Training your end users to archive their Outlook mail can be an endless cycle unless you have a great training aid that does the job for you. In January, we asked our members to send us their Outlook archiving training materials. Our goals were twofold:

  • We wanted to share top-notch training materials with members.
  • We wanted to reward the best submission.

We received many types of documentation, from Word documents to PowerPoint presentations to PDFs. TechRepublic’s senior editors voted on the top five submissions, and we’ve posted them all as free downloads for you. Here are the links to the top five submissions:

Do your part: Vote for the best submission
Now it’s your job to vote for the best of the bunch. After downloading each submission, please take our survey and vote for the person who submitted the best documentation. The winner of the contest will be awarded a free book or CD from our library of premium products.

Why they created the documentation
Good end-user training, whether it’s written as a formal part of your job description or not, can reduce the number of help desk calls you receive. Carnahan said he created his documentation to give staff members “more control and choice over their retention and management of e-mail.” He also wanted to encourage heavy e-mail users to archive their material in order to release server space used by huge .pst files.

Mitchell, who works in an academic setting, said the teachers he supports do most of their work in Outlook. “They needed a simple step-by-step for managing their e-mail, which can grow out of hand very quickly,” he said. “The document needed to be simple and concise, as they already put in over 50 hours every week.”

Park’s users had an entirely different reason to archive e-mail easily. “Our multioffice AEC [architecture, engineering, and construction] firm deals with multiple projects that last several years, and in order to keep track of our e-mails for projects, we needed to create an archive procedure for our record purposes,” he said.

Regardless of their reasons for creating the documentation, what matters most is which submission you find most helpful. Vote for your favorite today!

What documentation do you need?

If we were to run a similar contest, what type of documentation should we solicit from our members? Send us an e-mail and let us know what would help you and your users the most. If you’d like to submit some great documentation you’ve developed to share with fellow TechRepublic members, send it in!

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