ClearContext Corporate Blog

One of the new features in the latest ClearContext release is the implementation of suggested Topics.  ClearContext analyzes your email patterns and suggests Topics based the message sender.  Change the number of suggestions made via ClearContext > Options > Preferences > Topic Options.

If upgrading from a previous version of ClearContext, go to ClearContext > Options > Analyze Contacts and re-scan your email history. This will help ClearContext give accurate Topic suggestions when filing.

We are pleased to announce the release of ClearContext Personal and ClearContext Professional.  This release includes a number of our most requested features and makes organizing email and projects easier than ever.  Please upgrade soon, we’re confident you’ll find this release a huge step forward for ClearContext. (Please note that this is a complimentary upgrade for all of our registered IMS v4 customers).

We also would love your help in spreading the word.  In addition to the powerful new capabilities in Pro, with ClearContext Personal we now have a completely free solution for people who simply want to keep their inbox more organized and file their messages faster – please let your friends know about which product you think is right for them!  Thanks!

ClearContext Personal

Personal is a free Microsoft Outlook add-in for to organize your email and make your inbox useful again.  See our brief video for an introduction:

New Personal features include:

Suggested Topics

ClearContext automatically suggests the right folders to instantly file messages.

Attachment Explorer

Browse attachments in Outlook just like you view files in Windows.

FolderContext

View all the contacts and attachments contained in each folder.

ClearContext Professional

Pro includes all of the features of Personal plus the ability to organize and manage projects within Outlook.  This is a complimentary upgrade for all of our registered IMS v4 customers.  Here’s a 1.5 minute demo:

New Pro features include:

Tabbed Dashboard

Open each of your projects in tabs so that you can refer to them throughout the day.

Attachments and Contacts by Topic

ClearContext displays all contacts and attachments associated with the current project.

Download Pro here.  If you are using Personal and would like to try pro, select ClearContext > Try ClearContext Professional within Outlook.

Thanks!

Thanks to everyone who helped beta test this release.  It’s really rewarding to have such a passionate group of users willing to give feedback on pre-release products. 

As we near completion of our latest release, we are mapping out the future of the product.  Please take a moment to complete this brief, 10 question survey about the features you use most and the future features you would most like to see.  Our product development is driven by customer feedback – your answers will have a direct impact on the future of ClearContext.

We opened the survey last week to registered users and the data so far has been extremely valuable.  We were pleased to find that many of the feature suggestions will be addressed in the next release of ClearContext Professional. 

For example:

   

   

“I hope to see [the Dashboard] improved with future releases.”

   

In the next release, the redesigned Dashboard will provide a tabbed interface for quickly accessing multiple projects and better interactivity throughout.

   

   

“still too many keystrokes to assign topics. Not enough intelligence in figuring out what the topic should be.”

   

ClearContext Professional suggests Topic assignments based on email history and we have streamlined the assignment of Topics throughout the application.

   

   

“…sometimes I start to type an existing topic name (to eventually assign the message to it) and mistype the name, click file too quickly, and a new folder is created.  …If it prompted before creating a new folder, I could make is less painful during my mistakes!”

   

ClearContext Professional does exactly this – we prompt before creating a new folder.

   

   

“I don’t need a Clear Context Topics folder, why does it not work off my inbox?”

   

With the release of v2, the Inbox can be used as the root for Topic filing.  Details on changing this setting are available here.  The release of ClearContext Professional will support using the root of your mail file for filing, effectively making all of your mail folders Topic folders.

Some other questions that came out of the survey are below:

   

“I would like to be able to flag 3 of these topics as my high priority topics and have a view where I can see what topics are my highs, mediums and lows.”

   

Use a folder/sub-folder arrangement for prioritizing your Topics, placing your most important Topics as a sub-Topic of “1 – Very High”.  Then use the View Sub-Folders feature in the Dashboard to view all of your Very High Topics.  For more detail, see our Topic Management Tips.

   

“Topic assignment had a bug, when using with Exchange server, then any assigned sent e-mails are not assigned but end up in SYNC ISSUES and appear to be lost”

   

Quirky Exchange issues like this one are always the result of a corrupt mail file.  Follow step #3 here to repair.

   

   

“The current Beta is not working well with XOBNI…”

   

The Xobni team is working on a fix for this.  Follow this post for updates.

Thanks to everyone who has taken the survey so far.  If you haven’t given your feedback yet, please go there now.  Leave your email address in a comments field if you’d like a response.

Thanks!

Lifehacker has posted a list of email innovations they would like to see become commonplace in email applications.  Between the items listed and wishes in the comments of the post, it looks like ClearContext has pretty much got Outlook users covered.  Let’s take a closer look.

From the post:

Snooze This Message

   

Sometimes you just don’t need to deal with an email message this very second, but you don’t want it cluttering up your inbox or lost in a folder somewhere. Adding a "Snooze button" to your inbox could solve the problem: You hit "Snooze" on a message and it disappears from view—until a day later, when it reappears again, unread and in your inbox, ready for processing.

ClearContext’s Defer feature pulls a message out of the Inbox until you have time to deal with it.

Faceted Search/Related Messages

   

Your email inbox and sent mail archive is basically a huge personal database of communication over time, and smart search can help you slice and dice it by topic and sender.

ClearContext Pro and Personal have been showing message threads grouped together in the Inbox since v1 of the product.  In addition, the ClearContext RelatedView displays all messages, tasks and appointments in the current conversation as an integrated window within each item, giving a clear context for the current message you are working with.

From the post’s comments:

Notify me if no reply in X days.

   

Am I the only one who sees a need for this? How many times have you sent an e-mail that requires a reply and the jerk…I mean colleague…at the other end ignores it? Better yet if you could send an automated nag after a given period of time.

Use ClearContext Pro’s follow-up feature to notify you if you don’t receive a timely reply from an important email.

MUTE THREAD.

   

I get so much traffic at work from threads that I don’t need to see. When it first becomes irrelevant, I would like to be able to click a button and mute the thread, whereby all further messages in that thread go straight to a folder without cluttering my inbox.

Yep, got that too.  Unsubscribe – available in both Pro and Personal.

ClearContext also adds message prioritization, automatic filing, and advanced attachment viewing and management.  What else would you like to see?  Reply to All protection?  Attachment alerts?  Send your ideas to info at clearcontext dot com.

Inc Magazine has named ClearContext “Best for Organizing Outlook Chaos” in their article E-mail’s Little Helpers:

   

“What’s cool: It scans your inbox and automatically color-codes all tasks, appointments, and e-mails according to the subject matter and how frequently you correspond with the sender. That typically means everything in Outlook having to do with a key client shows up in red, while spam is shaded gray. ClearContext reminds you to follow up on unanswered e-mails from important contacts. In the pro version, you can schedule a meeting from within an e-mail — a function sorely lacking in Microsoft’s original.”

Also, CEO Deva Hazarika was quoted in this morning’s L.A. Times article You’ve got too much e-mail.

Deva is quoted in an article on the USA Today technology blog about next week’s IORG conference:

   

“The biggest impact, by far, is on business e-mail users," says Deva Hazarika, vice president of IORG and CEO of ClearContext, a maker of organizing software for Microsoft Outlook.

   

"Quite simply, the volume of e-mail people are getting is increasing and is more time consuming," Hazarika says. "On average, over the last few years it has doubled, to 100 to 200, a day. And the content of each mail has evolved from a simple note to a project-oriented task that requires a detailed response."

Last month NPR spent an entire week talking about email overload:

“E-mail. It was supposed to make communication easier, maybe even make life more manageable. The benefits are obvious — speed, global reach, mobility. But many people feel burdened rather than liberated. NPR looks at the e-mail assault and how to fight back.”

Segments include family spam, overload, no-email fridays and email security (among others).  Definitely worth checking out.

The E-Mail Age : NPR

Kelly Forrister has a great tip on the Simply GTD Blogs:

“Feel like you’ve gone numb to the Reminder windows that pop up on your Calendar? (Hint: answer yes if you find yourself clicking snooze or dismiss most of the time when you see that window.) Don’t feel bad. Most programs are built to help you to go numb to those Reminder because they set them on everything that is timed.

I’m not saying don’t use reminders–just use them sparingly so that when they go off, they actually mean something.“

She describes in detail how to disable reminders by default in Outlook and other tools.  Excellent advice if you haven’t already done it.

Nathan Zeldes has posted the results from two of Intel’s productivity pilot programs.  It looks like “Quiet Time” was more well received than “No Email Day”.  Read for more detail.

Over at Macworld.com, Joe Kissell recommends getting control of your Inbox by following a three step process; volume reduction, filing and message processing.  Though I’m not a big fan of Joe’s simplified filing system, it’s a good read regardless of which email client you use.

Additional reading – take a look at post Intelligently Empty Your Inbox if you are serious about getting your Inbox under control.