ClearContext Corporate Blog

Chris Pirillo’s post got me thinking about Outlook mail file health.  Yes, Outlook 2007’s plumbing is greatly enhanced and should provide better stability and performance over previous releases.  But using an old mail file in the new environment could propagate whatever baggage your PST file has from prior use, making it very difficult to realize the promised improvements.  Read on…

Tech savvy folks know that reinstalling an application can often fix quirky problems they are seeing.  Microsoft recognizes this as well and has built in a nifty "Detect and Repair" feature in the Office Help menu that basically reinstalls all Office applications.  This is a great place to start when you’re having troubles in Outlook.  But it usually only addresses half of the problem.

Even when starting with a squeaky clean install of Outlook, most people bring over their old mail file to the new setup.  Unfortunately, many Outlook issues can be traced to data problems rather than application problems.  Using your old, battle-worn personal folders file on a new setup can have a crippling effect on Outlook.  If your mail file is very large and/or you have repeatedly installed/unistalled certain add-ins (I won’t name names, but you know who you are) it is possible that your mail file is corrupted.  If you’re seeing quirky issues in Outlook and Detect and Repair didn’t fix them, then it’s time to clean up your mail file.  Here’s what I recommend:

1. Get your mail file size down.  Outlook XP and earlier have a file size limit of 2GB.  Outlook 2003’s limit is 20GB.  That said, I recommend that you keep your working mail file smaller than 1GB.  As your mail file size grows, performance slows.  Outlook has AutoArchiving functionality, but I just periodically run File > Archive and archive my mail to a separate PST file by date.  When the dated archive file gets to about 750 MB (large enough to fill a CD) I back it up and start a new archive file.  All of these archive files are loaded in my Outlook profile (File > Open > Outlook Data File) and are indexed by my desktop search program for easy reference.
2. Compact your mail file (particularly after an archive).  Right click the root of the file in your folder list.  Select Properties > Advanced and click Compact Now.  This will clear out any excess space created in your PST from the deletion/movement of messages.
3. Run SCANPST.EXE against your file.  Outlook installs with a utility to analyze and repair your mail file.  Slipstick has a great writeup on this utlity, along with instructions for its use.  SCANPST may be exactly what the doctor ordered when Outlook is feeling under the weather.
4. Finally, if the above don’t help, it is possible that your mail file is hopelessly corrupted.  In this case, it’s time to start with a fresh new mail file.  The easiest way to do this is to create a new Outlook profile via Control Panel > Mail.  Once you get Outlook running on the new profile, you can add your old mail file as a separate data file (File > Open > Outlook Data File – it’s likely called outlook.pst in the default drectory) and still have access to your data.  Alternatively, if you absolutely need your old data in this new file, use File > Import & Export to import all or a subset of your old messages into the new file.

I hope this helps.  A little care and maintenance can have a huge impact on Outlook’s performance.  If you’d like more detail on any of the above, please let me know.

We have a great deal of information in the weblog on using ClearContext to it’s fullest.  If you’re visiting our weblog pages, you’ll note that I have revised the "Getting the Most Out of ClearContext" collection of posts on the right sidebar to reflect the changes in our v2 release.  The posts include:

Archive Sent Messages in Outlook – ClearContext can automatically move sent messages to their associated Topic folder – a great way to keep both sides of the conversation in the same folder structure.

ClearContext Proritization Adjustment – instructions for tweaking the weighting of ClearContext’s prioritization algorithm.

ClearContext & ActiveWords: a Script to Get Started – do you use ActiveWords?  This step by step scripts demonstrates how to use the ClearContext ActiveWords agent to map keywords to your personal topic structure.

Convert Your Folders to ClearContext Topic Folders – a quick note on taking advantage of ClearContext’s automated filing featues using your existing folders.

Holiday Email Avalanche
– You’ve got 100’s of messages in your inbox and you want to clear them
out?  Follow these tips to regain control of your Inbox using
ClearContext.

How To Avoid Exceeding Your Mail File Size Limit – use ClearContext to help proactively stay ahead of your company’s size limitations.

IMS Pro Tips – a collection of tips highighting some core features of ClearContext IMS Pro.

User Guide – this is the complete User Guide for Inbox Manager and IMS Pro.  A downloadable version is also available.

 

I hope these help.  If there’s anything else you’d like to see on ClearContext use, please let us know.

In the days following installation, IMS Pro drops four tutorial emails in the Inbox with some tips to help new users quickly get up to speed on ClearContext capabilities.  Here’s a roundup of those emails, as posted in the weblog earlier in the year:

Some V2 Documentation

Views & Prioritization

Task & Calendar Management

Conversation Management

We have released a maintenance update to the product.  v2.0.4 includes the following:

1. Eliminated a Daylight Savings Time bug that caused dates to display incorrectly in the ActionView and RelatedView
   
2. Detected email addresses now looks in multiple places to find Exchange addresses
   
3. Detected email addresses now finds Office 2007 addresses
   
4. 
   Follow-up completion now updates the % complete and completion date
   
5. 
   Eliminated a bug in open items that caused multiple toolbars to appear when using arrows to view next/previous items

We also made several other minor cosmetic enhancements.   Download from our site here.

Over the last few weeks, a number of our users have posted methods for using ClearContext as a vehicle to incorporate Getting Things Done into their lives.  As we mentioned in a previous post, one of our main goals for v2 was to build a flexible framework that helps customers work more efficiently within whatever system or methodology they use to process tasks and information.  I want to share with you some GTD-specific comments as well as some upcoming enhancements we are making that will better support our GTD customers.

Paul has posted a detailed review of how he has used ClearContext to integrate GTD into his workday.  He walks through ClearContext installation and the features he uses the most:

"As part of of my goal to incorporate the Getting Things Done way of working in my daily routine I looked for tooling that assisted me in managing my Outlook email Inbox. I had a look at the Getting Things Done Outlook add-in from Netcentrics but did not find it to support my daily work. So I looked further and found the ClearContext Information Management System Professional."

In a similar vein, Jeff uses ClearContext as one of his many shortcuts for Getting Things Done:

"More recently, I’ve added ClearContext to the mix. This is an addin for Outlook that makes organizing your Inbox very easy and efficient. It analyzes your email patterns and can move/highlight the messages you receive based on sender, topic, priority, etc. There are a number of other productivity boosters that, as you learn them and make them habits, can quickly add up. I really like the ‘task’, ‘delegate’ and ‘defer’ options, which let you turn a message into a task for yourself, delegate it as a task for someone else, or simply hide it away until a later date."

The Tech Personality blog has posted How to Handle Too Much Email:

"The technique I use is based on ideas from David Allen’s Getting Things Done, my own techniques, and a great program called ClearContext. Now, my technique is based on Outlook & Exchange, because that is what I use, but you can adapt it to your email system of choice."

Ken has posted Implementing Getting Things Done with Outlook and ClearContext:

"In time, future versions of ClearContext should enable me to better expose the
custom fields so I can do a more clearer Category/Topic grouping to link up with
GTD’s concept of Action/Project. Overall though, I am quite impressed with
ClearContext v2.0 now that I’m using its tasks features."

This is a great segue into the enhancements that we will be making to better support our customers who want to integrate ClearContext into their workday:

1. Topic Integration in Tasks – as Ken mentions above, we will be exposing topic names in tasks in a future release to support the building of custom task views within native Outlook that include assigned Topics
2. Topic Duplication in Catgories – for all you PDA users, we’re going to give the option to automatically duplicate Topics in the Category field so that topics can be carried over to your portable devices
3. Enhanced Topic Assignment UI – we have found that many GTD users have very large topic hierachies.  We are enhancing our Topic UI to better support quick topic assignment and message filing
4. Delegate Defaults – when delegating an email, we will automatically set the delegated task’s status to "Waiting on someone else"
5. Follow-Up Category – we are going to support category assignment when creating Follow-up tasks from compoased messages

We are also investigating other enhancements, which include adding additional default options when creating tasks and appointments and enhancing the ActionView UI.  For more detail on upcoming enhancements, see the recent update to our product plan.

Are there other enhancements we should be considering to help you implement your methodology of choice?  Please feel free to post comments here or send feedback directly to support at clearcontext dot com.  All of our enhancements are driven by customer requests, so please make your voice heard.

Though we’ve had a version of the User Guide available on our website since release, I finally got the opportunity to port it to PDF.  If you want an offline/ hard copy of the IMS user guide, grab it here.

On a side note, I got to play around with Word 2007 when creating this file.  I have to say, though the new UI took some getting used to, I’m very impressed at how easy it was to stylize the document, adding themes, formatting tables, etc..  Maybe the page number in the footer is a little gaudy, but I just couldn’t resist.  Also, it appears that the native Word 12 "Publish to PDF" function did a much better job of converting my document to a PDF file than the utility I was using previously.  I didn’t know I had the talent to produce such a good looking guide!  (If I do say so myself…)

Now that we have v2.0 out the door, it’s time for a product plan update.  We have some really exciting things planned for the product in the near future that we’d like to share with you.  I also want to talk a little bit about our Office 2007 efforts.  I’m going to break this into categories – v2.x, Incremental Features, and Office 2007 plans.

ClearContext v2.x
Much like our v1.1 release, our v2.x release will be 100% driven by customer requests.  We received a ton of great feedback during our beta period and will use v2.x as our opportunity to incorporate more of your suggestions into the product.  These include:

ActionView User Interface Enhancement
Topic DDLB Enhancements – Better UI for management of large folder hierarchies
Tighter Topic Integration in Tasks
Unsubscribe from a thread
Domain Resolution for Exchange Users
AutoAssign functionality integrated with Outlook Rules
Import/Export of ClearContext Settings (in the meantime, see here)
Advanced AutoAssign Rule Management UI
Integration with an exciting new email product (more on this in the near future!)

Incremental Features
These are among the additional feature/functionality improvements that we’re considering for the product:

Advanced Contact Management Capabilities – including Smart Topic Assignment
Multiple machine support – “Master/Slave” mode
Topic/Priority sharing in groups
Custom Forms Support
Prioritization in Other Folders

Our future features and additional products list remains largely unchanged from our v2 product plan.

Made for Office 2007
We are extremely excited about the work we are doing with Outlook 2007, slated for retail release early next year.  Outlook 2007 will provide us the opportunity to more tightly integrate our features into Outlook, for a seamless IMS experience.  Though we can’t officially support Office 2007 until Microsoft releases it, each subsequent ClearContext release will be made with an eye towards 2007 support.  Planned “Made for Outlook 2007” features include:

Context Menu (Right Click) Integration
Enhanced Category and Flags Support
Integrated RelatedView Dialog
Ribbon UI Implementation
Optimized Performance
Additional Office 2007-specific functionality – we’re going to delve into more detail on this later

As always, your feedback can and does help us refine our product plans.  You can post feedback in our forums, on the weblog, or send us a note at info ( at ) clearcontext dot com. We will update the plan and provide more concrete timeframes as we integrate your feedback and continue product development.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates writes about the tools he uses on a daily basis in a Fortune magazine article.  He outlines his strategy for managing email, which includes the use of an assistant to help prioritize messages:

"I get about 100 e-mails a day. We apply filtering to keep it to that level—e-mail comes straight to me from anyone I’ve ever corresponded with, anyone from Microsoft, Intel, HP, and all the other partner companies, and anyone I know. And I always see a write-up from my assistant of any other e-mail, from companies that aren’t on my permission list or individuals I don’t know."

"I use tools like ‘in-box rules’ and search folders to mark and group messages based on their content and importance."

"I’m not big on to-do lists. Instead, I use e-mail and desktop folders
and my online calendar. So when I walk up to my desk, I can focus on
the e-mails I’ve flagged and check the folders that are monitoring
particular projects and particular blogs."

It sounds like Bill’s a piler, not a filer.  For those of you who don’t have the luxury of an assistant to priortize
and organize your email, ClearContext IMS Pro can do much of this triage work for
you by analyzing incoming messages, highlighting your most important
items, and giving you sophisticated tools for categorizing and actioning messages.

Over the last few weeks there have been several reviews on our new product that I wanted to share with you.  All of these folks were Beta testers and extremely helpful in getting the product out.

Garth Kidd – Productivity Tools

"[ClearContext] Assigns priorities to mail based on thread and participant, and colour-codes and sorts your mail by those priorities. That doesn’t sound as amazing as it is. I’ve never put down my credit card faster than when told my trial had expired."

Robyn Tippins – Email Management Is Essential For A Growing Web 2.0 Business

"I’ve been using the beta for several months now and I am impressed with the ability to organize my email.  In fact, I’m able to defer some emails to a later date (set by hours, days or weeks) and they arrive back in my inbox as if they are new emails."

Jason Clarke – ClearContext 2.0 to be released tomorrow

"The 2.0 version of ClearContext
comes with a raft of new features, tons of fit and finish, and
effectively turns Outlook into the email management solution it should
already have been."

William Bartholomew – ClearContext Evolves

"Anyone who has worked with me would have heard me rave about ClearContext; an add-in for Microsoft Outlook that is invaluable in controlling your deluge of email."

Shawn Morrissey – ClearContext V2 – Get it. You’ll love it.

"Deva, Brad, and the rest of the folks at ClearContext have created the most powerful Outlook add-in I’ve found. You will find yourself touching every email exactly once (and some not even that often!) as ClearContext helps you file, defer, and followup on everything that comes through your inbox, and touching the most important items first after ClearContext automatically assigns priority based on your personal ruleset."

Finally, on Friday I had the opportunity to talk with Perry Reed on for The TabletPC Show #32.  Perry has been a user for quite a while and was kind of enough to let me talk for about 35 minutes on our new features.  Perry writes:

"We talk about how the tool prioritizes your email and facillitates filing and organizing it. We also discuss the new version 2.0 of the tool and the new features it offers. We then go over some of the technical details, particularly the difficulty of writing an Outlook plug-in and the remarkable stability of ClearContext. And we mention the integration between ClearContext and ActiveWords."

Thanks to all for helping us put the word out on ClearContext and most importantly, helping us get v2 to where it is today.  If you’re looking for more customer comments, see our testimonials page.

As I mentioned earlier, today we announced the release of ClearContext v2.  The new product line includes IMS Pro, our professional grade information management system and Inbox Manager Personal Edition, a free add-in for Outlook prioritization and filing.  For a comparison of the two products, see our products pages on the website.

IMS Pro v2 represents a giant leap forward for the ClearContext product line.  See our five minute flash demo for an overview of v2 functionality.  Here are some of the new features:

In addition, we have implemented numerous improvements "under the hood" – increasing prioritization performance, streamlining error reporting, and implementing WordMail support.

Inbox Manager got a v2 refresh as well.  Most notably, we now offer the product free of charge.  If you’re looking for a smart tool to help you get a handle on your Inbox, Inbox Manager Personal Edition is a good place to start.

On a final note, our free license program is still in effect.  Write a review of the product in any public forum and we’ll send you a key for IMS Pro.  Just forward the link to us at info at clearcontext dot com.  See our initial announcement for more detail.

We’re really excited about this new release.  Take a moment to review our new website, download the product, and let us know what you think.