Portland Scrum Master – Focus. Cultivate Awesome. Ship.

Whitelisting or Mark Email as NOT spam

If you have a email sender that often goes into your spam box here is what to do. If you learn something new, pop me an email, I’ll add it to the doc.

First, add the sender to your contact list. Many systems use the contact list as the first screen.

Then find YOUR email provider and follow the steps.

AOL

From: https://help.aol.com/articles/aol-mail-spam-and-privacy

Open the Spam folder.
Select the email.
Check the box to the left of the email.
Click Ok on the top toolbar to move the message into your inbox. Future messages from this sender will be delivered to the inbox..

Comcast / Xfinity

The instructions are more complicated for comcast. You can do it!

The web page is here: https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/xfinity-connect-safe-list

Scroll down on this web page until you see “Add an Email Address to the Email Safe List”

Gmail

From: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/1366858

You can remove an email from Spam if you incorrectly marked it as spam:

On your computer, open Gmail.
On the left, click More.
Click Spam.
Open the email.
At the top, click Not spam.

Tip: To stop a message from being sent to Spam in the future, you can:

Hotmail (or other Microsoft email)

From: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/mail-goes-to-the-junk-folder-by-mistake-f409b58c-2617-47e2-8a97-cab612d98eff

Open your Junk Email folder and select the messages you want to keep.
From the top toolbar, select Not junk > Not junk (or Not spam > Not spam). You can also open the message and select the It’s not junk link at the top.
If you’ve blocked someone by mistake, open your Blocked senders list and select the next to their name.
Add the sender to your Safe senders list.

Paula’s Note: My experience with MS is that on the desktop when you mark a single email as not junk, they will ask you if it is a safe sender. On the app you have to add the person as a contact.

YAHOO

From: https://help.yahoo.com/kb/SLN28056.html

Open the Spam folder. If you don’t see the “Spam” folder, click More below the “Sent” folder.
Select the email.
Click Not spam to move the message into your inbox, and future messages from this sender will be delivered to the inbox.

Agile, Cultivate Awesome, Retrospectives

Retrospectives – Set the Stage – Pictorama

Paula

One of my favorite Set the Stage activities is Pictorama. It is easy to produce, fun for the team and gets people in a creative space to do the work of the retrospective.

Steps:

Facilitator spreads a pack of pictures on a table.
Team members pick a picture that represents the sprint for them.
When everyone has their picture, each person describes what it means to them.

Ideas for generating pictures:

Use your favorite image search engine. (I prefer one that lets me choose creative commons images so that I don’t have to worry about copyright.) I shoot for 3 or 4 images per team member so that they have enough to choose from without being overwhelmed.
- Using search terms that would appeal to an 8 year old will help you get a fun variety. For example “weird bugs” or “strange animals”.
- If your team has some drama afoot consider searching for emotion words. Coupling an emotion word with an animal name will give you pictures that folks can talk about safely. For example “sad cat” or “angry animals” .
- If your retrospective has a theme use that for your search.
Download your images into a special directory so that you can find them later.
Printing Images (Windows)
- Select all the images you want to print.
- Right click and choose print
- Choose 3.5 x 5 in (4) on the right hand side. This will give you consistent pictures sizes that are easy to cut with a paper cutter.
- Print.

Over time you will have a pack of pictures that you can rotate through. And if your day is going bad, you can hunt for “weird toads” to cheer yourself up. It’s for the retrospective, right?