A postman during your absence
Are you often away from home or the office? The AwayFind service promises to keep you informed of important e-mails. But does it actually work? We put it to the test.
Filter it out
Smartphones and laptops now enable us to go online just about anywhere. However, there are times when you wish to be left alone - for instance during a well-deserved holiday. Still, if you don’t want to shut yourself off from your messages completely, you can use AwayFind (http://www.awayfind.com). This service filters your incoming e-mails and forwards only those e-mails you definitely don’t want to miss.
Step 1. What e-mail account?
AwayFind is a Web-based service which constantly monitors your inbox. Irrelevant e-mails are ignored, whilst important messages are forwarded to the address you specify. This of course implies that you should give AwayFind access to your inbox. So after a short registration procedure (this is possible only in Firefox or Google Chrome, not Internet Explorer), you should also provide the details of your e-mail account. Note. At present, AwayFind supports only Gmail and IMAP e-mail accounts. In the near future, however, it will also be able to work with Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail and Exchange accounts.
Step 2. Notifications?
Next, you should configure the way in which you wish to be notified of important e-mails. This is possible, for instance, via an e-mail address created especially for this purpose (you should confirm this via the Add and Send Test Message button). Interestingly, AwayFind can also keep you informed through other channels, including Twitter, your favourite instant messenger, or text messages. The latter option can come in handy when you have no Internet connection. It’s even possible by telephone: in this case AwayFind calls you, and a computer voice will read the content of the message aloud. Tip. Do you wish to be left alone completely during your absence? In this scenario, AwayFind can also come in handy: it can have the most urgent e-mails forwarded to a colleague who can handle them for you.
Step 3. What filters?
Next, you should configure the filters. For instance, if you’re expecting an important order, you can set the address of this particular customer as “to be monitored”. You can also filter messages according to their subject or their content (for instance, you can set specific keywords such as “urgent” or “tomorrow”). E-mails sent with a high priority can also be intercepted automatically. For each filter you can set for how long the relevant action should be executed (day, week, month or lifetime). Moreover, you can specify how frequently AwayFind is to keep you informed. In this way, you can prevent being constantly disturbed. Another great feature: the auto responder function lets you send an automatic reply to less important messages, which aren’t forwarded to you. This feature comes with various options as well (for instance, you can exclude certain people or domains).
How good is it?
AwayFind is a good service, especially since it’s in the beta stage and hence still free. It is crucial, though, to create good filters. You can, of course, configure rules in your webmail service or e-mail software to have specific messages forwarded to another address. However, these rules only work if your mailbox is opened during your absence, which makes this approach less practical.
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