by Melissa Esquibel

Moving to a different position in your organization? Working in Outlook? Wondering how notify your soon-to-be previous executive’s email senders to contact someone new? Here are 3 strategies that could serve to make the transition smoother. Thanks to Kathy Acker for the inspiration for this post!

1. Hopefully, you are set up as the delegate for you executive’s Outlook profile. This part is easy but needs to be thought out and planned in advance. The day before the new assistant starts or as soon as his or her Outlook profile is created, switch the delegate designation. It is at this point that a decision needs to be made how much access authority the new assistant will have to the executive’s email and calendar. Perhaps it may be worth considering to phase in the levels of access.
2. At the same time, you send an email to the typical senders about the upcoming change in personnel, set up a rule for meeting requests which will be turned on the day before or actual day the new assistant starts. Now, as with the new delegate designation, the new assistant will be receiving the meeting requests, but if there are folks that copy the assistant, as well, the Outlook rule can automatically forward those. The criteria would include:

1. • Sent to: Executive’s name/email address
   • With your name in the cc: field
   • Uses the Meeting Request form name

1. The above two items should take care of most email. Now, just set up a Quick Step that does two operations:
   1. Replies to the sender that New Assistant Name will be handling messages for Executive Name as of this date.
   2. Forwards the message to the New Assistant with a message from you that says, this came to me for Executive Name. They have been notified to contact you from here forward.

Every office is different. However, thinking ahead about this will ease the way for the new assistant, allow you to focus on your new position, and smooth the transition for the executive.

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