What should we do in v4.x?

[brad]

Per our recent blog post:

4.x Upgrade

We’re planning to deliver a 4.x update in the first half of 2008. This is going to largely address feature requests people have made around the following areas:

Dashboard Display and Interactivity
Setup Improvements
Better Handling of Un-scored Messages

While some of the major components are being worked on, we’re still prioritizing a number of the specific smaller chunks of functionality to see what makes it in to this release. We’ve created a forum thread here to get input from everyone on what your top priorities are.

Let us know what you think we should be working on here, particularly in the area of Dashboard enhancements. Thanks - we look forward to the feedback!

[dgorecki]

Hi Brad:

One major category I don't see in your list is around Project / Task Management. Is that off the table until at least post mid-2008?

[deva]

David,

Much of what we have scoped out for project/task management overlaps with enhanced dashboard functionality we are planning. Some pieces of that will make it into our upcoming 4.x update, while other stuff will be pushed to a future release. It's largely a semantic distinction, but we do have some notions in mind when we think about how big a chunk of functionality we would like to deliver to actually call something a "Project/Task Management Solution."

There are two major external elements that influence how much of this task/project management stuff we build and on what timeframe. One is customer feedback - we now have a large base of users giving us constant feedback, something we pay very close attention to. The other is Microsoft. How exactly we approach things like task management will take into consideration how they are looking at hierarchal tasks and other related improvements to Outlook/Exchange.

So, the short answer is, we'll be delivering improvements in project/task management functionality over the next few minor and major updates, but we haven't fully defined at what point we'll have what we would consider a full project/task management solution.

While that didn't directly answer your question, I hope it helped give some perspective to the way we're looking at things. As we roll out product plans and feature lists for upcoming releases this stuff will become much more detailed and clear.

[cercph]

I have my topics set to be my personal folders in an offline pst. I'd like to see a function that will go through all of the personal folders and attach the folder name (topic name) to the emails already filed to those folders. I would then be able to get the historical view of those topics including emails I received and filed prior to installing ClearContext.

I would also like a toolbar option to se the Inbox View. I often switch between views depending upon what I am doing. Easily getting to the different default ClearContext views would be helpful.

I would like an option so that when the Topic button is pressed from the toolbar, I can set the treeview to be the default view.

Also in the Topics tree view, I would like to be able to add a new topic or sub topic. I can do it in the other view but not in the treeview.

Thank you in advance for considering these suggestions.

BTW, I only recently found ClearContext and am absolutely loving it. In the past 13 years at my current company, my Inbox has never been so organized. The reduced stress and the ability to focus on the work rather than the email has been fantastic.

[Hoelegang]

Brad, I would still be very interested in what was called "ARA" in June's product plan update: "tools for analysis, reporting, and alerts on activity within Outlook". Only the alert part seems to have made it in v.4, but an analysis/reporting tool on email usage would definitely add value to an already brilliant piece of software.

[brad]

Great feedback so far - thanks for taking the time to send it to us.

Hoelegang, to address your ARA comment; some of the same things that Deva says in this thread regarding project management apply. Some of the initial ARA concepts will be integrated into future versions of the product. We'll be looking to customer feedback to determine how much and how soon.

[subseaguy]

Brad,

I am a new user but like this app so much I have already dumped NetCentrics GTD. The instability was a killer, not to mention uninstall/install problems. One feature I would like to see would be the ability to have more than the three native priorities in tasks similar to what you have in the email form. In a perfect world, I would have a rating for CRITICALITY (how bad the task needs to be done i.e. A, B, C, D) and URGENCY (importance of when the task needs to be done i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4, etc). In my work, I go through about 60-100 emails per day and about 25%-50% of them generate actions. This gives me a lot of actions due on the same day. Having this granularity would be a big help.

Subseaguy

[konsta]

I'd like the ability to autofile based upon the sender name (which, in the case of some of my mail, is the only way to uniquely distinguish between two pieces of mail that belong in separate folders. I've tried using string searches in the body of the message, but that can bring my system to its knees). It would also be nice to add negative qualifiers to more complex queries.

---Andrew

[brad]

Konsta:

The Outlook Rules extension may provide the functionality you are looking for.

[konsta]

I bet you're right, as Outlook Rules do allow that type of searching, but I've had bad experiences with Outlook Rules slowing my system down way beyond what I can tolerate. Whatever you guys do in CC, it is much, much better. I've written my own addin that processes lots of rules on lots of mail, so I don't have to file them by hand (heaven forbid), but I was thinking it would be nice to be able to get CC processing that mail as well.

---Andrew

[brad]

Thanks for the suggestion.

[neepster]

Add "Delete Thread"!

Pretty, pretty, pretty please!!!!

Thanks :)

[jasonh]

How about the ability to search (really what I'd like) or arrange messages via date/category/conversation, etc as in the inbox.

It'd be nice to stay right in the dashboard an find the message that I'm looking for on a certain topic

[ClearContext Support]

Thanks for the suggestion. This is on our features list for future consideration.

[subseaguy]

It would be great if the Topic and Priority ClearContext user fields were available in the Outlook tasks views for sorting purposes.