After reading Michael Gartenberg’s blog at Jupiter Research, we’d like to revisit the ClearContext vs. Outlook rules discussion. At
first blush it could appear that ClearContext simply repackages some
basic Outlook rules. This understates ClearContext’s
prioritization algorithm and email management
functionality. Outlook rules are effective at doing fixed,
pre-defined actions on individual message criteria, such as flagging
email from your boss. In contrast, ClearContext scores all
incoming messages on multiple priority levels; based on criteria
developed from your email history and contacts, accounting for
individual preferences and exceptions. In addition,
ClearContext’s conversation management functionality
makes it easy to organize, categorize, and archive email threads once you receive
them, greatly reducing the time required to process email.
For a more detailed analysis, please see our weblog post ClearContext vs. Outlook Rules.
Brad, another potential advantage is the number of rules you can handle. Exchange has a fixed capacity of 32kBytes (!) for storing rules, which in practice amounts to 10-20 rules. Email users getting hundreds of messages a day from dozens of lists easily blow this rules capacity limit. Does ClearContext work well with say 20-50 CC rules? If so, that’s another big win.
Posted by Jim DeLaHunt on November 3rd, 2005.
Thanks for the comments, Jim. We have had several users point out this advantage as well. There is no limit on the number of AutoAssign rules you can create. Admittedly, our AutoAssign Management screen can get a little unwieldy, but we will be re-vamping this in a future release.
Posted by Brad Meador on November 3rd, 2005.