It’s a feature

I have various platforms for various activities and about half a dozen different email alias depending on whether its personal, work, local bellringing or national bellringing.  Some are redirected through others and some are direct.  However, what I’ve been noticing is that since using Office 365 and MS Teams for some of the bellringing activity, some emails aren’t getting through either at all, or arrive several days later, when of course I’ve missed whatever deadline was involved, or not provided feedback as appropriate.

I was on a call today where it was noted that I hadn’t given any feedback which was odd considering it was me that had raised the issue in the first place. I had to admit to not having seen an email with the relevant document at all.  When I checked the various email accounts what I seemed to have had was other people’s responses, but not the original email with the attachment. Someone very kindly emailed it to me again via a different route and it did arrive. 

What I’m not sure about is whether that’s because the redirects from some of the email alias’ aren’t working properly, or there’s a more fundamental issue with the setup, or whether it’s a “feature” of the system and something that I’ll have to live with.  I’m not technically minded enough to be able to figure it out and due to the desired firewalls and spam blockers we have on our PCs at home, maybe some of it is getting lost in the ether.

So, if you’ve sent me an email and I haven’t responded it may well be that I haven’t had your message in the first place, unless I am actually ignoring it. I am also not permanently attached to my emails; I do have the occasional evening where I don’t spend it on the computer after a 9½ hour day at work sitting at a computer.  I might just jump in an out to check that there’s nothing urgent or fire out a couple of other messages whilst I’m thinking about them. 

Often, I set aside a time when I’m going to blast through emails.  I’ll file the ones that need filing, respond to the ones that need responding to and maybe leave some others until another time to deal with. The other problem of course, is that to use any of the other email alias’ apart from the ones attached to Office 365 I have to use the main PC rather than my laptop, and that means waiting for C to finish whatever he’s doing. 

I will get around to dealing with it eventually, but if it’s not urgent, or requires a response, I might not necessarily deal with it straight away.