E-mail 101

Deciding the best way to connect your office to e-mail is a matter of understanding the choices you have

In 1995 and 1996, people were impressed if you had an e-mail address. In 1997, it was more commonplace. In 1998, it is a given. Within the space of a few years, e-mail (electronic mail) has become as much a standard business communication tool as the telephone or the fax machine. In fact, with the ballooning of Internet usage, clients now expect you to have external e-mail access. Today if you are to service your clients effectively and keep pace with today's technological tools, your office must be fully connected to Internet e-mail.

E-mail is the starting point for any organization that wants to immerse itself in Internet technologies. In his book, Extranets: The Complete Sourcebook, Richard H. Baker states: "... as communication is important between members of an organization, it is just as important between organizations. Successful businesses no longer exist as isolated enterprises. They have come to see the value of active communication with their suppliers on one hand and their customers on the other."

In public accounting, many of our suppliers are already using e-mail to improve or supplement traditional delivery methods. Revenue Canada will e-mail you budget releases and similar information as soon as the official paper document is released. Software vendors will send you upgrades, patches and technical support via e-mail. CA-Xchange, a private mailing list available only to CAs, offers peer-to-peer e-mail support.

While larger organizations have been connected to e-mail for some time, smaller firms in public practice and industry have been slower getting on-line. Until now, this has been primarily because they lack the know-how. Now, however, with the Internet growing less daunting and more mainstream, getting on-line with e-mail is easier than ever and accessible to everyone.

Many software packages can help you with e-mail. The actual applications you choose are less important than how you want to get connected. You can build off an existing internal e-mail system or you can start from scratch. You can use your office computer to sort and deliver mail, or you may want your Internet Service Provider (ISP) to take care of it. And what about extra features such as auto-responders and mailing lists? Each choice opens up a variety of alternatives.

No matter what alternative you choose, you will need a couple of basics in order to access e-mail over the Internet. First, you need some type of modem telephone connection and access to the Internet, most likely via an account with an ISP Second, you will also need to register a domain name. Similar to having a permanent telephone number, the domain name is yours and it stays with you, even if you change from one ISP to another. A domain name also establishes personal identification as part of the e-mail address - `john.smith@mycafirm.ca' holds a lot more meaning and recognition than `jsmith@isp.net:

E-mail consists of a two-part process: an e-mail client and an e-mail server. The client is what will be on your notebook or desktop computer, so you can read and write messages. The e-mail server will be where you set up addresses for all your staff, and receive, deliver, sort and organize incoming and outgoing mail. The location of the e-mail server will make a significant difference in how you administer the office e-mail.

An internal server in your office gives you flexibility because you are in control. You can get the ISP to set up a single account for your firm that will lump together all Internet mail sent to those e-mail addresses that end in '@myca firm.ca: From time to time, your internal e-mail server will connect to your ISP and download all e-mail from the one account. As the messages are downloaded, the server will look at incoming addresses - the `john.smith' part - and sort the mail into local electronic mailboxes. Employees in the office will check periodically their individual mailboxes for new mail. The server will also perform the job in reverse for outgoing messages.

With this solution, administration of addresses and other server functions is done at your end. You can make as many individual addresses as you want for no additional cost -'smith' or john smith' or `john-s' are all the same to the ISP because he or she is concerned only with your domain name (@mycafirm.ca).

If you already have an internal e-mail system, such as Lotus cc:Mail or Microsoft Exchange, you already have an internal server with staff mailboxes set up. What you need to do is link your internal cc:Mail server to your Internet mailbox. This is accomplished using an application called a "Gateway." Every e-mail system usually has its own Gateway program that you must use with its software. The Gateway will connect to your ISP, download the mail, determine who it is for and send it to the existing cc:Mail server for normal delivery. It also takes all outgoing messages and uploads them to the ISP for Internet delivery.

If you do not have one of these packaged systems, you will need to use an "Intranet" approach. With this solution, you will use an e-mail client designed for use on the Internet, such as Eudora by Qualcomm Incorporated, Pegasus Mail by David Harris or Netscape Navigator's e-mail function. These clients do not currently offer some of the more robust e-mail functions that the packaged systems do, such as message receipts or integration with some applications. They do, however, have most of the normal e-mail functions, such as an address book and mail filtering.

To use this method, you will have to run TCP/IP, the networking protocol designed for the Internet, on your local network. Many network operating systems already have built-in TCP/IP support; Microsoft Windows NT, Windows 95 and Windows for Workgroups will all support TCP/IP, as will Novell NetWare. With TCP/IP, the client part of email is independent from the server part but both conform to a single set of rules so they can work together. Your choice of e-mail client, such as Eudora or Pegasus, will have no bearing on your choice of an e-mail server.

Along with a TCP/IP e-mail client, you will need a TCP/IP e-mail server. There are several such servers and most of them are available for download and purchase on the Internet. In Internet terms, these servers are referred to as POP3/SMTP servers, which stands for `Post Office Protocol' and `Simple Mail Transfer Protocol: One such server is MDaemon Server by Alt-N Technologies. It will perform all the e-mail server functions such as setting up mailboxes, addresses, mailing lists and handling client requests, and it will also perform all the Gateway functions of connecting to the ISP, downloading and sorting incoming mail and uploading outgoing mail. The Intranet solution will therefore also function as an internal e-mail system.

Rather than setting up an internal server, another potential solution is to let your ISP host all of your office e-mail addresses. This puts all the administration of the e-mail addresses in the ISP's hands as he or she will set up an individual mailbox for each user. Mail will not get lumped together but will be put into separate accounts. If you need only a few addresses, this may be simpler than setting up your own server. If you need many addresses, you should find out how much the ISP is charging per mailbox.

To use these mailboxes, which are on the ISP's computers, every user will require access to the Internet and will require an e-mail client such as Eudora. Access can be provided by either having each user equipped with a modem and telephone line or by using some application to share a modem over the network. If you are sharing modems, you could either have exclusive sharing, where only one user at a time can connect with the modem (for example, Artisoft ModemShare), or you can use an Internet Gateway application that allows multiple users to share a single modem connection simultaneously (for example, Wingate by Qbik New Zealand Ltd., which requires TCP/IP on the network, or Artisoft iShare, which does not).

If your staff spend much time outside the office, they will need modems to have access to e-mail. Internal servers are a problem because, other than the one mailbox at the ISP, the system is all on the company network. You will need dial-in access to your network to let your staff connect by modem and check their e-mail, and this opens up security concerns. Staff who travel may also be stuck with long-distance charges to reach the office. The external solution -- having mailboxes on the ISP's computer makes e-mail available anywhere your staff can connect to the Internet. Using a national ISP means an Internet connection is a local call almost anywhere in Canada.

You may decide a combination of these solutions would be best, with an internal server to handle the processing and addressing of the e-mail, and a few external e-mail accounts that travelling staff can use to access the Internet and e-mail. Your internal server can be set up with filters that automatically forward e-mail sent to the office address of your out-of-office staff to the external e-mail account they are using. The server can redirect mail anywhere in the world via the Internet, and internally generated messages such as memos could be forwarded to travelling staff in the same way. The external addresses could also be used by different people at different times.

As well as simple messaging, most e-mail clients have functions that will allow basic filtering and mailing lists through address book functions. Some have auto-responders to send back messages automatically, based on the contents of an incoming e-mail. If you are using your ISP to handle all your e-mail, additional functions will likely incur extra charges. Internal servers may offer more sophisticated functions without the additional cost. These include mailing lists with subscribe, unsubscribe and moderator functions; advanced address name aliases; and auto-responders and catalogue functions that e-mail back to the sender documents or files based on messages e-mailed to the office.

Once you settle these issues, and you have chosen the solution that best suits the needs of you and your office, you are ready to look at specific applications. The software you choose is the least critical part of the puzzle. It is the selection of the best configuration for you and your office that is the key to a successful e-mail system.

Stephen Thorne, CA, is a consultant with Hill & Company PKF in Toronto.