Entries tagged with email - Channel 10

Outlook Connector Version 12.1 Beta Released

sarahintampa — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:52:00 GMT

The Microsoft Office Outlook Team have just announced a new beta version of the Outlook Connector - the add-in that lets you sync your Windows Live Hotmail data in Outlook. In the past, email and contacts syncing was available for free, but syncing your calendar was only available with a subscription service. No more! Calendar sync is free! Not only that, but the calendar syncing service now also syncs with the Windows Live Calendar Beta service, too! That means you can sync your work calendar in Outlook to your personal calendar in Hotmail to your family calendar in Windows Live Calendar and vice versa. And since Windows Live Calendar supports calendar sharing, other shared calendars that you have access to will also sync back to Outlook. The new Outlook connector is faster, more reliable, and, as always, free. You can download it from here.

Have Urgent Emails Find You With AwayFind

sarahintampa — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:24:00 GMT

Recently, I wrote about an email overload solution that did not impress me, but here’s one that does: AwayFind. While it’s not necessarily the absolute be-all end-all solution to today’s information overload situation, it certainly has more usefulness than Attent’s virtual economy where emails are given prices.

What AwayFind offers instead is the ability to step away from your email without missing the really important items – the “emailed emergencies,” so to speak. The service works via an auto-responder which simply states something like:

Messaging me about something I need to know today (like a canceled meeting)? Please click here to get my attention:

http://awayfind.com/username

You can, of course, edit this message to include other details like when you plan on checking email, whether you’re on vacation, or the phone number to someone else who’s available to help.

If the email was indeed very urgent, the sender will (hopefully) click the link to get in touch with you. This takes them to a web page where they fill in their contact info and the message (which they will likely copy-and-paste from the original email).

The form is not too cumbersome to fill out, but has just enough fields that people will consider whether or not it’s worth their effort. This should help address the slew of email senders who tend to think that their emergencies are your emergencies. If anything, they’ll just go find someone else to get them through their current crisis.

The AwayFind service comes in two variations: a basic, free service and a professional version for $5/month. Most people will need the professional version, as the free service only offers 5 text messages per month. Of course, even the Professional version is somewhat lacking in that department, too, as it only provides 30 texts per month. Then again, hopefully, you don’t have 30 emergencies every month – that’s one emergency per day! Still, it would be nice not to be limited considering that you’re paying for the service.

You can also have email notifications sent to you when someone fills out a form. Ideally, these would be sent to an alternate address (like your personal address), so you’re not tempted to read your other work emails when you receive these alerts. The service actually supports as many different email addresses as you would like.

Whether you’re on vacation, on the road, really busy, or simply overloaded with email, AwayFind can help the most important messages reach you. To try the service for yourself, you can sign up here.

Email Overload: Band-Aids Are Not Solutions

sarahintampa — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 16:57:00 GMT

A company called Seriosity has introduced a new tool for email productivity, Attent, which attacks what they say is the main source of information overload: SENDERS! Yes, it’s the people sending email that are the real problem that need to be addressed, according to Attent, so they’ve come up with a system for businesses to implement which is supposed to make people stop and consider if something is worth emailing.

With Attent, each employee is given a set amount of “Serios” per week, which are basically like virtual dollars. For each email you send, you can attach a certain number of Serios to it, depending on importance. More important emails are sent using more Serios. The system works as an Outlook plugin, and, since it only works with other people who also use Attent, the company would have to roll this out to everyone to make it an effective tool.

While this is an interesting idea, the reasoning behind this idea is that you can force people to email less by forcing them to calculate how much they can “afford” to email, and that seems to me a pretty much a knee-jerk reaction to dealing with info overload.

For one thing, Attent can’t stop people outside the company from emailing, so it only forces internal employees to turn to phone calls and face-to-face requests which may be even more disruptive than emails.

From personal experience, I found that a lot of people chose to email simply because email was the absolute fastest way to send out a request for help, a question, or to share a message with a large number of people. When this became a burden, such as it was at one of my I.T. jobs, the real cause that should have been addressed was why were people turning to email instead of using the tools to them at hand? Why were people sending emails instead of logging help desk tickets? Why were people sending emails instead of referring to online documentation? Why were people sending emails instead of doing the job themselves – which they had the ability and permissions to do, but not the know-how?

The problem that must be addressed in every company are the underlying causes that lead some people to use email far more than necessary – and use it first, without thinking things through. This tool, Attent, aims to do that, but without deeper understanding about what’s wrong in the particular company.

For example, in my situation, implementing a I.T. support email address that directly posted items to the helpdesk instead of arriving in my inbox would have been a big help. Training people where to find the answers they need and how to use the tools we had in house would also have cut down on the emails. (Unfortunately, I didn’t have the authority to implement changes, because believe me, I would have!)

At another job of mine, where I did have authority to make changes, I spent a good part of a day out of the new hires’ week of training teaching the new employees about our in-house web resources – one of which was a SharePoint site. Even for those who had never been exposed to SharePoint, the majority were able to understand pretty quickly how they could use it and it definitely helped cut down on requests in the future as people weren’t emailing in basic questions like where to find a certain file or bit of information. They already knew where it was online.

Often businesses tend to overlook the value of training, but then they end up working harder due to the lack of training of their new employees. The value of real, instructor-led training is something every business needs to understand because, once in the thick of things, employees will never find the time to study user manuals or do research – everything becomes “I need an answer now.” The best time to reach employees and set out what the expectations are for them is at the very beginning of employment before they become reliant on using their preferred tools and processes that result in increased efficiency for them, but that decrease the overall efficiency of the company as a whole since they put the burden on other people who have mastered the use of the company’s informational systems.

Of course, training isn’t a panacea for the entirety of the information overload problem, but it’s certainly a better use of a company’s money that setting up a virtual economy where emails have a price tag associated with them, in my opinion.

For dealing with the remainder of the email, tools that add efficiency to the process of sorting through your inbox - like my business email add-on of choice, ClearContext - are really the way to go. Heavy use of filters, rules, and informational auto-responders can also help cut down on the flood. However, real solutions to today’s information overload problem are going to much more in-depth and complex than an Outlook plugin. Maybe IORG will come up with some answers for us.

(Image courtesy of Seriosity)

ClearContext Personal Launches Beta

sarahintampa — Thu, 29 May 2008 11:09:00 GMT

If you're swamped by email in your Outlook inbox, you have to try ClearContext, an Outlook add-in that helps analyze and organize your mail. The company has just launched a new product called ClearContext Personal, available as a free download that everyone can use (currently in private beta according to their product page, but a sign up list is available).

You may remember some of our earlier coverage of ClearContext (click here for 7 Outlook Tips). Now the company is rebranding their product naming conventions a bit along with the launch of several new features. The previous professional (paid) version of the software was called ClearContext IMS v4. Now, it's a much more understandable "ClearContext Professional." Registered users of IMS can upgrade and get access to the new features for free.

For everyone else, ClearContext Personal edition is offering some great tools which include the ability to see attachments and contacts from emails in each folder, the ability to save, sort, and forward those attachments, the ability to create distribution lists, meeting requests, etc. from those contacts, and more.

Back when I was a regular ClearContext user at my I.T. job, one of my favorite features were the buttons that let me instantly file either individual emails or entire conversations with one click. Once I had everything set up properly, email came in already categorized, so I wouldn't even need to tell it what folder it belonged in. Of course, for the times I did need to categorize the email, it was only a matter of typing the first letter of the folder's name and hitting "Enter" to assign the category. (Love keyboard shortcuts!)

However, it looks like the next version of ClearContext Personal is offering a feature that can even trump that - the ability to explore and preview your attachments within Outlook just like you were browsing a folder on your desktop. (You have to see the screenshot). That looks extremely useful.

Other ClearContext Personal features include threaded conversations, highlighting of the most important messages in your inbox, and "Notifications Managers" that automatically move what we fondly refer to as "bacn" out of your inbox. (What's bacn? click here to find out. Short answer is "email you want, but not right now").

The new features should certainly help heavy Outlook users get a better reign on their inboxes if they can take a break from their email long enough to install and configure the add-in!

PCWorld Tells You How To Do Everything Faster

sarahintampa — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:05:00 GMT

A new article over at PCWorld.com offers up 22 tips on more efficient ways to perform common tech tasks - things like reinstalling Windows, backing up your data, creating a podcast, making a web site, sharing photos, and more. Here are a few sample tips from the article:

Add a Folder to Your Favorites: Drag the beloved folder from Windows Explorer to the Start button, and from there to the Favorites menu. In Windows XP, you also have the option of opening the folder and then clicking Favorites, Add to Favorites from inside the Explorer window.

Fix a Photo's Exposure: Microsoft's Windows Live Photo Gallery app improves on Vista's Photo Gallery program. Select Fix, Adjust Exposure In Windows Live Photo Gallery (which runs in both Vista and XP), and you'll get both Highlights and Shadows sliders and a histogram, as well as the familiar old Brightness and Contrast options.

Read the News: A number of free services can send you RSS feeds over e-mail. My favorite is SendMeRSS.com, which is so easy that you don't even have to register with the site, although doing so will make adding feeds simpler. Just enter the URL for the RSS feed you want, type in your e-mail address, and click Feed. From then on, new items will automatically appear in your inbox.

Email Large Files: My rule of thumb: Never e-mail more than 1MB of content without the express permission of the recipient. As an alternative, try YouSendIt, a brain-dead-simple take on the FTP transfer. The service is free for any file under 100MB, and individual files can be downloaded up to 100 times. You don't even have to sign up and enter a password (though the service offers additional features if you do, and even more if you pay). Just enter both e-mail addresses, point to the file, and click the Send button.

There are eighteen other great tips like those above, so you're sure to discover some tip, idea, or software app to use that you didn't already know about before.

i'm Making a Difference - Now in Your Email, Too!

sarahintampa — Wed, 07 May 2008 14:12:00 GMT

You've heard about the i'm initiative before - it's the charitable movement that allows you to donate to your favorite causes just by using IM. Now, you can participate in both Windows Live Messenger or Hotmail or both. You can choose to support the same organization in both places or pick a different one for each service. To get started, go to http://im.live.com to join. This program is currently available only in the U.S. and benefits organizations like the American Red Cross, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, the National AIDS Fund, National Multiple Sclerosis Society, ninemillion.org, Sierra Club, StopGlobalWarming.org, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, The Humane Society of the United States and the U.S Fund for UNICEF. (via LiveSide)

Twitter+Email+Flickr+Virtual Earth = Twisney.com!

sarahintampa — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 21:35:00 GMT

What do you get when you combine Disney World, Twitter, Flickr, and Microsoft's Virtual Earth? You get the awesome site Twisney.com! The site lets you send in email, IMs, text messages, or tweets in order to update the Virtual Earth map with your photos and news. When you send in your status update to Twisney.com, they match it to a location on the map by looking at the first few words of your message. You can use an abbreviation, a paraphrased name, or the location's full name as found on your map of Disney.

Examples:

btmr, on the front car of the train, let 'er rip!
thunder mountain, on the front car of the train, let 'er rip!
Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, on the front car of the train, let 'er rip!
thunder mountain rr, on the front car of the train, let 'er rip!

If you're emailing in your update from a mobile phone, just attach the picture to the email, and send it to these instructions. That way, all your photos will be available from one page: www.twisney.com/username, which you can then share with your family and friends.

You can keep tabs on other Twisney users from your mobile phone from the mobile version of the site: http://www.twisney.com/mobile/overview

All the photos sent in to Twisney are uploaded to the Twisney group on flickr. You can also see them on a map here.

How To Search Your PSTs with Vista's Built-In Search

sarahintampa — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 15:32:00 GMT

Do you archive your email to PST files (maybe due to a corporate policy limiting your mailbox size)? If so, you know that even though it's archived, you will still need to access those old emails from time to time. If you don't want to keep all your archives open in your Outlook, there is another way...if you use Windows Vista. With Vista's built-in search option, you can specify that you want PSTs to be indexed (this is not turned on by default). It's pretty easy to set this up, just follow these steps:

Go to the Control Panel
Choose "Indexing Options"
Click on the "Advanced" button
Click on the "File Types" tab
Check the checkbox next to "PST" to include it in the search
Select the bullet next to the option "Index Properties and File Contents"
Click OK and OK again on the message that appears.

You're done! Now you can use Vista's built-in search to find that email you need!

Get a yourname@live.com email now!

MaxPowerhouse7 — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 22:23:00 GMT

Ever since we came out with live.com I have been a huge fan of the domain name. You say "Google it" I say "Live it!" To each his own.

Either way, for a long time I have been asking the product teams to use username@live.com instead of user@hotmail.com as my email address... and today they have delivered! Starting right now you can go here and register a name, like clownmember.f4r7@live.com.

Sign Into Hotmail With One Click

sarahintampa — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 07:27:00 GMT

Did you know that you can sign into Hotmail with just one click? Neither did I, until I saw this post on Windows Live Chronicles blog. Here's how it works:

Install the "Windows Live Sign In Assistant." Currently, this comes with Windows Live Messenger if you check the option to "Install Windows Live Sign-in Assistant."
Go to http://mail.live.com instead of http://www.hotmail.com
Check "Remember on this computer", and "Remember my password," then click "Login."
Repeat process if you have more than one account. (For details on those steps, see their blog post.)
From now on, you can access your mailbox from mail.live.com with one click!

Outlook 2007 Tip: Preview PDFs Automatically

sarahintampa — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 18:48:00 GMT

Did you know that Outlook 2007 can be configured to allow you to preview PDF attachments automatically? With this handy tip from the Living-With-Outlook blog, you can easily set up your Outlook to allow PDF previewing right in the Outlook's Preview Pane. To get started, you first need to download the latest version of Adobe's Acrobat Reader (currently version 8.1). After it's installed, restart Outlook, and locate an email that has a PDF attached. You should now be able to preview the file just like you would any other previewable file - just click the PDF icon in the Reading Pane and your PDF will display to the right of your message list. Longer PDFs will be scrollable using the scroll bar or arrow keys. When you're finished previewing the attachment, one more click will easily return you to the email message.

Windows Live Custom Domains

sarahintampa — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 17:13:00 GMT

At the Windows Live Custom Domains site, you can sign up to receive unlimited domain name email addresses for a domain name that you already own or you can purchase a domain through one of the site's partners. The free service is hosted and managed by Microsoft, so you don't have to worry with equipment or scale issues and can just focus on running your business.

The Custom Domains service also lets you manage your domain accounts online using the provided web tools or you can allow your site's visitors to create their own accounts using open membership. These custom domain name email addresses work out-of-the-box with Windows Live and MSN services, like Messenger and Spaces and have 2 GB of storage per mailbox. The service is initially limited to 100 email addresses at first but can be upgraded for free to an unlimited number by completing a short questionnaire.

Customized Outlook Conversations View

sarahintampa — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 09:02:00 GMT

Would you like a way to keep track of all the conversations that you initiated in your Outlook email? This can be done by combining an Outlook view with a search folder. Follow the steps below and you will have a folder that shows your email as conversation threads:

Create a new search folder (New -> Search Folder)
Specify Inbox and Sent items as the only folders to include in the search, but don't specify any search criteria. The search folder will show all items from the Inbox and the Sent Items folder.
Create a new view by copying the "Messages" view (In Outlook 2003 - View, Arrange By, Current View, Define Views, then copy the "Messages" view)
In the view, select the option to Group by "Conversation" and Sort by "Conversation index."
Click the Filter button and go to the SQL tab.
Check the "Edit these criteria directly" checkbox.
Copy and paste the DASL filter from below, changing the text "your name" to your actual name:

"urn:schemas:httpmail:fromname" = 'Your Name' OR(("urn:schemas:httpmail:displayto" LIKE '%Your Name%' OR"urn:schemas:httpmail:displaycc" LIKE '%Your Name%') AND("urn:schemas:httpmail:subject" LIKE 'RE:%' OR "urn:schemas:httpmail:subject" LIKE 'AW:%'))

8. Apply the new view on the newly created search folder

Thanks to Carsten Kinder for this tip!

Get Your Webmail in Your Outlook

sarahintampa — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 23:52:00 GMT

Do you want to use Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007 to check your Windows Live Mail (formerly known as Hotmail)? You used to be able to configure HTTP through Outlook, but then need a paid subscription to do so. However, with the new Microsoft Office Outlook Connector Beta, you can now download, read, and compose Windows Live Mail emails for free.

If you do not have a paid subscription, the Outlook Connector Beta enables you to use your Live accounts within Outlook to read and send your Office Live Mail/Windows Live Hotmail e-mail messages, manage your Live Mail contacts, use advanced options for blocking junk email messages, and manage multiple email accounts in one place.

With a paid subscription, the Outlook Connector Beta also enables the ability to manage, share, and synchronize your Windows Live Calendar in Outlook and access your Tasks and Notes. The beta is available for download here.

Windows Live Hotmail is here!

Laura — Thu, 10 May 2007 19:32:00 GMT

This week we launched Windows Live Hotmail, a new Web-based e-mail platform and the follow-on to its successful MSN Hotmail service. The new e-mail service will not only look a lot more like Outlook, Microsoft's popular e-mail application, but it will integrate with it, too.

Windows Live Hotmail will bring a few changes to Hotmail. Most notably, the interface was designed after Outlook, and will include familiar Outlook features, like right-click and drag-and-drop capabilities, preview pane customization, and auto-complete addressing.

Check out this clip and see it in full action. Then....go get it!

Exchange Hosted Services: Right solution, right time, right price for healthcare

bcrounse — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 22:41:00 GMT

If you are charged with managing e-mail, messaging, and other forms of electronic communication and collaboration in a healthcare organization large or small, you will be very interested in learning more about Exchange Hosted Services from Microsoft. For starters, check out the new audio-cast on this topic in my House Calls for Healthcare Professionals series. This just might be the solution you've been waiting for.

Click below to access the programs

Exchange Hosted Services: Secure email communication and collaboration in healthcare
This program is also available in MP3 for download.

Program Introduction and Guests:

E-mail communication has become the norm for consumers and business people. And when it comes to healthcare, consumers have a growing expectation that they should be able to communicate electronically with their doctor or hospital, just as they do with their bank, retail store, or other service industry provider. Striving to increase efficiency and curb rising costs, healthcare providers are turning to e-mail to replace paper-based communications. But healthcare poses some special challenges when it comes to maintaining confidentiality and privacy. To address issues raised by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and other regulatory requirements, healthcare organizations must evaluate and implement organization-wide security best practices and technologies—adding potential complexity and expense to the equation. Finally, there’s a solution for more secure e-mail communication for healthcare: Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services.

Panel guests:

•

Forrest Hobbs, director of sales and market development for Exchange Hosted Services (formerly known as Frontbridge Technologies), has worked on Exchange Hosted Services since 2001. He develops and implements programs for sales, marketing, and business development. Previously, Forrest headed business development for TTI/Vanguard, a technology think tank for Fortune 500 companies and government agencies.

•

Danny Bohm, senior product manager for Exchange Hosted Filtering and Exchange Hosted Encryption, has worked with Exchange Hosted Services and its customers since 2003. Prior to that, Daniel led research and development and operations teams at iBeam Broadcasting, a streaming media production and hosting company.

Additional resources

Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services

I hope you enjoy the program!

Bill Crounse, MD Healthcare Industry Director Microsoft

ClearContext: Prioritize your email!

Laura — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 21:18:00 GMT

Is your email Inbox an unmanagable trash fire? Deva Hazarika, CEO of ClearContext, stopped by to show me how their Outlook addition will apply logic to your inbox, sorting and sifting your emails in ways that make you an efficient comm machine. Working like a digital butler, ClearContext watches your email patterns and quickly learns who is important and who can wait. Whether you go for the free version or step up to the pro package, your inbox will thank you. Check it out for yourself!