What's coming in ClearContext v5.1

[deva]

We've been talking about talking about ClearContext 5.1 for a number of weeks now, but testing and fine-tuning has kept us from being able to do a good job at discussing the details of what will be in this release. I'm happy to say that we're far enough along on the testing of 5.1 to start telling you about the features now and move into user testing soon.

The number one goal of 5.1 was to redesign the task and project management capabilities of ClearContext to make them both more powerful and easier to use. We were initially planning to release 5.1 in Q1. However, after reviewing all of the feedback given to us about the ClearContext Dashboard and how people work with tasks and projects every day, we realized we needed to expand the scope of changes to make them as seamless and integrated with Outlook as our filing and other inbox management features. That resulted in some delays, but we're now entering the final stages of internal testing and plan to start user testing in May.

Today I'm going to write a summary of the key features and changes coming in ClearContext 5.1. Throughout the week we'll go into more detail plus start posting screenshots of various new features. Of course, feel free to ask any questions you have.

Projects and Dashboard

-Completely redesigned interface lets you view project dashboards alongside associated mail folders
-Flexibility to view only the items (tasks, files, contacts, etc) you want to look at for each project
-Pin your most important projects for instant access to them
-Easily move and rename projects
-Add free-form notes (for call logs, reminders, etc) to projects
-At a glance get status of any/all of your projects

Tasks/to-do list

-Update tasks in bulk (want to move due date to next week for a group of overdue tasks?)
-Manage and view tasks by project, category, priority, etc
-Quickly add and manage tasks for any project (just start typing right in the project window!)

Inbox Management
-File project (quickly file all messages in threads assigned to a project)
-Delete upon reply (bringing this back!)

Infrastructure and performance improvements

-IMAP (preliminary support for IMAP. unfortunately due to limitations of this protocol in Outlook, many features for this are limited and/or slow, so we may not be able to fully support IMAP)
-Threading (fixing a number of threading issues in 5.0 related to messages in a thread coming from various different systems/platforms outside Exchange)
-Category assignment (fixing some issues related to assigning categories to messages)
-2010 (better integration w/ Outlook 2010)
-Suggestions (improving the accuracy of project suggestions listed)

We're incredibly excited about the 5.1 release, especially for all of our users who use Outlook to manage all of their tasks and to-dos. With this release you'll think of tasks and projects in a completely fresh and new light. We're happy to answer any questions you have, and look forward to giving you a sneak peek of what the new features look like in the coming days!

[DanielDooley]

These are a few of my favorite things:

-Completely redesigned interface lets you view project dashboards alongside associated mail folders
Needed the ability to sort mail folders by attachment to find things while looking at the dashboard

-Add free-form notes (for call logs, reminders, etc) to projects
Fantastic I can finanally stop typing notes in emails to my self and see the history of call conversations in one place

Wish - Wish there was a way to link to external files, maybe I can paste a link in the note area. The

-Update tasks in bulk (want to move due date to next week for a group of overdue tasks?)
Yes! one of my daily task is to update all my task to current or future dates depending on the days priorities.

-Manage and view tasks by project, category, priority, etc
Excited about the priority management.

Is there a process to apply for the user testing? I was happy to be part of the beta testing in the past.

regards,
Daniel

[Scott - CC Support]

Thanks for the feedback. Send an email to beta at clearcontext dot com and we'll add you to the beta list.

[deva]

Daniel,

Adding files and all sorts of other content is planned for the Dashboard. We are starting with a basic notes capability and will expand out the scope of what can be managed inside a project based on user feedback. The next couple of screen shots should give you a good idea at how this functionality will be built out moving forward.

[deva]

Here are a couple of preview screenshots (not the final user interface) of how the redesigned ClearContext 5.1 dashboard will look.

The first picture shows the dashboard screen. Big improvements include the ability to easily review all your project status, pin important or frequently used projects for quick access, and lots of ways to quickly add, update, and review the tasks that are most important to you. The "manage tasks" button at the top launches a brand new task organizer - we'll show you what that's all about next week.



The second picture is the project detail screen. Here we've added a section for project notes, and just like the dashboard, there's a powerful new task pane to let you quickly view and manage the tasks for each project. Files and contacts for each project are just a click away.



We'll go into more detail as well as provide more screenshots next week!

[dgorecki]

Looks promising.....

Any plans for hierarchical tasks or incorporation of Journal Items?

[ClearContext Support]

Any plans for hierarchical tasks or incorporation of Journal Items?

These both remain on our features list for future consideration but will not be in v5.1.

[Lorenza]

Is there any consideration for linking notes to the Office OneNote application since it is a part of Office? It might be nice to have a "basic" note that could have a link to OneNote embedded in it and go to a page in OneNote for more powerful Note capability use.

I would also like to know if the "basic" note shown in your example is using the integrated notes part of Outlook or your own internal note implementation? I would suggest using the outlook one for your "basic" app and provide the linkage to OneNote for "advanced" note taking. Then you could focus your development efforts on linking that stuff instead of developing a new application for each function.

[ClearContext Support]

Thanks for the feedback, Lorenza. In v5.1 notes are stored on a ClearContext database. We may integrate other sources in a future release.

[tony.prescott]

One of the preliminary requirements for GTD is to have a trusted system for depositing and organizing information. I have a challenge in organizing my documents within outlook because they are all linked to email. Will it be possible to drag links to documents into the "notes" Section of projects? If so, this will be a tremendous help for organizing external documentation. I can simply look up the project and refer to the associated external documents. Maybe the title of the note will be "external documents".
Thanks!
Tony

[Scott - CC Support]

Thanks for the feedback. We plan to implement the ability to link other items to the Dashboard in a future release.

[arizonanorse]

I definitely want to beta test! I am looking forward to IMAP capability and future file linking to external files.

[Djblois2]

Do you have any more screenshots for us? More than a week has passed and I am dying to see what we have coming.

[Scott - CC Support]

Thanks for the interest! More info is coming this month.

[deva]

Lorenza, tony: Making ClearContext projects within Outlook a more flexible repository for all sorts of content is a key focus of ours. We definitely plan to expand the types of content management possible inside the project, both with respect to information contained within Outlook as well as external content/data.

djblois: We are testing and finalizing the UI on our task management pieces. We'll post some screenshots of that stuff next week.

arizona: unfortunately, as noted above, the IMAP integration does not perform to the level we'd like it to, so we won't recommend it as a platform for ClearContext. However, we'll let people give it a try and see what kind of feedback we get in the beta period.