In one of our email usage surveys, we found that 2/3 of email users leave their sent messages in the Sent Items folder. It’s not surprising that so many have given up on organizing half of their correspondence given how difficult it is to file sent messages properly.
ClearContext Pro makes filing your sent messages simple. Press the “File This Email” button when composing a message. If a project is assigned to this conversation thread, the sent message will be moved from Sent Items to the corresponding project folder. If a project hasn’t been assigned, ClearContext will ask for one before it sends.
ClearContext will remember your filing preference. You can explicitly turn send message filing on/off via ClearContext > Options > Project Options > Send and Replied Messages with Projects.
“Looking at median time in conversation view, we noticed that typical Priority Inbox users spend 43% more time reading important mail compared to unimportant, and 15% less time reading email overall as compared to Gmail users who don’t use Priority Inbox.
If you haven’t given it a try yet, use ClearContext’s Mark Important feature in v5.2 to achieve similar results in Outlook.
“Here’s a tool that can help you take back control of your inbox, automatically, without setting up lots of rules or filters. The amazing thing? It actually works.”
“It automatically files unimportant emails, like social network notifications, newsletters, e-commerce emails, and other automated “bacn”, into categorized groups, taking it out of your inbox.”
In the contact analysis process performed during setup, ClearContext’s prioritization algorithm automatically identifies those contacts that you email the most and marks them as important. ClearContext uses this contact priority to highlight emails in the Inbox from your most valued contacts. Manually mark email important via the Mark Important button on the toolbar.
CC VIP
During initial setup, ClearContext analyzes email history to determine email addresses from which you send and receive the most email. Using this information, your VIP contacts are marked as important. By default, email received from these contacts are marked with category CC VIP and color-coded red. Manually mark/un-mark a message as a VIP using the Mark Important button. This will automatically adjust the contact priority and future messages will reflect the change.
CC OK
All messages from known senders are marked with category CC OK and color-coded green. These include messages from contacts that are in your address book – but not marked important – and messages from contacts that are not in your address book but are replying to conversations that you have already participated in.
Contact Priority
Also adjust priority via contact records. Open the contact for an important sender and press Mark Important. All future messages from this sender will be designated CC VIP.
Views
In Outlook 2007 and later, ClearContext color codes messages using Inbox category colors. In Outlook 2003, ClearContext changes the font color to indicate priority. To see font color coding in other versions of Outlook, select a ClearContext view from the Outlook view menu (View > Current View). There are three views installed during setup:
ClearContext By Date – messages ordered by received date
ClearContext Threaded – messages grouped by conversation and ordered by date
ClearContext Prioritized by Category – messages grouped by category
If you change options below, the views above may no longer color code by priority.
AutoFile automatically moves incoming "bacn" email – including newsletters, social networking notifications, shopping email, etc. – to categorized folders. AutoFile comes pre-configured with filing rules for common automated email and is updated over time. You can also create your own AutoFile rules.
AutoFile Rules
AutoFile Rules AutoFile comes pre-configured with filing rules for common senders of automated email. These rules are updated over time as ClearContext users idenitify new senders. Create your own custom AutoFile rules in one of two ways:
Highlight a message and press the AutoFile button on the toolbar or select AutoFile from the ClearContext menu. In the dialog that appears, select the group you would like to file to. All messages in the current folder will be filed to the group you selected. All future messages from that sender will be filed as well.
Click and drag a message onto a filing group in the Sidebar. Select Move on the dialog. As above, all current and future messages from this sender will be moved to the AutoFile filing group.
See below for AutoFile rule configuration options.
AutoFile Sidebar
The AutoFile tab on the ClearContext Sidebar provides a tool to view and manage these emails.
AutoFiled Messages
The top section of the AutoFile tab shows a count of all unread messages across all AutoFile groups:
Click on Unread to view all AutoFiled, unread messages.
Toggle the Filing Group view between All Groups and groups with Unread only via Options.
Select Options > Rules and Settings to configure AutoFile.
Select Options > New Filing Group to create a custom group for use with AutoFile. This feature is available for Pro only.
Filing Groups
Open the AutoFile tab on the ClearContext Dashboard to see an unread count of messages filed by group (Shopping, Social, Travel, etc.). From here:
Click on a filing group to see unread, AutoFiled messages for that group.
Double-click a filing group to open the folder that it moves messages to.
Click the check mark on the filing group to mark all messages in the group as read.
Right click a group to disable/enable filing to it. Open View AutoFile Group Details from the right click menu to manage the filing rules for the individual group.
Unread Messages
The message list at the bottom of AutoFile tab shows all unread email for the chosen group. Messages are grouped by sender. You can act on individual messages via the Actions or right-click menus:
Mark Read messages that you no longer wish to see in the list.
Delete messages that you do not want to keep.
Select Actions > Jump to Folder to open the folder that contains the current message.
Select Stop Filing for messages that you no longer want to AutoFile.
AutoFile Options
Open ClearContext > Options > AutoFile to configure the service. The following options are available:
Create Daily Digest message in Inbox directs ClearContext to place a summary of all AutoFiled messages in the Inbox once/day.
Check Allow automatic updating and sharing of rules to periodically download new AutoFile rules for automated senders. When enabled, this will send the custom AutoFile rules that you create to ClearContext so that new bulk senders can be identified.
Enable/Disable individual Filing Groups in the bottom half of the options dialog.
Double-click a filing group or highlight and click Open Details to see the rules designated for the selected group. Turn off individual rules from this dialog.
Press Apply to Inbox to apply all currently enabled AutoFile rules to your Inbox. This is especially useful after an AutoFile rule update.
Daily Digest
The Daily Digest is sent to your Inbox once/day and lists all messages filed over the last 24 hours. Use this message to ensure that you don’t miss an important AutoFiled email. Click on a filing group to jump to the folder that contains the filed messages. The Daily Digest also provides some email usage and responsiveness statistics for the last 24 hours. Disable the Daily Digest via ClearContext > Options > AutoFile.
As we prepare to take off for the US Thanksgiving holiday, here are some tips for tackling the Inbox after time off:
Select ClearContext > Options > AutoFile > Apply to Inbox to file messages using ClearContext’s automatic rules.
File other unimportant, informational messages by dragging email from bulk senders onto an AutoFile filing group in the sidebar. This will move all messages these senders into folders for later review. Watch a demo of this here.
Starting with your high priority (CC VIP) messages, manage your inbox; spending a minute or two on each conversation. Delete, Reply, File, Defer, Unsubscribe or create a Task or Appointment and quickly move on.
At ClearContext, our vision is to organize all the information that flows through email. But with the ever-increasing flood of unimportant email, many people are too overwhelmed to even get started. So we’ve created ClearContext Personal, a free product to help Outlook users get their inbox under control and see the email that really matters.
Everyone complains about getting too much email, when in reality most of us simply get too much unimportant email and don’t have useful tools to deal with it. People try all kinds of systems to deal with the glut of messages from social networks, newsletters and ecommerce sites, but trying to manage folders, labels and multiple accounts fails over time for many people because it is too much work. The result is that people spend too much time dealing with messages that aren’t important.
ClearContext Personal makes that information easier to deal with by doing three things:
Automatically filing unimportant messages out of your inbox to deal with later
Creating a daily digest of all autofiled email, so you never lose any information
Highlighting email from important senders in your inbox without any confusing rules or training
We’re not the only ones to recognize the huge challenge people face dealing with all these messages. Gmail created Priority Inbox to try and tackle the issue. And in their new messaging platform, Facebook acknowledges the problem by separating mail into two inboxes – one for messages from your friends and another for all other messages.
Today, ClearContext brings that type of next-generation inbox functionality to the hundreds of millions of Outlook users facing similar problems with email. With ClearContext Personal, we’ve focused on making everything clear and easy to understand for the user. “Bacn” emails such as newsletters and notifications are automatically separated into “AutoFiled” folders – and organized into categories like Travel, Social, Shopping, etc. And simply hit the “Important” button to have all email from specific people highlighted as VIP emails. No complicated rules or configuration, just install and the AutoFile service will regularly update with new rules to automatically file and categorize email – so you can focus on the important emails in your inbox.
And for users that would like to also manage all of their email, tasks, appointments, files, and contacts into projects in Outlook, try a free 30-day trial of ClearContext Pro
We’re very excited to announce that ClearContext Pro v5.2 is now available for download. ClearContext 5.2 introduces a completely new module to automatically filter and manage all the “bacn” newsletter and notification emails you receive.
AutoFile
Automated emails (notifications, newsletters, coupons, etc) are now automatically categorized and filed for you. The AutoFile service regularly updates with new rules to manage unimportant email.
A new AutoFile tab in the ClearContext sidebar lets you quickly review and manage all your AutoFiled messages, and the Daily Digest provides a summary of AutoFiled messages so you don’t have to worry about losing any information.
When upgrading from v5.1 or earlier AutoFile is enabled by default, including sharing AutoFile rules you create and downloading updates. Adjust these settings in ClearContext > Options > AutoFile.
Other Features
A number of minor enhancements have been made to increase the flexibility of the ClearContext Dashboard and Task Organizer functionality. These include support for people who organize by start date and undated tasks, as well as subproject and optional appointment views in the Organizer Review tab.
The Contra Costa Times ran a story by Laura Casey on the supposed death of e-mail. ClearContext CEO Deva Hazarika is quoted:
In fact, e-mail is only becoming more important for working professionals, says Deva Hazarika of ClearContext of San Francisco, a software company that helps people organize all the information that flows through e-mail.
…
"People need information to be traceable. They need to look back at information. That’s why all of important conversations are pretty much staying with e-mail right now," Hazarika says. "E-mail is really not only sticking around, but it’s getting entrenched. It’s really the one place where I can reliably send (information like receipts from Amazon or business) communication to you."
Hey ClearContext fans, we've been heads-down working on a few projects for a while, but have a few big announcements coming up in November! - 6 months ago
In one of our email usage surveys, we found that 2/3 of email users leave their sent messages in the Sent Items folder. It’s not surprising that so many have given up on organizing half of their correspondence given how difficult it is to file sent messages properly.
a project is assigned to this conversation thread, the sent message will be moved from Sent Items to the corresponding project folder. If a project hasn’t been assigned, ClearContext will ask for one before it sends.
The Gmail team 
Dave Johnson at BNET had this to say about ClearContext Personal
During initial setup, ClearContext analyzes email history to determine email addresses from which you send and receive the most email. Using this information, your VIP contacts are marked as important. By default, email received from these contacts are marked with category CC VIP and color-coded red. Manually mark/un-mark a message as a VIP using the Mark Important button. This will automatically adjust the contact priority and future messages will reflect the change.
Also adjust priority via contact records. Open the contact for an important sender and press Mark Important. All future messages from this sender will be designated CC VIP.
AutoFile Rules AutoFile comes pre-configured with filing rules for common senders of automated email. These rules are updated over time as ClearContext users idenitify new senders. Create your own custom AutoFile rules in one of two ways:
The top section of the AutoFile tab shows a count of all unread messages across all AutoFile groups:
Open the AutoFile tab on the ClearContext Dashboard to see an unread count of messages filed by group (Shopping, Social, Travel, etc.). From here:
The message list at the bottom of AutoFile tab shows all unread email for the chosen group. Messages are grouped by sender. You can act on individual messages via the Actions or right-click menus:
Daily Digest 
As we prepare to take off for the US Thanksgiving holiday, here are some tips for tackling the Inbox after time off:
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