It's been a long wait, but the Office team is finally giving the public a preview of Outlook 2010, slated for release in the first half of next year. Check out the end of this post to read more about Outlook 2010.
But why wait for 2010 when ClearContext Personal and Pro have Outlook 2003 and 2007 users covered already? Here’s a breakdown of some of the new Outlook 2010 features and their ClearContext counterparts.
Ignore Thread \ Unsubscribe
Outlook 2010’s new Ignore Thread feature moves all messages in the current conversation to the Deleted Items folder. Future messages are also automatically removed from the Inbox. ClearContext’s Unsubscribe performs the same function, plus lets you review the messages later or resubscribe to a conversation.
Conversation View \ MessageContext
The new default view for Outlook 2010 is a conversation view that groups all related messages together in the Inbox. ClearContext provides a similar threaded conversation view for the Inbox. More importantly, the MessageContext window displays the entire conversation for each open message. In Pro, it also shows any tasks or appointments generated during the course of the current conversation.
Quick Steps
Quick Steps in Outlook 2010 are a way to set up macros for commonly used multi-step functions. ClearContext filing features provide many common functions without the need to create any macros — including single click filing (message or thread), automatic message filing when replying (or creating tasks and appointments), and automatic filing based on email history.
Product Roadmap
It's nice to see productivity features like these making their way into Outlook – but at ClearContext we're already working on the next generation of more intuitive, powerful and automated productivity features for email. Tomorrow we’ll post our full product roadmap, highlighting our continued mission to help email overloaded individuals more effectively prioritize, organize and manage their email and projects within Outlook.
More Info on Outlook 2010
Here’s the official Outlook 2010 preview video:
Here’s Robert Scoble’s longer interview with Chris Bryant, Group Product Manager for the Office 2010 team.