We know that sharing in caring, but do we all know how to do it? With the launch of the Professional Services’ Sustainability Strategy I decided to investigate further into an area I think I’m quite experienced at: Data Sharing.
In the Digital Learning support teams we think ourselves as tech-friendly, advising on both the best way to deliver learning, and the ed-tech to use to do it. However, are we always following the guidance when it comes to sending content to others?
First of course I need to find out what I should be doing. On the Information Storage Advice
page I found this:
“OneDrive should not be used for storing materials that will be needed by anyone other than the individual themselves. Make sure files are stored in shared locations or that ad hoc shares are done through suitable SharePoint locations.”
With a little more digging I also found this on the Internal Data Sharing page:
“When everyone has access to the materials they need there is no need to send them via email or otherwise duplicate them, doing so increases the risk that they will be mismanaged and removes them from the control of those responsible for them.
Finally, my Information Governance refresher was due on Learn Upon. This is me
getting one of the questions correct!
Enough research then. Time for some self-reflection. The new Outlook doesn’t allow for list views in the same way that the older versions did. However, by going to my SENT folder, filtering by date and marking them all as Unread for a moment, I was able to find out that:
In the last 12 months I sent 166 emails, of which 19 had attachments.
I shared from SharePoint 16 times, and 4 from my personal OneDrive (ooops!)
I also got 8 reactions (rather than emails back) which is better for the environment because I get the Outlook weekly reactions digest instead.
Example Reactions Digest:
On reflection, I think I’m pretty pleased with that. I’m not an emailer by choice – preferring the features of Teams chat where I can avoid Reply All and yet still communicate with a team of people. I’m setting myself the target of actively courting Teams instead of email, and reactions instead of replies.
To that end I’ve updated my email signature to say:
How do I compare to you? Send your replies on a postcard to…