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Email is a strange beast. It's about communicating with our clients, vendors, the press etc., so it needs to be open. But it is also about communicating within PwC, and that more trusted layer can be treated differently. Google has just launched a way to help you to differentiate between the two, because mix-ups can be bad.
Labels help you reply correctly.
The "External" label is managed by Gmail
The "External" label is managed by Gmail
How it gets attached
How it gets attached
External labels get created by the Gmail service. They are a special kind of label to make you aware of emails that involve at least one account from outside of pwc.com. That person can be the sender, the recipient or someone copied. Some examples:
Any email you send to a client will be labeled "external", when you go look for it in the "sent" folder.
Any email a client sends you will be labeled "external".
When you email a PwC colleague, and copy a vendor, it will be labeled "external" as well.
The "External" label is different from labels that you can apply yourself. In the screenshot above, you can see that it looks differently (1) and always gets applied first before any other labels (2). You have no control over them, meaning you cannot remove it, apply it yourself, search for it, create filters for it etc. You also cannot disable it. In short: External labels are a security feature, so Gmail will not let you mess with it.
How to think about the "External" label
How to think about the "External" label
The label is nothing to be worried about, like a spam alert. Many of your emails carry this label. The main functions are:
For emails without this label: Be careful to include external parties in an ongoing email conversation that has so far been internal. Consider reading the previous email (expanding the ellipsis in Gmail to reveal the full email!) before cc'ing someone from outside of PwC.
For emails with this label: Be careful about what you say and attach, since content will end up in hands and systems outside of PwC.
Those practices are as old as email - Google now helps you to be mindful about them.
What gets labeled, what does not
What gets labeled, what does not
You already know the basics, but you would not subscribe to this blog if you were satisfied with the basics.
Scope
Scope
The definition of "External" is "non-Google domains controlled by PwC". That means third-party services we contract for mass mailing services, for example. Our own Calendar invites are not labeled, but our clients' Google Calendar invites are.
Time
Time
The feature was launched in April, that is when the labeling started. Older conversations have not been labeled.
Conversations
Conversations
If you use conversation view (as you should!), you know that labels apply to the entire conversation. The same is true for the "External" label.
Bonus: How to miss the "External" label
Bonus: How to miss the "External" label
You will completely miss the label on the "Mail" app on iOS. It's becoming more and more of a simple, generic app - and as security features such as this are increasingly service specific, users should think twice about the disadvantages of using it. For all iOS users, there is a beautiful, high-powered Gmail app for iOS that makes the best use of the platform and the service.
Sending internal information to external sources can be catastrophic, because there is no undo send in email (no matter what someone tries to tell you). People need to think before they send - but that just got a little bit easier, and the risk folks can sleep a little bit easier. Just a little. Thank you for reading!
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