Solving the attachment problem with SkyDrive - Init

<body> <h1>Solving the attachment problem with SkyDrive</h1> <blockquote> <p><i>We’ve talked about </i><a href="http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2011/11/22/skydrive-designing-personal-cloud-storage-for-billions-of-people.aspx" target="_blank">our approach to connecting</a><i></i><i> the file cloud, app cloud and device cloud. A key part of the work we are doing in the app cloud is to bring the benefits of cloud-based file sharing to email apps. </i></p> <p><i>In this post, Lia Yu, a product marketer on the SkyDrive team, describes the problems people have with traditional email attachments and how the cloud can solve them. We’ve also included a few tips for how SkyDrive can help at work – where we’re often inundated with attachments. (SkyDrive may be particularly helpful if your workplace hasn’t made the switch yet from </i><a href="http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/notes/" target="_blank">outdated</a><i></i><i> to </i><a href="http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/online-software.aspx" target="_blank">modern</a><i></i><i> tools.) </i></p> <p><i>We hope you find these tips helpful – and look out for more updates soon.</i></p> <p>- <i>Anand Babu, Group Product Marketer, SkyDrive</i></p> <p><i></i></p> </blockquote> <h3>The attachment problem</h3> <p>Every day, the average office worker receives over 170 email messages a day, and sends over 35. With that kind of volume, it’s understandable that over half of the average work day consists of dealing with email. That’s over 1000 hours a year. It’s worth taking a look at where people can save some time on the process.</p> <p>Dealing with email attachments is a big contributor to the amount of time spent on email. In <a href="http://explore.live.com/hotmail/" target="_blank">Hotmail</a> alone, there are over 1 billion email messages sent with file attachments per week. While attachments can be useful, in many situations, they aren’t the right tool for the job. </p> <p><a href="http://www.skydrive.com/work" target="_blank"><img style="border: 0px currentcolor; display: inline; background-image: none;" title="Sending attachments takes a lot of time" border="0" alt="Sending attachments takes a lot of time" src="http://windowsteamblog.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer-Blogs-Components-WeblogFiles/00-00-00-53-82-metablogapi/4657.Sending_2D00_attachments_2D00_takes_2D00_a_2D00_lot_2D00_of_2D00_time_5F00_5F7495EA.jpg" width="334" height="148" /></a></p> <p><i>To see how much time an attachment can waste during its life, </i><a href="http://www.skydrive.com/work"><i>click here</i></a><i> to see our infographic.</i></p> <p>Here are some examples of when attachments are frequently a waste of time: </p> <h4><strong>1.</strong> <b>Working together on a document</b></h4> <p>If you use email to work with others on a doc, everyone has their own edited version saved locally on a computer that they then have to send as an email attachment to the group. With so many doc versions being sent back and forth, docs can get lost and a lot of extra work is created. If people edit simultaneously, someone will have to go through multiple versions and try to merge edits into one doc. It’s colossally inefficient and potentially migraine inducing.</p> <p><a href="http://windowsteamblog.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer-Blogs-Components-WeblogFiles/00-00-00-53-82-metablogapi/7331.Comic_2D00_photo_2D00_courtesy_2D00_of_2D00_The_2D00_Oatmeal_2D00_Matthew_2D00_Inman_5F00_13A8BF31.jpg" target="_blank"><img style="border: 0px currentcolor; display: inline; background-image: none;" title="Photo comic of Collaborative Editing Software, Courtesy of The Oatmeal Matthew Inman" border="0" alt="Comic of collaborating on a document via email. Jim, Matthew, Cathy, Susan, and Rick are sending email messages to discuss edits in the doc. It is getting confusing and causing frustration." src="http://windowsteamblog.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer-Blogs-Components-WeblogFiles/00-00-00-53-82-metablogapi/568 </body>