SHARED MAILBOXES AND SHARED EMAIL

LIVING IN A WORLD OF SHARING

What is a Shared Mailbox?

A shared mailbox is an email address that more than one person has the right to access. People are given appropriate access to the common mailbox as and when required. These mailboxes are standard email folders and are no different to your own email folders, except that a number of people can be given access to the shared item or unit. In other words, such mailboxes allow a group of users to view and send e-mail from a common mailbox. They also allow users to share a common calendar, so they can schedule and view vacation time or work shifts.

It can apply to a personal email address, a purpose-built address to share email  and a sub-mail folder and can be used to:

•     Organise and control your mail, quantity of mail and archiving.

•     Provide clearly defined email addresses for business use.

•     Emails to a contact address (e.g. dental-enquiries@flint.net) will now be sent          to a single shared mailbox. This arrangement allows easier administration for          all;  e.g. whether or not the query has been answered.

•     A single copy of the email is stored, as opposed to multiple copies when email        lists are used.

•     The shared box is considered separate, freeing up your personal quota.

•    A clear distinction between business email and personal email makes it easier         to  facilitate access to email when people are on leave or move between jobs or     roles.

•     It is more convenient for archiving and allows members who have recently              joined the list to catch up with previous emails and present members to review      the use.

Shared Inbox for Gmail

The Gmail share inbox is an app that allows users of Google Apps email to share email addresses among multiple users. More than just sharing the address with multiple users, the Shared Inbox lets group members assign tasks to other members of the group. Responses sent to customers come from the Shared Inbox address instead of from the individual team member. This facility is available to any company using Google Apps email on their company domain. Sold on the Google Apps marketplace, a standard Shared Inbox account costs only $10/user/year

The Fiefdom Of HALWARA

Blandings Halwara

 If Tezpur was good fun, Halwara was a fiefdom.  The  Overlord was Gp Capt NC Chatrath, VRC. He would drive in truly majestic fashion, reaching his office at 0900 hrs on the dot. He would pack up at 1000 hrs on the dot. The station ran beautifully. He actually believed in de-centralisation and not just lip service, much in vogue today. He was a  passionate Bridge player, with his wife Pam as his partner. His instructions on the subject were explicit. Two more offrs were required to form the quorum; these two were Flt Lt Driver and myself. A Fg Offr Shome was on standby. Our COs had been ordered to ensure that we flew two sorties by 1000 hrs. 1100 hrs onwards was Bridge time. For those who have read PG Wodehouse, he was Lord Emsworth personified. I won’t disclose the name of “The EMPRESS of Blandings.”

The Sqn Adjt, one Flt Lt Guni Sehgal was quite a bum, despised by all. He was subjected to a blanket parade one evening, as he came out of the swimming pool. He went from bad to worse thereafter, pushing junior offrs around. At that point in time, we were unaware of the ‘goings on’. A Court of inquiry was in progress, presided over by a Sqn Ldr, the Terms of Reference of which required identification of Offrs who had consorted with a promiscuous 16 yr old servant’s daughter. Revelations showed that many Sqn Ldrs were involved, requiring a change of  Presiding Officer. One Wg Cdr was implicated and the Inquiry was finally conducted by old Pop  Wadhawan, who himself had 10 children, 8 of whom were adopted. He was very simple and popular and somehow extricated the entire lot of sinners, who contributed 200 bucks each to the welfare of the servant concerned. 

Sumit Mukerji And The Tempo

THOSE WERE THE DAYS

Air Force Station, Tezpur, bred the by-word of that era in the corporeal shape of a Sqn Ldr Parsuraman. His aim in life was very simple: to stay drunk. An excellent Met Offr, he was at his sharpest at the half-bottle stage. A fair Bridge player, he would carry on playing till he toppled off the chair. He would then request one of us to get him up, put him on the hazily lit road and point him towards our billets. He would then weave his way towards the billets, turn right as the first billet appeared and stick his left arm out horizontally, something rather unusual even for Bacchus. Later, he confessed ; His arm was to impact the pillars of the verandah of our living-in barracks and he would count each hit. At the count of nine, he would turn hard right and fall forwards, collapsing onto his bed, put in place precisely by his orderly. He never missed.

The Base  Ops  Offr would double as the Duty  Offr.  No vehicle was provided for the rounds, as they were far too noisy. One borrowed a pal’s 2-wheeler to go about his checks. Dark nights were terrifying, with stories of Hyenas and Jackals abounding. The darkness was Stygian, with dense vegetation, Sal Forest et al . Dinky Shaheed, RIP,  was into his 4^th large when somebody reminded him of his duty. He sprinted out, climbed aboard the nearest Lamby and set off. Luckily, all turns into the technical area were left turns. Having got in, he discovered to his horror that the scooter could not turn right ! Just his luck, that night was the Hyenas night out. He went onto the wagon for one full month. 

       The Army ran the RSI Club in town and we would drop in unannounced aiming to get into a scrap. We would drive down in Tushar Sen's Hindustan, which had no doors. Good fun, the drive as well as the scrap. The Army didn't find anything funny, but when did an Army Pongo have a sense of humour? The crowning glory was the hijack of a Tempo, which had a pull/push rod system for Gears. I have never yet seen anybody who could get into reverse gear from the top apart from young Mukho, who promptly overturned, luckily without injury. When you next meet Air Marshal Sumit 'Chunks' Mukerji, now retired, ask him about L the B.

The Peepal Tree And Chicken

                                       KANG'S BULLET

One offr from 30 Sqn, a Flt Lt TS Kang had just purchased a gleaming red Bullet motorcycle and brought it himself from MaDras, now Chennai. His stories of travel on a goods train were both amusing and terrifying. He loved his bike so much that he would tune it twice a day, keeping many of them awake till midnight. The icons of old, viz, Irfan Haidari, PPK Naidu, S Bhalla, Yezdi Irani and their ilk, warned him to desist. But, love is indeed a many splendoured thing and Kang decided to take them on. One midnight, the gang got together and silently lifted the Bike to the base of a massive Peepal tree and hoisted it 50-odd feet up, invisible to the ignorant. Kang was put through a grilling time, with Police dogs thrown in, 3^rd degree questioning of the orderlies, et al. There was a slightly dodgy moment when one dog headed for the tree; but only to lift his left hind leg. Good training, what? One week later, the bike was as silently restored, to the paeans of unbridled ecstasy of a chastened owner. Tragically, Kang was killed in a road accident on the same bike in Pune. May he rest in peace.

       The IAC dispersal was opposite the ATC. The hostesses then were very pretty and this led Yezdi Irani, the Operations Adjutant [Flying] to phone in a bomb threat. The intention was to get to know the Hostesses better. Yezdi rushed out to the F-27 as the passengers were now back in their waiting room. Alas, the Stn CDr reached first and ordered him to look after the Pilots! Guess who looked after the Air Hostesses?

       CTO was a Wg CDr Mukhodadhya, who spent his spare time rearing chicken, not for eating though. He once went on two weeks leave, handing over care of the birds to his neighbour, a Flt Lt MS Dalhi. A farewell was in the offing and 4 Sqn was tasked with the Food.  As their policy was ‘Drink before eat’, they forgot to set up the Menu. Chicken was a rare delicacy and when Denzil Uncle realised what had happened, he organised a quiet nocturnal abduction, intending to replace the previous night’s fowl with imported ones. The CTO was livid with rage on return and this was the probable cause of his raising the undercarriage on a MiG-21 during a ground run!  Incidentally, he is the only  Officer of any branch to have ever repeated this feat.

       Accidents do happen and that era was no different except that were no limitations, no irrelevant stuff. His course-mate, Plt Offr Tanwar ejected at 1030 hrs. He was recovered by 1230 hrs and sent up to fly a repeat sortie at 1600 hrs. He then debriefed all of us on his misadventure. His primary lesson was “I will never fly again without my cigarettes.” At all of 5’2”, he thought that getting out of the 8’ Elephant grass was far more terrifying than the ejection. He flew 17 sorties before Air HQ stopped his flying altogether. He moved over to Jorhat, to fly Tpt ac.

Them Tezpur Days

TEZPUR IN THEM OLDEN DAYS

I was in Tezpur from January 1973 to end March 74.  A free for all station; anything went. The monthly task was 320 hrs on the T-77 and 60 on the trainer. We had to finish flying by the 20^th of the month so that the station could stand down for 10 full days. With three Sqns of Migs it was a mad rush to get airborne and fly your four details by 1300 hrs. All this with nary an accident. The local menace was CO 4 Sqn, who would taxy out on his own, joining up with any formation carrying out tyre checks, etc., especially a 4 aircraft formation. He would make them run rings with his peccadilloes. 4 Sqn was very good in Chess, as he was very fond of the game. Bad weather? Chess board out. This overly laissez-faire approach told in the end when 4 Sqn had a spate of 5 accidents, all, fortunately ending in safe ejections. Their Flt Cdr and a very senior pilot got lost in very heavy clouding, from 300 feet up to 20,000, as the navigational aids on their aircraft failed. They ejected near Silchar, 325 km away. He himself ejected when burning up fuel in Afterburner after experiencing engine problems (oil pressure failure) warranting immediate landing. He was removed from Command but was reinstated as all his men went into a Hartal. Ironically, he rose to become Inspector General, in charge of Flight Safety!  

SINDHIS TO THE FORE

The Avaricious Sindhi

I may be the only bloke from the IAF to induct two types of aircraft. It often requires you to go abroad and fly the purchased aircraft back to India. I would like to add a story about petty selfishness here. It concerns a Sindhi and an equally greedy Punjabi businessman.

My team leader in France for the induction of the French company, AMBDA or Marcel Dassault’s latest production, the Mirage-2000, was a Wing Commander and the second in command a senior Squadron Leader, due for promotion within a month of returning to India. We were to ferry quite a few aircraft to India. After the first ferry, the two honchos submitted a Ferry Report and added a paragraph  in fine print that all ferries were to be led only by Wing Commanders (Wg Cdr), i.e., themselves. Moreover, the Wg Cdr not ferrying the aircraft was to go as the leader of the advance party−four weeks in advance−in order to sign the taking over documentation and return with the Ferry team in the supporting Transport aircraft, an IL-76. Thus both these selfish chaps were overseas, one way or another. This clause was deleted after the last ferry. Greed has no bounds and you will see that regularly.

This same Wing Commander was selected as the Air Attache to Ukraine while another Wing Commander was selected for Sweden. Using his beguiling charm, this scheming Wing Commander managed to persuade his erstwhile Directing Staff at the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington, Ootacamund to change over the two names so that he could go to Sweden while the deserving Wg Cdr was shunted off to Ukraine.