Manage and Schedule NYU Email Messages

By Nicolas Lebrun | Updated January 20, 2022

Take Advantage of  Message Scheduling, Filtering, and Undoing Delivery

Given the fact that so much of the workday takes place online, one’s email account no longer acts as a simple means of communication. Often, it more closely resembles an all-purpose workspace that serves as a to-do list, a virtual water cooler, and a file cabinet, all rolled into one. When things start to pile up, many aspects of one’s workflow can be impaired. Below are a few helpful tips on how to more effectively manage your NYU Email inbox.

Schedule Message Delivery

If you are interested in sending a message to someone first thing in the morning, or thinking of writing an important email a couple of days in advance, NYU Email has a simple message scheduling and automation system which allows you to do so without disrupting your workflow.

After composing a message, click the white arrow to the right of the send button at the bottom of your draft. This will reveal the “schedule send” option, at which point you will be able to specify your message’s delivery time days or weeks in advance. While queued, the message will appear in a “scheduled” folder, where you can edit the message, or cancel its delivery. Typing “in:scheduled” into the search bar at the top of the page will also direct you to your message queue.

Automatically Filter Incoming and Past Messages

NYU Email’s filter function allows you to automate much of the organizational work required to keep a well-ordered inbox. A simple organizational strategy you can implement through the filter function is grouping and labeling messages according to the team or project they pertain to.

Clicking the arrow to the right of the search bar will reveal a drop-down menu where you can set the parameters of the filters you would like to create. In this case, you would enter a name or a set of names associated with a team or project into the sender and recipient fields. Note: using a sender’s name, and not their email will typically yield better results as it will identify messages from all accounts associated with them and not only from a specific one.

On the following page, you will be given the opportunity to perform a number of automatic actions on the messages that fit these criteria. For the purposes of this example, select the label box, enter a label, and click create filter. This will create a system in which any message that fits the preset criteria will automatically receive the label you’ve selected and appear in the label’s folder.

You can combine this label with other actions including archiving, starring, marking as read, forwarding, and more, depending on the nature of the messages. Exploring the filter function yourself will allow you to define filters that conform to the specifics of your workplace situation.

Undo Message Delivery

In the event that you accidentally send a draft before completion, or have second thoughts about an email, NYU Email allows a short period of time to recall a recently sent message.

After pressing send on a draft, a small tile will appear on the bottom left-hand side of the screen, prompting you to “undo” its delivery or “view” the message. Clicking “undo” will return the message to the draft folder where it can be further edited, whereas clicking “view” will only show you a copy of the message. The default cancellation window is set at five seconds but this can be adjusted to a maximum of 30 seconds on the email settings page.