It comes as no surprise that many of our users are early adopters. Since our last product plan update, we’ve received numerous requests to accelerate implementation of support for Outlook 2007 from many of you who have already taken the plunge with the latest Office 2007 beta.
With that in mind, we are very pleased to tell you about our upcoming ClearContext IMS Pro v3 release. With this release, in addition to the Office 2007 support, we have taken some important steps towards our big picture goal of making ClearContext a full fledged personal assistant to efficiently manage your email activities. More on that in an upcoming post – for now, we’re going to focus on some of the specific functionality we’re implementing in this release. We are entering the test cycle now and will have an open beta of the product this quarter. Here’s some of what’s in store:
V3.0
Office 2007 Support (Preview Screen Shots are Located Here)
- Ribbon Support
- Quick Defer options from the Ribbon (1h, 1d, 2d, etc…)
- Integrated RelatedView in preview pane and open items
- SharePoint Sharing – file topics directly to your SharePoint discussions
- 2007 related performance enhancements, including elimination of slowness when filing
Additional Key v3 Enhancements
- Topic Assignment & Filing Enhancements – brand new UI for quick filing (especially useful for large folder hierarchies) and automated reminders to set topics and file outgoing messages
- Unsubscribe from a Conversation – "unsubscribe" from message conversation threads so future messages are automatically moved out of your Inbox
- Manual Message Prioritization – manually set message color and priority order in the Inbox
- MessageMetrics – full integration with an exciting new add-on product for measuring and reporting on your email usage statistics (we’ll have a detailed post on this product in the next few weeks)
- Total Workday Control – we continue to expand our support of Michael Linenbergers TWC system. See our partner page for more detail.
The initial release will come in two flavors:
- ClearContext IMS Pro – contains all of the features in v2 and all of the new features above
- ClearContext IMS Personal – this completely free version of our product will focus on inbox prioritization and management including a subset of the new v3 functionality
Beyond v3.0
After the release of v1 and v2 we jumped straight into working on major new upgrades of the product. While we once again have a bunch of big new ideas on the drawing board, we’re holding off on the revolutionary stuff immediately following v3 release to first focus our efforts on two key areas that a large group of our customers have requested.
The first focus area is a set of incremental features we have discussed in previous posts, including:
- Context Menu (Right Click) Integration (2007 Only)
- Domain/Address Resolution Improvements for Exchange Users
- AutoAssign functionality integrated with Outlook Rules
- Import/Export of ClearContext Settings (in the meantime, see here)
- Advanced AutoAssign Rule Management UI
- Custom Forms Support
- Prioritization in Other Folders
The second focus area will be geared towards our corporate customers. Tentatively, this will include the following enhancements:
- Advanced Contact Management Capabilities – including Smart Topic Assignment and Contact RelatedView
- Multiple machine support – “Master/Slave” mode
- Topic/Priority sharing in groups
- Enhanced capabilities for Sharing/Collaboration with SharePoint
- Enhanced support for mobile/PDA customers
We’ll have a more detailed post about this after the initial v3 beta release.
Upgrade/Pricing
Pricing is TBD on all of these products (except for IMS Personal, which will be absolutely free). We will provide some opportunities for registered v2 users to obtain an upgrade to v3 free of charge. Watch your email for more information soon. As of August 1st, every person who purchases IMS Pro v2 will automatically receive a complimentary upgrade to IMS Pro v3.
As always, we welcome any feedback you have on our plans. You can post feedback in our forums, on the weblog, or send us a note at info ( at ) clearcontext dot com. Watch this weblog for updates on our testing progress and the opportunity to try out a beta of v3.
This is great news – I’m looking forward to it (even though I love the current version, I’m an upgrade junkie).
I’d also like to see a “Delete thread” button/command at some point. That would help mailbox cleanup when I step in late and don’t need to retain a thread for reference.
Posted by Dwayne Melancon on August 15th, 2006.
Dwayne – Thanks for the suggestion. I have added it to our features list for future consideration.
Posted by Brad Meador on August 16th, 2006.
IMS 3.0 Beta Testers Wanted
We’re recruiting beta testers to try out the Beta 1 test release of ClearContext IMS Pro 3.0. Details on this release are here. If you are running Office 2007 or Office 2003 and are interested in taking part in our
Posted by ClearContext Corporate Weblog on September 1st, 2006.
IMS 3.0 Beta Testers Wanted
We’re recruiting beta testers to try out the Beta 1 test release of ClearContext IMS Pro 3.0. Details on this release are here. If you are running Office 2007 or Office 2003 and are interested in taking part in our
Posted by ClearContext Corporate Weblog on September 5th, 2006.
My two cents worth
1) How about a sort function within Auto Assign rules list. When you have a lot of rules it can be time-consuming to find the rule you want to edit.
2) Subtopic selection drop-down.
Great product keep up the good work!
Posted by Airsoft Gun Room on September 17th, 2006.
Thanks for the suggestions – I’ve noted your requests. FYI AutoAssign Management enhancement is something that we hope to implement soon after 3.0 release and we are investigating better ways to manage Topics and Sub-Topics.
Posted by Brad Meador on September 17th, 2006.
ClearContext 3.0: you can save cash and help Garth!
ClearContext IMS Pro 3.0 has a feature I dearly want: unsubscribing from threads so that theyre automatically filed out of your inbox. That one feature alone is probably worth the cost of the upgrade, but theres a way you can help me out …
Posted by Deadly Bloody Serious on September 20th, 2006.
FYI – there’s an update here: http://blog.clearcontext.com/2007/06/clearcontext_pr.html
Posted by Brad Meador on June 6th, 2007.
ClearContext IMS Pro for Outlook 2007 – Alpha Demo
Deva and Brad from ClearContext stopped by to show me what they’ve been up to – a version
Posted by Anonymous on June 14th, 2007.
I know this is an old post but are there any further planned updates do you know?
I am currently using office 2007 but I don’t like it nearly as much as 2003.
Posted by Jack Stevinson on July 27th, 2010.
Jack planned updates to ClearContext? We’re now on version 5.1. Details here: http://www.clearcontext.com/update5x.html
Posted by Brad Meador on July 27th, 2010.