3 Ways FlashPanel Helps You Prepare Your Company for Thanksgiving

As an IT admin, covering all the bases when many employees are out of the office over holidays can be tricky. But if your company uses Google Apps, there are some crucial steps you can take in FlashPanel to ensure client interactions and inbound emails don’t fall through the cracks.

Remotely Set Email Auto Replies

It’s hard for employees to remember to set an email auto responder during the busy holiday season when there are so many non-work related items to think about. Forgetting to do so can leave customers, colleagues and partners completely in the dark, unsure of who to email next when they fail to receive a response.

Google Apps administrators who wish to avoid the chaos caused when an employee fails to set up an auto reply may want to handle this for employees who are out of the office.

To set email auto-responders in FlashPanel, visit Tools > Email Tools > Auto Reply then set a beginning and end date for the responder and fill in the subject line and body of the email. Then choose the users you would like to apply the auto reply to and finally, review and then apply the setting.

Delegate an Inbox

If setting an email auto-reply isn’t sufficient to ensure interactions are delegated to the appropriate employees, Google Apps admins can remotely delegate an employee’s inbox to another user. Delegating an inbox allows all incoming mail to also be sent to the designated employee, who can then respond to those emails accordingly.

To remotely delegate another users’ email, you’ll need a third party tool like FlashPanel. To delegate an inbox in FlashPanel visit Tools > Email Tools > Email Delegates then Create Delegate by clicking the gear icon at the top of the screen. Simply denote which user can “access the inbox” of another user and apply.

*Note: The account delegation feature must be enabled in the Google Apps Control Panel. To enable the delegation feature in the Control Panel, select Email in the Service settings tab. And on the General settings page, enable Mail Delegation. This can take as long as an hour to be applied.

Customize Company Email Signatures

Another important step to take during this holiday season is to customize company email signatures per holiday hours or even to include a seasonal greeting.

FlashPanel allows you to create customized signatures for each employee by pulling in the appropriate directory information. You can then push the signatures out to employees and even schedule the signature to be applied daily, weekly or monthly (in case employees have altered the new signature in their own Gmail settings).

To create standardized custom signatures for your domain in FlashPanel visit Tools > Email Tools > Signatures then select Create Signatures. You can choose from an existing template or design your own. Once you’ve selected the design of the signature and added various contact fields, select the users you wish to apply the signature to (you can select all users at once as well) and then apply the signature. If you wish to schedule the signature to have it pushed out automatically, select Schedule & Apply in the final step and set the desired time interval (daily, weekly, monthly and so forth).

Hopefully these tips will help keep your Google Apps domain and company organized throughout the holiday season.

Happy Thanksgiving from the BetterCloud Team!

If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring?
Pilgrims!