ClearContext Corporate Blog

While we still think AutoAssign is the best way to create simple rules for assignment of ClearContext Topics and Priorities, in IMS v3.1.0 we also provide preliminary support for the creation of Outlook rules to provide this functionality.  This enables power users to craft more complex scenarios to assign topics and priorities using custom actions within Outlook rules.  A beta version of the ClearContext Outlook Rules extension is available for download here; along with complete instructions for use.  Give it a whirl and let us know what you think.

 We’ve added three new action buttons to the Inbox Alert Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget.  Now you can Mark Read, Delete or Reply to the message you are previewing (Outlook 2007 only).  We haven’t posted to the Windows Live Gallery site yet, but you can grab it here.  See our gadget page for more detail.

We are pleased to announce the v1.0 release of our new Windows Vista sidebar gadget, ClearContext Inbox Alert for Microsoft Outlook.  The gadget displays unread Inbox messages and, if you are running ClearContext IMS, allows you to color-code, sort and filter by priority.  Check it out on the Windows Live Gallery.

We’ve got several resources online if you want to learn more about the gadget.  Our gadget page explains the advantages of running it with ClearContext IMS installed.  We’ve got a comprehensive User Guide describing gadget functionality, and our FAQ covers various system requirements.  Finally, if you have feedback or questions about Inbox Alert, post them on our forums.

Productivity Tip

Did you see this this excellent article in the New York Times?

“Multitasking is going to slow you down, increasing the chances of mistakes,” said David E. Meyer, a cognitive scientist and director of the Brain, Cognition and Action Laboratory at the University of Michigan. “Disruptions and interruptions are a bad deal from the standpoint of our ability to process information.”

The gadget is a great way to give yourself focus on the work at hand without missing really important messages.  Turn all of your new mail notifications off and configure the gadget filter to show Very High priority messages only.  Inbox Alert will only display your important messages and you can get to the less important ones when you have some free time.  To turn off notifications in Outlook, go to Tools > Options > Preferences > E-Mail Options > Advanced E-mail Options and uncheck every item under “When new items arrive in my Inbox.”  Honestly, you should do this even if you aren’t running the gadget.  You can thank me later for the productivity gains!

As part of our v3.1 release, we have worked with Michael Linenberger to implement several new views in the Total Workday Control enabled version of ClearContext.  In particular, we have implemented a new To Do Bar view to port the TWC TaskPad to Outlook 2007.

If you haven’t yet checked out TWC and you’re looking to get a handle on your daily tasks, I highly recommend you check out Michael’s system.  He has posted a ton of information on his website, including a great guide to getting started with ClearContext and the Total Workday Control system and step by step instructions for transitioning the TWC system to Outlook 2007.

For more detail and a link to the TWC/CC download, see our partner page.

We are pleased to announce that v3.1.0 is available for general release.  As mentioned in more detail previously, v3.1.0 adds several new features, including:

• ClearContext Vista Sidebar Gadget Support
• Enhanced Automated Filing
• Improved AutoAssign Management
• Global Follow-Up
• Open RelatedView
• New Total Workday Control views

We have updated the website to support the new release and changes in the User Guide reflect the new features.  We’ve also added a new Add-Ons page to the website which shows one more item to come in conjunction with this release.  More detail on that later…

If you previously installed v3.1 when it was released a couple of weeks ago, there is no change between the functionality of that release and this one; you do not need to update your install.  We did change the installer, so our Vista Admin customers running with UAC turned off will no longer need to make a separate download.

If you’ve been waiting for the final final v3.1 release, download and install it now – I think you will find the new features very useful!

Thanks for all of the great feedback we have gotten on the new ClearContext sidebar gadget.  We have posted a beta refresh of the gadget here.  We now support Outlook 2003 and 2002 (XP) users who are running IMS v3.1.0 or greater.  The connection to Outlook should be more reliable and we’ve polished up the UI.  We’ve also resolved an Outlook shutdown issue that was tied to the receipt of non-mail items (i.e. task requests).

ClearContext IMS Not Required

This release contains standalone support.  If you have friends who are running Outlook 2007 but haven’t made the leap to ClearContext IMS yet, please forward this gadget to them.  Much like the ClearContext-enabled version, the gadget displays unread Inbox messages and allows message previews without opening Outlook.  Due to technical restrictions in Outlook 2003 and earlier, the standalone version of the gadget is available for Outlook 2007 only.

Please post feedback on the gadget in our user forums.  Thanks again for your help.

Regular readers of the weblog may have noticed that posting has been light the last couple of months.  Work on our v3.1 release has kept us busy.  I’m pleased to finally come up for air and offer all of you early access to our v3.1 release (download here).  We’ve implemented several new features along with numerous small fixes and preliminary support for our upcoming Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget (more on that in a bit…).  New features in v3.1 include:

Enhanced Automated Filing – Taking advantage of the v3 Topic Selector, file messages buttons now allow automated filing of any message, regardless of whether or not a Topic is currently assigned.

Improved AutoAssign Management – We’ve implemented a new AutoAssign Management dialog to make it easier to manage long lists of AutoAssign rules.  Now you can sort by rule name, parameters, actions, etc..

Global Follow-Up – Now for any email message, automatically create a reminder if you don’t receive a response within a certain time.

Open RelatedView – 2007 users can now click the open button on the integrated RelatedView to launch a larger RelatedView window.

New Total Workday Control Views – we have added some new views to our TWC enabled version of ClearContext, including support for the Outlook 2007 To-Do Bar.  More details and a link to this release will come in a future post. UPDATE: Download the TWC enabled version of v3.1.0 here.  More details to come on the new views upon formal release.

We have also implemented many functionality and performance enhancements throughout the product; too numerous to mention here.  I will be updating our user forums with the details a little later. UPDATE: The detailed list of enhancements is located here.

Early access to v3.1 is available here and is a free upgrade for all registered v3 customers.  (Windows Vista users running as an Administrator with UAC turned off should download this one).  We’ll roll this out to the main site after we get everything else that goes along with a release (documentation, website updates, etc.) pulled together. UPDATE2: The main site has been updated and we have rolled the release to the general public.  I have changed the download links on this post to point to the final build.  The new installed eliminates the need for a separate Vista Administrator/UAC off download.

Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget Beta Testers Wanted

With v3.1 we have implemented a backend to support our upcoming Vista Sidebar Gadget.  The gadget displays unread Inbox messages as they are received for a quick review of unread items.  It can be sorted and filtered by priority and allows a quick preview of the message without the need to open Outlook.  The gadget works with both IMS Professional and IMS Personal.  This is a work in progress; if you are running Windows Vista and would like to try an early version of the gadget, see our gadget page.

We are anxious to hear what you think about our new releases; please post your feedback in our Features and Support Forums.  We’ll post additional information about the releases as well as our future product plans here on the weblog in the coming weeks.

CNN has posted an interesting story on e-mail addiction and a 12-Step program for fighting it:

“Developed for cases such as a golfer who checked his BlackBerry after every shot, and lost a potential client who wanted nothing to do with his obsession, Marsha Egan’s plan taps into deepening concern that e-mail misuse can cost businesses millions of dollars in lost productivity.”

The 12 Steps are not all that different from most of the email tips that get floated these days, though the one that has had the biggest impact for me is #7 – “turn off automatic send/receive.”

As a bonus, check out Nathan Zeldes’ favorite email tip over on the IT@Intel blog.  Was there really a time when people received enough physical paperwork that they had to manage it as Nathan describes?

In conjunction with today’s formal launch of the 2007 Microsoft Office system, we’re rolling out a limited-time offer that should be attractive to those of you who are upgrading your team to Outlook 2007.  Thoughout the month of February we will provide a 25% discount off all group license purchases of 25 or more copies of ClearContext IMS Professional for companies that are upgrading to Outlook 2007.  If interested, drop a line to sales at clearcontext dot com for more detail.

OK, given that my current livelihood is tied to Microsoft Outlook’s success, I’m a shill.  But the blog pundits have been using this week’s official launch of Vista and Office 2007 as an opportunity to compile their lists of likes or dislikes of the new products and I feel I have to put in my two cents.  I love Outlook 2007.  I’ve been using it full time since Beta 2 and think it’s a great improvement over previous releases.  Hopefully without coming across as too much of a fanboy, here’s my top five reasons why:

1. Integrated Search

Outlook 2007 indexes your mail file and provides a lightning fast search results via a search box integrated into the app, right above the message list:

This is one of those features that should have been Outlook from the beginning, making it extremely easy to find the message you are looking for just by typing in a few keywords.  Sure, you can download any one of a number of free desktop search applications that provide this functionality; but the integrated search is easy to use and provides results right within the Outlook interface.  Think of the millions of hours that will be saved by average workers when they start using this feature.  It’s easily the single biggest time saver in the new release.

2. Collapsible Navigation Pane

I really liked the addition of the the right side preview pane in Outlook 2003, but I felt like the UI was starting to look a little too busy.  The Outlook 2007 team answered my critique with a collapsible navigation pane:

Hiding the folder list and other navigation elements on the left hand side of the Outlook interface opens up a good deal more space for the preview pane, which in turn ensures that I rarely have to open a message to read or act on it.  If I need to open a folder, I can temporarily expand the navigation pane by clicking on it to see my complete folder list.  Because I use ClearContext filing functionality to move messages out of the Inbox, I only navigate to my folders when I’m looking for something, so hiding the list and opening up more space is a big plus.

3. Attachment Preview

The Outlook 2007 Preview Pane allows me to preview my attachments when I click on them:

This is another time saver for me.  Viewing pictures or Word Documents is a snap, appearing right in the Preview pane without launching another window.  This feature is only marred by the fact that it doesn’t universally open all attachments (for example, PDF files) but instructions are available to create your own viewer if you’re so inclined.

4. Better Viewing of To Do’s

There are two new ways to slice up tasks and calendar data in Outlook 2007 – the 2007 calendar shows the day’s assigned tasks in addition to appointments and the pervasive To Do bar gives a quick view into tasks and appointments throughout the rest of the app:

This is just a better way to slice up information in Outlook.  One of the reasons we built the ActionView into ClearContext is that previous versions of Outlook didn’t recognize that "to-do’s’" – appointments, tasks, and flagged items – are scattered across multiple silos, making it difficult to get an integrated picture of everything that’s on tap for the day. In Outlook 2007 tasks and flagged messages are displayed alongside appointments, making it much easier to see what I should be working on and when.

5. Integrated RelatedView

OK, this may be cheating, but hear me out.  The killer feature in Outlook 2007 for me is ClearContext’s integrated RelatedView:

This IMS Pro feature, integrated directly into every message – is only available on 2007 and shows all messages, tasks and appointments in the current conversation.  This gives a very clear picture of all past communications regarding this subject and any actions that have been taken on it.  I write this up as one of my five favorite features of Outlook 2007 because previous releases did not afford us the opportunity to automatically integrate this information right into the message itself.  For this release, the Outlook team put a lot of work into providing more robust hooks into the application so that partners like ClearContext can build a seamless experience for their customers.  Look for even tighter integration from ClearContext and other add-in vendors as we continue to take advantage of the new API’s that Outlook 2007 provides.

Honorable Mention: Category Integration

As I discussed earlier, I’m also a fan of the better exposure of categories in Outlook 2007.

The bottom line here is that I find the changes made to Outlook for the new release provide significant productivity gains over previous versions of Outlook – it just fits better with the way that I work.  If you like the Ribbon UI in the other apps (which, for what it’s worth, took me several weeks to get used to, but now I would not want to go back), then it’s definitely worth the upgrade.

BONUS: See Deva’s thoughts on Outlook 2007 in his interview with OutlookPower magazine.