Alternatives to using email (in particular, Outlook) as a knowledge store?
- by Umber Ferrule
I suspect that, like many people, I use my work email account (accessed via Outlook 2007) to store information. I generally try to group similar things in folders and sub-folders, but with a multitude of folders this gets very unwieldy. In particular, it can be a bind to locate things using Outlook's tree structure. (As an aside: I've yet to come across a good free search add-on for Outlook.)
I realise Outlook is not the best place to store all my information and I'd prefer not to.
In an ideal world I'd like to be able to organise all of the information stored in Outlook in a MindMap (my software of choice being Freemind) or Wiki.
To maintain an email audit-trail, I've considered saving individual emails as files using a MindMap or Wiki to link them. What do people think of this? (I can't say I relish the thought of the exporting process!)
Whatever I do is going to involve some pain (i.e. setting up a Wiki/MindMap) or sticking with what Outlook provides currently.
Has anyone been in the same position? Has anyone mass-migrated information from Outlook? If so, what was the best way? Any ideas or alternative proposals?
