by deva » Mon Apr 19, 2010 1:04 am
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!