How to achieve Inbox Zero in Zoho TeamInbox

What is Inbox Zero?

In the modern world, employees spend about 3.1 hours per day checking their work email. That comes out to around 15.5 hours per week. Unsurprisingly, this negatively impacts employees' productivity and often causes them to lose focus on more important work tasks. Inbox Zero is an approach to keeping your inbox as empty as possible by better organizing and managing your incoming emails using various tools and techniques.

Benefits of Inbox Zero

In an era of email overload, achieving Inbox Zero can help you:

• Focus on high-priority tasks
• Make sure no emails are overlooked
• Eliminate inbox clutter
• Reduce time spent on low-priority emails
• Increase overall productivity at work

Achieve Inbox Zero

Zoho TeamInbox can help you attain Inbox Zero. Here are the ways you can use Zoho TeamInbox to manage your inboxes better and work more efficiently:  

Archive completed conversations

After you finish a task associated with a given email (or if the email requires no further action), simply Archive the thread. This moves your thread from the Open view of your inbox to the Archived view, keeping your main space clear for ongoing conversations. You can choose to archive a thread immediately after sending a reply by clicking Send and Archive.

Automate archiving

If you want to automatically archive emails based on specific conditions, you can set up a workflow using Rules. For example, if you want to "archive" every incoming email that has your name in the CC or BCC section, create a rule specifying your condition and action. This way, TeamInbox will automatically archive unwanted emails, removing them from your Open view without requiring any manual effort.

Learn how to set up Rules.

Snooze and set reminders on emails

If a thread is not urgent, but will need to be revisited later, press Snooze. The thread will be moved from the Open view of your inbox to the Snoozed view for a set time period. Once the snooze time is up, your thread will reappear in your Open inbox. Snooze helps you attend to emails based on their priority and provides you with a clear view of your most important threads.

Learn how to snooze threads.

Note: If you snooze a thread, it will only be snoozed for you—not the rest of your team.

Delegate threads  

When your team receives an email, assign it to the person responsible. This way, you can more easily identify and focus on your own tasks. Threads that have been delegated to you will be available under Assigned to Me. You should only concentrate on managing emails in this view.

Learn how to assign threads. 

Use Response Templates 

Response templates come in handy when you have to use the same content repeatedly while composing or replying to emails. With templates, you can reply to and close messages faster.

Learn how to create response templates.

You can also automate responses using Rules. Let's say you're on the development team and you occasionally receive emails from your team requesting release notes on your latest product enhancements. You can automatically reply to these emails by setting up a rule instead of having to draft a manual reply each time. You can also make a Rule to "archive" the thread once the response is sent.

Share drafts  

Draft a reply to a thread and easily share it with members of your team for review. As you compose your email, it will be automatically saved as a draft until sent. Simply click Share Draft and the draft will be shared with your teammates. They can now make requests to edit the content. Once the draft is good to go, send the email to its intended recipient and archive the thread.

Conduct internal discussions

Use comments to have internal discussions on messages without forwarding them to your teammates. Just @mention the person you want to include in the conversation, and they will be notified so they can respond promptly. This way, you can have discussions without switching between applications. Quicker discussions lead to faster responses. Once you respond to the thread, "archive" it to move the thread out of Open view.

Learn how to add comments.

Attaining  Inbox Zero in your personal inbox 

 Let's look at a few tips to maintain a clean "personal inbox" to boost your productivity at work.

• Archive emails when you are done responding or when you finish the associated tasks.
• Automate the entire archiving process. For instance, in a personal inbox, you can automatically archive any email that has your name in the CC or BCC section.
• Snooze low-priority emails that need to be revisited later. This helps you de-clutter your inbox and helps you respond to emails according to their priority.
• Use response templates instead of typing out replies to every email. This saves time and effort when you have to respond to emails using the same content repeatedly.
• After composing an email, share the draft with your teammates for review. You'll receive quicker feedback from your team so you can reply faster, and close threads more efficiently.
• Use comments to share a thread or to have internal discussions with your team. Provide quicker responses and close threads to move them out of your inbox.