jour for all of you that fight multiple little fires and floods every day and how to move sort of back and forth between crisis mode and efficient processing mode with your inputs. We even added two addendums to the end of the video. One was sort of a deeper discussion for those of you that may be in a situation where you are literally and truly under email and input overload and overflow. And, you know, I sort of help define what I believe that means when you're in a situation where you've just got so many inputs coming in It's basically keeping you from being able to do the work they hired you to do. And how I would address a situation like that, including elevating the discussion and making clear that you handle the job design issue that's inherent in that situation. I also added in a second addendum, which is all about, you know, how to clean up a really messy inbox if that's something that you need. So like, if you've got hundreds or even thousands of emails and you're like, Okay, I want to follow this new process you've laid out here, but how do I clean up the mess? You've got that in that video too. So all of this was designed to help you really gain efficiency, organization, reduce inherent distraction simply by volume. Get your stuff out of the inbox once it's done for now. Keep the quick stuff moving. Prioritize the rest. And so now what I want to do is transition into video number 2. In this video, we're going to now take you to the next level by discussing some critical automations you can do in both classic and new Web Outlook that are especially useful for some of your repeating messages that you're sending out as well as repeating replies to messages. Uh, we want to really give you some capability to save a lot of time potentially there. And for some of you that are doing a lot of this, uh, sending very similar messages out to different groups and people, this is going to be a huge potential time saver. But I also want to look into the automations on how you can auto-label, how you can auto-file, how you can auto-delete messages. Messages, and even maybe stop having to see all of those unnecessary reply-alls. I'm going to give you a tip to maybe take at least some of that away. We're even going to share just a couple quick little Copilot tips. I know not everybody's using Copilot yet, and I'm going to save the majority of those tips for the specific Copilot video in the series. But I do want to quickly show you that Copilot can both help you with crafting messages. It can help train you to be a better and more professional writer of email messages, and it can help you summarize your messages. And we're going to show all of those pretty quickly, but you can get more detail on that in the Copilot video in the series. A big part of the automations discussion in this video will also be about how you can hopefully reduce overall email distraction. And this is critical because the latest statistic I saw was that the average professional email user is looking at their inbox— no jokes— 17 times a day. That's more than twice an hour. But about a quarter of you are looking at your inbox as much as 20 to 40 times per day, some even more. That's every couple minutes. And if you've got one of these— how many of you got one of these? Um, you're looking at those 50 to 150 times per day. Can you say squirrel? And, um, here's the thing, uh, I might even share a couple tips on how to reduce looking at these so many times, but we're going to really give you some tips on how you can identify your most important senders and messages so that those ones stand out, as well as hopefully set up some automations to get rid of some of the junk and spam coming in so that hopefully you can maybe look at your inbox a few less times per day, helping you stay more focused, yet still be able to respond to your most important people and items quickly. Uh, the real goal here is to hopefully help you keep your focus at work on your most important work stuff, and thus, uh, help you be able to be more efficient and maybe get home a little bit earlier each day. And then what we're going to do is we're going to finish with a discussion on how to both start and work your day so that you get your most important projects, priorities, items first and foremost. Deal with that batch of new stuff that comes in overnight, including email, but everything else in a more efficient manner at the start of the day, but also set it up so that your priorities are first and foremost top of mind throughout the day and allow you to get to your appointments and meetings on time and prepared and deal with those crises du jour and how you can just sort of switch modes throughout the day to maximize focus and productivity., and this will be a beautiful lead-in for video number 3, because I'm not going to go super detailed on that final discussion in this video, but it's going to be a launch pad for what we try to do in video number 3 in this series, which is the video on time, project, task, and people management for both classic and new and web Outlook users, uh, where we're going to go much deeper into how to better utilize and set up your Outlook with especially things like your calendar, your task list, your notes, so that you can get a lot more out of this software for at a higher level, more productive, more prioritized, bigger focus on bigger stuff. So I think it's time to dive in. Let's get into the core of video 2, the tips on how to really enhance the automations, reduce the distraction, work your day. All right. Hi everyone. Headphones are on. That means it's time to get into the technical meat of the program.