Handling business/private emails

Yet some questions remain: am I even allowed to send and receive private messages through my ETH email account? And what about business emails? When should I store these centrally to ensure that other ETH members (e.g. team colleagues) also have access to them – and what role does the dossier principle play in this respect ?

Private communication via email

In principle, you may use your ETH mailbox for sending or receiving private emails. However, since the ETH email infrastructure is not designed for this purpose and the ETH mailbox is intended for business communication, we recommend using commonly used email services from other providers (e.g. GMX, Gmail, Protonmail) for your private correspondence.

Storing business emails centrally?

All employees of ETH Zurich are obliged to conduct their business and file all related documents properly (cf. Weisung über die Archivierung von Dokumenten der ETH Zürich [Directive on the Archiving of ETH Zurich Documents] and the Compliance Guide). But what does this mean for business emails?

Emails are classified as business-relevant documents and, as such, must be filed accordingly. Here is where records management comes into play, i.e. the systematic management of records in a document repository.

The objectives of record management are to

• find the right records in the file system quickly and reliably
• provide support to new staff members and deputy personnel
• make business processes more transparent
• identify relevant documents and mark them for permanent archiving
• promote cooperation within and across ETH departments
• comply with legal requirements

The dossier principle

The basis of records management is the dossier principle: this means that all documents belonging to a business transaction are filed together in one dossier:

All documents that are relevant to a business transaction or task belong in such a specific folder – irrespective of the document type (e.g. email, minutes, memo, summary table) or the file format (e.g. PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel).

But what counts as business relevant? The basic rule here is that all documents that a deputy needs (e.g. when covering for another employee due to holiday or another absence) to provide information about a business transaction or to continue the transaction independently are business relevant. As email accounts at ETH Zurich are usually personal email accounts, business emails must accordingly be filed in the respective folder. This is because deputies or new employees only have access to emails that have been copied from a personal email account and are stored centrally.

It is best to save emails as PDFs. For the sake of simplicity, however, emails can also be filed in a business dossier via drag & drop from Outlook. Any business-relevant attachments should be stored separately in the business dossier.

And don’t forget to ensure that you name your files correctly and consistently. See Best Practices for Records Management for tips.