This page describes the collaborative framework that Nyaya Health uses to work efficiently, openly, and effectively amongst our team members.

 

General Note on Collaboration and Efficiency Keep Email to a Minimum, and Open to Broader Team Members Maintain E-Etiquette Public Discussion of Crisis Conference Calls Skype  Overview Fax Wiki Evernote Dropbox Team Listserve Group Listserves Weekly update emails Google docs Bibliographic References Nyaya Health Server Email Managing Your @nyayahealth Account Nyaya Health Email Archive  Using your account with gmail Using your @nyaya account with an email client like Thunderbird or Outlook Auto-Signatures Gmail Productivity Tips Google Chat: Rapid Communication

 

General Note on Collaboration and Efficiency

Nyaya as an organization largely runs via email, online tools, and occasional phone calls. Here are several strategies that we can employ to improve our efficiency in utilizing electronic communication and collaboration tools:

Keep Email to a Minimum, and Open to Broader Team Members

-any email longer than a few paragraphs you should consider just calling, voice chatting that person (more difficult for Achham folks; contingent upon current internet situation). any email that requires formal documentation, post to the team list serve or wiki.  

-for requesting tasks for other members, you should provide organized, bulleted points.

-if you do feel compelled to write at length about a topic, you should take the time to organize your thoughts on the wiki or on dropbox and then send your collaborators a link to that. it is so much more efficient for your thoughts to be in an indexable, saved format than in your email.

-it is a good idea to hit "reply all" on almost all email correspondences with other team members.

Maintain E-Etiquette

Remember e-etiquette!  If you are upset by somebody, wait and talk with them on the phone, or, better, in person.  avoid sarcastic, offensive, or accusatory language.  Before sending a nasty email or chat, take a deep breath and realize that it can be very unproductive and damaging to long-term e-communication if you say something accusatory over electronic media.  In the real world, when we say something accusatory to someone, we can watch body language, we can resolve the issue through talking through, we can otherwise address concerns and criticisms productively.  We can defuse our anger quickly, in person.  That option is not typically available for e-communication, where there is a lag time in response, which can build stress and resentment on the other end that cannot be dealt with for a considerable amount of time. Some quick tips for e-etiquette: 

• always use plural pronouns e.g., "we" rather than "i" when talking about successes
• use collaborative language, e.g., "talk with" rather than "talk to"
• choose your battles wisely to those that are actually going to change outcomes.  Allow others to be "right"; your own ego is the single greatest barrier to collaboration and efficiency.
• avoid emotive discussions over email but if you must, avoid emotive/theatrical language, e.g. "saddened" has a pedantic connotation whereas "i felt sad" describes your emotion.  

 

Public Discussion of Crisis

For a lean, pragmatic, and transparent organization, it is vital that we communicate rapidly and effectively about crises and challenges that we face.  Oftentimes, these crises will have significant emotions and interpersonal conflicts attached to them.  It is vital, however, that we do not let these emotions and interpersonal conflicts get in the way of telling vitally important stories and discussing challenges that are so often neglected in global health and development.  Possible outlets include blog posts, lay op-ed type pieces, and academic pieces.  In each case, there will be times when a few members disagree with the analysis provided by another team member.  For blog posts, the solution is relatively simple: we would encourage publishing alternative or multiple perspectives on an issue.  For lay press or academic pieces, we ask that all team members have the humility and pragmatism to allow the authors of a particular piece.  If we are driven by consensus, powerful, important pieces to the public--essential for transparency, donor and volunteer engagement, and our own self-reflection-- will be left to collect dust in our personal archives.  It is okay, and in fact encouraged, that we have only a few co-authors bottom-line a particular piece.  We cannot operate on consensus, and have to allow for individual voices to be heard. That is the only way that we can efficiently talk about difficult issues.  Inaction owing to disagreement/veto is as dangerous in dialogue as it is in operations; most of our mistakes as implementers and activists are owing to lack of action rather than making the wrong one.  Team members involved in a crisis that is up for public discussion should be involved and made aware of the writing at its earliest stages, so that they may voice concerns and correct factual inaccuracies.  This does not give them the right of veto if they remain uncomfortable about a piece; it is on those expressing alternative viewpoints to write an alternative piece either as a response or companion piece or in a different venue.   Finally, it is worth noting that any thing published by Nyaya members represents their own views and not the overall consensus view of Nyaya Health (as such a view in fact, healthfully, does not exist); this is true in any good, dynamic organization that publishes anything.  

 

Conference Calls

For an organization with largely a virtual structure, the importance of weekly conference calls cannot be overstated. 

Voice is much more efficient and personal than email.  Given the fact that most team members do not see each other in person very often (aside from those presently working in Achham), it is important 1) that members of the team stay in regular contact; 2) that e-communication is conducted in a critical but respectful manner.  Everyone on the Nyaya team must come to the (virtual) table with a mutual respect for each other, acknowledging that without other team members there can be no Nyaya Health.   The protocol for conference calls is as follows: 

 

1] Achham leadership sets a one-hour time slot for the week, starts an agenda in evernote, and emails team@ 

2] Agenda is edited over the course of the week

3] Whoever is available for the call discusses the agenda at the stated time.

4] Minutes are saved in evernote with "conferencecalls" tag and are emailed to team@ list.

 

The expectation that, while the entire 55+ team@ list is emailed, only 2-5 members would be able to make the conference call on any given week.  Regardless of the number of people on the call, these conference calls help to keep the lines of communication going as a regular and routine process, and helps to keep all members engaged, inspired, and on task.

 

Skype 

for weekly conference calls

Weekly conference calls are hosted via skype.  A US-based team member, normally the DOO (and when he/she is unavailable, any other team member who has volunteered to do so) will host the call. This means team members who wish to join the conversation will simply log onto their respective skype accounts and will be invited to a group conversation by the host. 

 

HOSTING A TEAM CONFERENCE CALL

 1) Login in to skype using Nyaya's ID. 

2) Once you have logged in, begin by selecting the first contact and then add people to that "conversation."  There are a couple of ways you could do this: 

          i) Drag other contacts into the top of the first converstion window. If you see icons for each of the new contacts you just dragged on top of the screen, then you have successfully created a multi-person conversation. 

         ii)  Alternatively you can use the "add people" menu and select anyone who is online and it will create the conversation for you. 

3) Once you've got everyone in one conversation window,  you'll see a button underneath them that says "call group" and then walah, you're on!

4) You can also add contacts after you're on the call with someone else, again by dragging their name into the call or right clicking and selecting add person. 

5) If its a good day and the internet for our Achham team is working well, we can find our contact for Achham usually the ED, online. In that case a normal skype conference call should suffice. 

6) If Achham team is not available online then host should call the "Bayalpata Hospital CDMA mobile phone", a listed contact. 

7) If KTM team is to participate simply call "KTM Nyaya mobile phone" also listed under Nyaya's skype contacts. 

 

NOTE: Calling mobile phones from skype is expensive. If possible, it is better to use a phone card which is inexpensive. Here is how you can use phonecards via skype. It is advised to try to login and prepare a few minutes prior to the scheduled time for the call if you are not acquainted with the usual protocol. 

 

 CALLING A MOBILE PHONE ON SKYPE USING A PHONE CARD

               1. Have the himtel phonecard PINs on hand. 

               2. Start a call with the contact listed as "Himtel."

               3. Follow the prompts and key in the pin number.  Keying in the phone number is probably the most painful part of the protocol. Once you are                   connected to HIMTEL and are prompted to entere the PIN, first select the icon "open dialpad" on the topright corner of the call window. Once the                   keypad is visible, use that to enter the PIN. 

               4. Once your PIN has been accepted, dial in the mobile number that you wish to call using the same keypad. 

               5. It might be easier to host call, if this connnection is established first. Subsequently, you can add other contacts to the conversation. 

 

MAINTAINING SKYPE CREDIT

 It is prudent to maintain a skype credit balance of $5 at the minimum. Nyaya's skype account has been set up to automatically credit our account when the balance is low and can this can be done in a click of a button. 

1.  Simply click on the "Buy More Credit" option under the skype menu. 

2. A separate window appears with all of the account info furnished before hand. The updated balance should be visible in this window. 

 

Overview

We use several collaborative technologies that can be confusing at first as to their purpose.  

wiki: for publishing to the public and collaborating on projects among US-based team members.  it loads poorly in Nepal.

dropbox: for sharing our >14,000 organizational files amongst our members.  

google apps: for email and listserve management

blog: for stories and updates broadcast to a larger, more public audience

tumblr: for shorter stories and quick updates

office technology (fax, pdf, etc): read more about software we utilize on our US Operations page

 

Fax

We have an account setup with www.myfax.com for fax service. For username/password please speak with the Director of Operations or access here. To receive a fax you may send to 866.867.5765 which will be received via faxATnyayahealth.org. Note - faxes sent via this service will also send a confirmation to faxAT. 

 

Wiki

For publishing to the public and collaborating on projects.

This is absolutely essential for efficency and institutional memory.  Typically, we use the wiki for collaboration and for sharing information with the general public. Creating a new wiki page takes 10 seconds but can save you many hours in efficiency.  As a general rule, anything pertaining to research or ideas that you are working on should go onto the wiki.

If you find yourself emailing the same ideas or references to people, you should definitely put on the wiki. If you find yourself in an extended email "conversation", post stuff on the wiki. It is much more efficient organizationally and personally to use the wiki-- and you can share your ideas with the world! If you want certain sensitive ideas/information to be only shared with Nyaya members, you can of course just set the wiki page access controls as such.  For spreadsheet information, use docs.google.com/a/nyayahealth and then link the spreadsheet to the wiki.

See http://wiki.nyayahealth.org/WikiTips for more information.

 

Evernote

Collaborative Clinic Manual

We use evernote for our collaborative clinic manual.  The reason that we use this for our clinic manual is that: 

• it is free and open-source
• it has tagging system for creating chapters that are not simply linear (i.e., individual "notes" serve as sections within multiple tagged chapters).  the search function is very fast and accurate.  this is why we do not use foldershare for this purpose.
• it has online, offline, and mobile options, which is critical to access for our Achham and KTM teams who have less stable internet access.  this is why we do not use the wiki for this purpose.
• it is rapidly sync-able across our members, even on slow internet connections. 

 

Dropbox

For sharing our ~14000 organizational files amongst our members

This is how we share PDFs, formatted word documents, spreadsheets, and other files among our new members. Documents are available whether you are connected to the internet or not; any changes you make are made available to other members once you are connected to the net and sync. See  Dropbox.

***if you are using Dropbox and wish to un-install it, please do not simply delete the folder as this can delete the folder from everyone's computer if you are set to auto-syncing.  Before uninstalling you can either pause syncing or unlink the dropbox(AT)nyayahealth.org account from your drobox settings(for more info go to Dropbox. If you have any confusion speak to current Volunteer Director if you would like to uninstall Dropbox.

 

 

Team Listserve

for logistics communications

The team list is an internal listserve for all the core members of the nyaya health team who have worked or volunteered in some capacity.  This is used regularly for planning purposes and to provide core members with regular updates as to the status of various projects (~50 emails per month).   

 

For the most part, the team list is used to communicate updates, blog posts, new wiki updates, general planning documents and ideas, or to engage in group dialogue.  Articles of general interest/news items may be posted if they could inspire dialogue meaningful to our work; otherwise, these should be avoided.  The wiki and evernote should be referenced extensively; the end-goal of any team list thread is to incorporate the ideas into a protocol or action plan.  Note that the team list is NOT meant for requesting individual items or tasks from people.  Task lists may be sent for group input, but the group psychology of the team list typically is such that any requests would not get done.  Hence task lists/requests should be emailed individually as well as keeping of a running tally on evernote.  

 

Additionally, Nyaya Health has a board@ listserve that is used to communicate among board members only. As an open-source, transparent, and collaborative organization that intentionally blurs traditional authoritative boundaries, we aim to restrict the board@ list to only for very politically or interpersonally sensitive subjects (which for the most part email is not a very good means of communicating).   

 

Finally, Nyaya Health has a leadership@ listserv that is used to communicate among Board members and those team members deemed, at any given time, to be a critical part of the leadership, administration and vision-building for the organization. Membership, in addition to the members of the Board, is decided at the discretion of the Board of Directors and may and will change fluidly contingent upon current job descriptions and responsibilities of various team members.

 

For those more part-time members who feel overwhelmed by the volume of email on the team list, there is a simple productivity tip that they can employ: automatically filter+archive all the incoming mail from team@nyaya (or even all incoming mail from any @nyaya address).  Then dedicate one hour per week at a set time to review all of the materials.  Checking mail constantly and responding to different streams all the time (e.g., work, research, personal, nyaya) is an inefficient use of email, and contributes to the mild form of attention deficit disorder that many people experience today. 

 

Finally, the team listserve is internal.  We encourage members to forward postings to collaborators, but we ask that members take care to be diplomatic and not forward controversial/heated exchanges.  The team listserve is meant for open and frank exchange, and we should respect our member's privacy.  If you have any questions about an email exchange, PRIOR to forwarding to someone, please run it by another Nyaya member.  

  

Group Listserves

The purpose of working group listserves is to ensure that the Nyaya members who form the core of a particular group working on an issue remain updated.  All emails pertaining to the particular issue are cc’d to this listserve, even if the email is primarily an exchange between only two of the members of working group.

 

Examples include: 

data@ : members involved in data analysis and collection 

donations@: members involved in donation processing

grants@: members involved in grants writing

blog@: members involved in the workings and writings of the blog

 

Many members of a listserve are primarily “observers” in that they may have been involved in the work in the past but are currently focused on other things, or that the work concerns an area of their primary expertise. The director or leader of the working group, as well as the person to whom the email is directed, are the only persons required to respond to a particular listserve.

 

The main consideration in whether a member should join a listserve is simply whether they have the particular expertise/interest in the working group, and whether they are interested in the additional email.  

Finally, it is important to note that any major updates or topics of general interest should go over the broader listserve, team@.

 

If a member, for whatever reasons (changing priorities within the organization, new interests, time constraints) finds that s/he is not able to follow along with the listserve, it is best that s/he requests being removed from that listserve.  While many "observer" type listserve members are not expected to respond to all the emails on the listserve, it should be expected that they will at least read/screen the emails in case there is particular content that they should respond to.  Honest departure/unsubscribing is an important component to maintaining an active, dynamic, and relevant listserve.

Weekly update emails

Each week the Achham team should send an update email to team@. The purpose of the email is two-fold:           

1. To keep team@ informed and inspired by the work going on in-country - many readers of team@ are unable to participate “on-the-ground” and gain great encouragement/inspiration from seeing the fruit of their labor in action. While emails should not be so long as to be burdensome on Achham team writing them, it is stressed that details are important and vital to maintaining team inclusion/understanding of day-to-day events!
2. To facilitate discussion of important topics and offer input to Achham team - team@ contains members from all backgrounds who can often offer critical advice on problems we may be facing in our daily work.

• Each week, ideally on a specified day, an email should be sent from Achham team to team@ updating on general issues Achham team is working on/facing challenges from.
• Email should focus on broad issues (e.g. data management challenges) but also on specific day-to-day issues (e.g. we had a local family complain because they felt our services were x, y, and z…) as both are crucial to keeping team members engaged and involved.
• Subject of email should be simply “[Achham] weekly update” to ensure those volunteers with limited time can easily identify which emails are updates and which are topic-specific emails.
• While the update should be sent by the ED typically, it is understood due to time limitations of the ED, short-term volunteers may occasionally also send the email under the supervision of the ED.
• A template outline for the email will remain on Evernote. The purpose of the template is to offer suggestions for topics to be included, it is as such not comprehensive nor should all items necessarily be included. The template should be revised/updated regularly to ensure the ED (and/or short-term volunteers who may be assisting with the writing of weekly updates) have an easily accessible and relevant outline to streamline writing each week.

 

Google docs

primarily for collaborative spreadsheets

This is managed within google apps.

 

These cover mainly spreadsheets, since pbwiki has low functionality on spreadsheets. Most other documents should be posted on the wiki; and highly formatted documents should just be saved as MS Word documents in foldershare. You should use the nyayahealth google apps account for this: http://www.google.com/a/nyayahealth.org

You login with your @nyayahealth email address and password.  For most collaborative documents (other than those that have sensitive password information) Go to share...sharing settings... check "anyone with the link".   Then check the box "can edit".  We do this to facilitate sharing among members without @nyaya email addresses.  Copy the URL link.  

 

To send to your team members, click share... "email editors/viewers".  Type your message and include the URL in the message (sometimes members have difficult time clicking on the auto link provided in the text).  Make sure to click the box "paste the item itself into the email" in case someone has a low internet connection that takes a long time for gdocs to load.  

 

Google docs can be managed offline through the use of google gears, which provides great benefit for operating in area with intermittent internet access.

Integration with MS Office can be achieved through this small application: http://www.offisync.com/download.html So now there is no excuse for sending word attachments on any project involving more than one person ie ALL (worthwhile) projects :).   

 

Bibliographic References

Many of our team members have institutional licenses for endnote, but endnote remains limited as a collaborative tool.  Wizfolio is an excellent collaborative alternative with direct cite-while-you-write capabilities within MSWord (which can then be synced with google docs, as above).  Main steps: 

1) request login information for nyaya health's organizational account from a nyaya colleague

2) go to wizfolio.com and install in your browser (use firefox since it works best for wizfolio)

3) add wizadd to your browser so you can point-and click directly on URLs/references/pubmed searches to add your references to the folder

4) download wizcite so that you can install it for your word processor

5) start adding references to your document

6) use wizfolio's clear and excellent FAQ section for further information

 

NOTE: WHEN USING MICROSOFT WORD 2010, BE SURE TO SAVE AS A 2010 DOCUMENT WITH "MAINTAIN COMBATIBILITY" BOX CHECKED.  THIS WILL HELP PREVENT ERRORS/FREEZES WITHIN WIZFOLIO.  

 

Nyaya Health Server

for posting files

The Nyaya Health Server we post to nyayahealth.org/Library for sharing and posting key documents. FTP manager with FileZilla: http://filezilla-project.org/download.php and set up FTP file transfer on your computer to the details seen on

http://nyayahealthprivate.pbwiki.com/NepalTripPlanning#FileTransfer

and on the private online presence doc:

http://docs.google.com/a/nyayahealth.org/Doc?id=dgn3nhv2_4hj24nc79

Pls test your links before you send them to people/post on wiki. 

 

Email

Email is also managed through google apps.

 

Managing Your @nyayahealth Account

It is essential and not optional that you use your @nyayahealth ID for any nyaya-related business.  We need an institutional archive of whom we've contacted and how we've operated.  If anything unfortunately happens to a member (death, sickness, etc.), we need to be able to maintain all the hard work and efforts and contacts of that member.  The only way to maintain this is by using your nyayahealth ID for nyaya-related business.  At the same time, you must not use your nyayahealth ID for any family or personal matters.  This is quite easy and efficient to achieve using the "multiple accounts" option available through gmail.  Many members have more than 10 email addresses that are all managed efficiently in gmail through filters and labels. 

 

Nyaya Health Email Archive 

All of our organizational emails are archived in gmail accounts mailarchive@nyayahealth.org and mailarchive2006@nyayahealth.org. The latter holds all emails from 2006 through April 30, 2011 plus some from June 1, 2011 through June 15, 2011.  The mailarchive@ account holds emails starting from May 1, 2011 onward (plus a handful of older messages that didn't end up in mailarchive2006@).  There is some overlap in the dates because of not having had a plan in place before mailarchive@ overflowed..

 

The primary functions of having a mail archive are: 

 

1. internal transparency: our email communication, which constitutes a huge portion of how we work, are available for review by other team members as needed; 
2. institutional memory: in the cases of transitions of team members, it is helpful to have an archive of previous correspondence on various subject matters or with various individuals
3. efficiency: this can cut-down on the need for forwarding or looking around for lost emails
4. reliability: in the cases in which anything unfortunately happens to a member (death, sickness, etc.), we need to be able to maintain all the hard work and efforts and contacts of that member.  
5. team coherence: members are less likely to disobey basic rules of etiquette (e.g., not respecting others, not engaging in productive and non-judgment dialogue, not )

 

One thing that Nyaya members agree not to do:  read the email archive regularly.  The mail archive is a privilege and a pact between each other to.  The mail archive is simply not meant for that purpose; since the risk is real given human nature, the following points are worth noting, particularly for Nyaya team leaders/managers:

 

1. Do not "jump into" another conversation that you come across in the archive.  Doing that is like a boss snooping around the corner between two officemates in their cubicles.  
2. Do not read the archive; other people are managing all the emails in the archive and it is wickedly inefficient to be reading those.  Though it is tempting to think one can be helpful in such situations, it is very unlikely to be productive and is going to feel intrusive and make one feel less inclined to using @nyaya emails.  
3. People are entitled to having private threads without intrusion by managers, just as in the non-virtual organizations people have lunches, phone calls, cubicle chats, etc.  The flip side of this on the part of all team members is above, in the section on collaboration and efficiency: that most conversations should be focussed on wiki, team@, or other collaborative content. 

 

In May 2011, the policy of having the entire mail archive being open was changed.  Under normal circumstances, the archive is now closed to all users, including leadership.  The passwords on the archive accounts are set to long random strings and no record is kept of them.  Should it be necessary to consult the archive for any reason, the following protocol is followed.

 

1. Someone with gmail administrative rights (admin) sends an email to leadership@nyayahealth.org explaining the need for access, and the length of time for which they will need access.  If no one on leadership@ responds with a concern within 24 hours, approval is deemed to have occurred.  If someone on leadership@ does raise a concern, approval is deemed not to have occurred until the person who voiced the concern responds with affirmative approval.
2. If an admin believes there is a critical need to access one of the archive accounts immediately in order to maintain the functioning of the organization, they may include that in the "request" to leadership@ and access the archive immediately.  But in doing this, they accept whatever consequences may come should leadership disapprove.
3. To access the account, the admin resets the password to something they can remember and accesses the account. 
4. When done, the admin sends an email to leadership explaining the resolution and resets the archive password to a "random" string of at least 10 characters, which they do not save.

 

In addition to the overall mail archive, all nyayahealth groups (aka listserves) are now set to archive their messages.  Except for those groups designated as private (because of privacy issues), these group archives are open to examination by the general population.

 

There is a summary of all email flow here.

 

Using your account with gmail

I suggest you use gmail's nifty account management feature to manage all your email accounts including @nyayahealth within gmail. If you have some other email account (yahoo, hotmail, etc.), you should try to figure out the same functionality within those products, or switch to gmail while still retaining your @yahoo or @aol etc. account: https://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?ctx=%67mail&hl=en&answer=21288

The following are the directions for managing things within gmail.

Open your gmail account.

1. Under Settings, Accounts, add your username@nyayahealth email. You will quickly get sent a verification number . Paste that number into the box. Now you can send email as your nyayahealth address from within gmail. When you send an email pertaining to nyaya health, you can just click the drop-box in the FROM box to your new email address.

2. Under Setting, Accounts, check the box:

"When I receive a message sent to one of my addresses:"

"Reply from the same address the message was sent to"

That way when someone sends to your nyaya account, you automatically respond with the nyaya account.  This helps us with archiving of all our emails and ensures that you use your nyaya account easily.  

3.  Create a filter for "to:@nyayahealth.org" (no need for YOURID@nyayahealth.org) that sends all such emails to your "nyayahealth" label.  You can further your efficiency by auto-archiving and only opening your "nyayahealth" label when you are sitting down to work for a period on nyayahealth activities.  An important efficiency maxim, especially in our twitter-filled age, is to stay focussed on single tasks at a time.  As a volunteer whose time is limited, you should be clear to dedicate your time to nyayahealth when you have it but when you are on personal or other work time, you can focus on those instead.

4. You are free to browse any emails in the general email account. Do not worry about the read/unread status of the emails (e.g., you can read an unread email and keep it as read) since other than the inbox and the starred labels (e.g., volunteers, online presence), we are not managing all our own emails through our personal gmail accounts.

In several cases with unsolicited emails to high-profile people (corporations, professors), send from your yale (or other fancy name account if you have it), then when you get a response you can switch to your nyayahealth account, can just click the "From" tab and change that.

 

Using your @nyaya account with an email client like Thunderbird or Outlook

In Achham especially, where email / online access is not always reliable, it can be helpful to have your email accessible offline. Some volunteers have had problems using Gmail Offline (failure to sync properly, lost emails, drafts that never send, etc), which is likely in part due to Achham's poor connectivity, but nonetheless, it may not be the best option while in Achham. Instead, we recommend using an offline email client such as Thunderbird or Outlook (Thunderbird is open-source and free!). 

 

You can get tips on setting up your accounts on Thunderbird / Outlook here.

 

If you decide to do this, regardless of where you are in the world, it will be important to contact the current email administrator and request that s/he turn off your @nyaya forwarding to your personal Gmail address. If you don't do this, you will quickly see that you will receive two copies of ever email addressed to @nyaya showing up in the client's inbox. This is because your personal Gmail account collapses both copies (ie. you only see one) whereas the client will display one copy sync'd directly from the @nyaya account and one copy sync'd from your personal Gmail account (ie. the forwarded copy). 

 

Auto-Signatures

As can be seen in many other organizations, especially larger ones like PIH, an auto-signature is a standard feature in professional emails, and has the ability to communicate a significant amount of social capital. By detailing credentials and affiliations in a non-confrontational way, an auto-signature contributes significantly to the readers' understanding of the context from which the author writes (especially in the case of new / novel readers as in cold-calls etc). It is important to note that, when used appropriately, an auto-signature is not an arrogance thing, but rather, an opportunity to respectfully and subtly communicate some very important information about yourself and your affiliations that you feel is important for the reader to understand. This is an opportunity to build the social capital of Nyaya as a whole by demonstrating not only our credentials, but also our professional and academic affiliations, which are given great importance by many of the individuals that we communicate with on a regular basis. 

 

Many professionals regularly change their auto-signatures, per the particular audience that they are writing to, emphasizing different affiliations etc. We suggest that all Nyaya staff and volunteers utilize an auto-signature that appropriately represents themselves and their role to Nyaya. 

 

Important features of an auto-signature: 

1) Name

2) Academic credentials (MD, PhD, MBA, MPH, MSc, etc)

3) If relevant, university affiliations

4) If relevant, hospital or particular office affiliations

5) A line detailing your particular affiliation with Nyaya, or simply "Nyaya Health | http://www.nyayahealth.org" to be more generic

6) Contact information including email, phone (country codes included), Skype, etc

 

Example auto-signature:

 

--

John Doe, MD PhD

Professor of Medicine

Harvard University School of Medicine

Brigham and Women's Hospital

 

Executive Director (or Grants Director etc)

Nyaya Health | http://www.nyayahealth.org

 

p: +1.999.999.9999

e: johndoe(AT)nyayahealth(DOT)org

Skype: johndoeskype

 

To implement this efficiently within gmail, see: 

http://thenextweb.com/2009/03/09/multiple-signatures-gmail-extensions-userscripts-bookmarklets-required/

1. Enable Canned Responses in “Labs” in your gmail account.
2. Write out your email signature into your email as if you were writing a normal email.
3. Next save the signature as a canned response under any name, something like “My Main Signature” for example. (repeat this step for all your various signatures)
4. From now on, you can write emails as your normally would and once you’ve reached the foot of your email and ready to insert your signature – simply click the “Canned Responses” menu and select the appropriate signature.

 

Gmail Productivity Tips

See this on managing all your accounts in gmail:

http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2007/06/manage-all-your-email-accounts-with-gmail/

If you don't like this system, you can use gmail fetcher instead, only issue is uncertainty with speed of fetching.

https://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?ctx=%67mail&hl=en&answer=21288

More info on achieving optimal performance from gmail. Believe me is worth the twenty minutes to go through and set these things up:

http://lifehacker.com/software/gmail/hack-attack-become-a-gmail-master-161399.php

http://lifehacker.com/software/gmail/how-to-free-up-space-in-gmail-215191.php

here's the latest version:

http://lifehacker.com/software/exclusive-lifehacker-download/better-gmail-2-firefox-extension-for-new-gmail-320618.php

this firefox add-on rocks:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2127

other ways to add images to gmail:

http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/08/how-to-add-html-signatures-with-images.html

 

Google Chat: Rapid Communication

It is essential that you download the extension google.com/talk and logon. It really is essential because from time to time there are emergent things that need to get communicated between the US-KTM-Achham people and chat is the cheapest and most reliable way to go when the internet is running.  As noted above, please use text-chat for quick things; dialogues are most efficiently done by voice.

You can sign into chat with your NAME@nyayahealth.org email and then click "ADD...contacts" to can add all the other people in nyayahealth. Note that in order to do voice chat you must download the extension; you cannot do voice chat from within gmail. Also note that use should use the extension anyways and NOT within gmail because: the extension doesn't require 1) a browser to be open (in achham sometimes hard to open browser); 2) gmail to be open (is inefficient to do this within gmail since you have to be on that page to talk and you can't be doing non-gmail-related work); 3) is low-BW; 4) just runs in background and notifies you whenever there is a new chat. Note that if you sign in with your NAME@nyayahealth.org you can be logged in on your personal account (e.g. johnny@gmail.com) simultaneously within your gmail or other browser. The key with signing in to your @nyayahealth account is 1) you can be signed in without being bothered by anyone other than emergency nyaya-related info and 2) keeping track of contacts as new members come on (just go to "choose from my contacts" and check the box next to all the members).

for you mac users, you'll have to use ichat:

http://www.google.com/support/talk/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=24076

If you do not want to load the file or are using someone else's computer, login to:

http://hostedtalkgadget.google.com/a/nyayahealth.org/talkgadget/popout

If you use your personal account (not recommended but if you prefer) you can use the pop-up: http://talkgadget.google.com/talkgadget/popout .

In either case, you can scale the browser down to a small rectangle on the side of your screen so that you can have chat open and still work on other things.

Also note that the latter two popout options are the only way to do conference chat.