Category Archives: Blog

The Biggest Pitfall of Slack and how to Overcome it

29 February,2016
T

If you haven’t been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard about Slack, the communication tool that is taking companies by storm. At its heart Slack is a super-slick chat tool. In geek terms it is great for synchronous communication or communication where the various users are willing and able to communicate simultaneously. In turns out that synchronous communication is superior to asynchronous communication (think email) for many types of communication. The rapidity with ideas can be exchanged coupled with the low overhead of sending a message is the primary reason for this. A key point though is the notion that users must be ‘willing and able‘ to communicate synchronously. Why may they not be willing or able?

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December 2015 Product Updates

16 December,2015
Choose Image

At TMail21 we are a team of productivity geeks, we eat our own dogfood and iterate on the product based on internal as well as external feedback. In the last few months we have been busy improving the usability of the product as well as fixing bugs.  A few of the major product updates in  latest release are :

Profile Images

Users can choose their profile image by clicking the profile icon and uploading an image.

From the profile page users can choose the privacy settings to show the images to anyone or  to my organization users only or no one.

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Rethinking BPM based on Lean Principles

5 December,2015

[Click here for the Lean BPM Manifesto.]

In 2001, software development was in a mini-crisis. Software projects were being specified in ever-more elaborate terms. Methods like the Rational Unified Process and Waterfall project planning were being utilized. And yet software projects were failing at increasing rates or being delivered late or being delivered with the wrong requirements. That year, a group of software developers came out with the Agile Manifesto http://www.agilemanifesto.org/. This manifesto based on Agile and Lean principles created a revolution in software development leading to much improved outcomes. Today it is not uncommon for software to be released to production on a daily or weekly basis in small valuable increments with rapid feedback and iteration. In the past quarterly releases to production would have been considered good.

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Zero-code BPM is not a Myth

18 November,2015
Zero-code BPM

Zero-Code BPM

A debate has been raging in the BPM community regarding Zero-Code BPM. The question is whether business processes can be run without coding. The debate has been not about desirability (everyone agrees it is desirable) but rather about feasibility.

One of the proponents of the view that Zero Code BPM is possible is Keith Swenson. In his post Zero-Code BPM Systems he makes several points. One point is that code comes in many forms. In particular visual drag and drop is code because it requires code-like thinking. A second is that a no-code BPM system will not “look” like a BPM system. This is because BPM systems as currently conceptualized are about detailed control rather than about individuals self-organizing to perform work.

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How Businesses are Missing Out on One of the Most Powerful Collaboration Techniques

13 October,2015

The primary way that businesses collaborate on processes (other than specialized applications) is via a mix of EMail/Chat + document-oriented-collaboration . An example of a modern document-oriented collaboration system is Google Docs. But do businesses realize that there is a better way? It turns out there is a much more powerful collaboration technique available and it has been sitting right underneath our noses all this time.

It is a technique used by software developers on a daily basis and goes by the techie name of Source Code Management .

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6 Steps to Rocking TMail!

7 October,2015
Create TMail Snapshot

Earlier this week, we launched our Private Beta, and have been excited at the response. Thanks again for sticking around with us in our quest to maximize enterprise productivity. We know you’re probably not up to speed on the entirety of TMail just yet, so we’ve created a list of jumping off points to get you going. As always, if any questions or concerns come to mind, don’t hesitate to contact our support team!

1. Create Your First TMail!

To create your first TMail, click the + New TMail button in the top right hand corner of the dashboard. From Here, you can build out your very first TMail in the same intuitive way you create a new email. Also located in this area is the inbox refresh button, to update your sent and received mail.

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Hyper-productivity with Lightweight EMail Processes

3 October,2015

EMail is the most widely used tool for notifications and discussions. But it is less well appreciated that EMail is also the most widely utilized (lightweight) business process management (BPM) tool in use. Most users may not even recognize that they are using email as a business process tool.

Here are some example lightweight business processes in a company

  • Collaborate on a design (Engineering)
  • Collaborate on a Sales Cycle (Sales, Marketing and Legal)
  • Collaborate on a Blog Post (Marketing)
  • Collaborate on a Customer Issue (Support)
  • Collaborate on an Issue (General)
  • Collaborate on an Invoice (Accounting)
  • Collaborate on a Contract (Buyer Legal and Seller Legal)
  • Run a Sales and Operations Planning Process (All)

etc.

Unfortunately using EMail to collaborate on lightweight business processes can become an exercise in frustration.It is difficult to track the ‘true’ current state of the process . Instead the state of the process is represented by some combination of comments scattered over several threads and dozens or hundreds of attachment versions strewn about. For anything but the simplest processes this approach rapidly spins out of control.

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Our Private Beta Is Here

30 September,2015
Now In Private Beta

We are so excited to launch our private beta, and hope you join us in our quest to redefine the way we collaborate, communicate, and cooperate. Haven’t signed up for the beta? Click Here to quickly request an account! As a thank you for participating in our beta, we’re giving away a free 3 Month trial of our Pro Plan, which gives mid to large-sized teams great flexibility and personalization options.

TMail was founded with one mission: Taming your inbox! We’re tired of having to sift through email after email just to find that lost attachment. We’re frustrated with the seemingly endless inflow of mail, and an inbox backed up by the thousands. But we’re not setting out to kill our communication companion. We’re coming up with ways to fix Email’s pitfalls while enhancing it’s strengths at the same time.

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Tracked Mail: How Tracking Numbers Will Transform Email

25 September,2015
tracking-numbers

Tracking numbers are a concept yet to be fully integrated into mainstream email. But they can provide an immediate path to critical information, without the need to frantically scavenge through your inbox. TMail has incorporated tracking numbers into its core product model, with each TMail assigned its own unique number. Information doesn’t have to be hard to find, so why has a better and more organized system not yet come to prominence?

Incorporating Tracked Mail

Email has operated in a traditionally silo-based format since its inception. Therefore, incorporating content from emails into the entire workplace ecosystem requires copying and pasting which unnecessarily duplicates information. Furthermore, this can slow up the collaborative process, and require individuals to hunt through chain after chain of mail in search of the right information to reference. Finally, let’s say you want to tell a co-worker to look at a particular message. You have to use vague generalities like ‘  It was in an email about the product launch I sent sometime yesterday morning‘. A tracked mail system, however, overcomes this problem by sending individuals right to the message that matters.

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Is Social the Future of Work?

18 September,2015
Social network interface businessman touch button.

With the impending release of Facebook at Work, it once again raises
the question of whether Social is the Future of Work.

Color us skeptical.

Now it seems that Facebook at Work is not just a social network
for work, but also a group chat system for work. We definitely believe that
chat has a big place in the future of work. So, the question is not
whether Facebook at Work will succeed, as much as whether the
social component of it will succeed.

Social is great for keeping up with the joneses (er bosses and
colleagues) but is that what companies primarily want out of their
productivity solutions? While it can’t hurt to know what Joe in
Marketing is up to, it could prove to be more of a distraction than
a productivity boost.

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