Xobni Completing Outlook: Day 1

Email management is unfortunately become a necessity in the workforce and in personal life. It feels like these days you’re bombarded with information whether the information is relevant to you or just an FYI. A few years ago, I ended up adopting an Inbox Zero policy to help me manage my email and thus distractions from email.

While drinking my morning cup of coffee and reading the Sunday edition of NY Times, I read an brief article about Xobni, a company intent on improving your efficiency on Microsoft’s Outlook product. The premise of the product is to be able to search for email, and at the same time provide context to emails you’re viewing. I already leverage a desktop search engine called Copernic that has been working wonderfully for me, but I thought I’d give Xobni a try.

The gist of it is Xobni is a worthwhile product to incorporate in your everyday emailing. The company has focused on making frequent tasks easier and enabled you to understand your habits better by presenting you with analytical information. Xobni has created a way to make you efficient without interfering and locking you into their solution. After a day, I’ve already ditched my email search solution in favor of Xobni. I hope they continue their integration efforts with Outlook, and also look into tackling web-based solutions such as GMail, Yahoo Mail, and Hotmail.

Fairly simple to install, you download, you install, you say OK/ACCEPT a couple of times, and you’re done. Just as any search application needs to do, Xobni needs to scan your mailbox and compute analytics in order to enable searching and context based data. The indexing took about an hour.

Xobni transforms your Outlook interface by adding another sidebar. In this case, that’s a forth pane no bigger than the typical sidebar containing folder information.

All information is surfaced in this pane except for analytics information which is a window on its own. Xobni’s advantage is context, its able to present you with supplementary information that can be used for further action. As soon as you click on an email, you’re presented with information about the user the email is from, the network of people on the thread, recent conversations and file exchanges.

In regards to the user that sent the email, you have aggregate information on the volume of email you send and receive from this person as well as when the person usually sends emails. Understanding when a user responds is useful when you’re gauging when to follow-up with someone who hasn’t responded yet but don’t want to be annoying. A skill I wish everyone had. You can also call the person through Skype, email them, and most importantly coordinate meeting times. Scheduling meetings can be a nightmare at times, so Xobni makes it a one button action to get the conversation started. It scrapes your calendar and emails when you’re free. Simple enough, you can edit it with meetings you feel you could move, but it takes a frequent task that takes a few minutes and reduces it to a second.

Access to recent conversations helps you review emails between you and the persons emailing you. Again, the email is presented in the Xobni sidebar to remain unobtrusive while you work. Personally, my favorite aspect is when you select a recent conversation and you are presented with thread breakdown and the first few sentences of the email. Simple, but useful.

The Files Exchanged feature ties right back into the network context concept of Xobni, files that you have exchanged in a thread or between individuals are presented for quick access. Another common operation.

Xobni separates itself from the likes of the other mail search tools by providing more contextual data as well as analytical information. Once indexing of my mailbox was completed, I was able to see summary information on the current day’s activities. Kind of boring, but helpful to identify those days when you’re being bombarded with emails.

Another favorite feature of mine, is the “Follow Up” Delay summary. It breaks down the delay in your response time for emails you receive. My personal rule is to respond within a day even if its just to acknowledge the email. This allows the person that emailed me to understand when I may be able to get back to them, and gives them a chance to focus on something else. At times I’ve personally experienced an over-sense of urgency via email because a response was never sent.

With these summary charts, Xobni enables its users to be more self-aware.

Lastly is Xobni’s search feature. It’s simple, it’s fast, and it works. It’s inline with Outlook so I don’t need to go to a separate application to search anymore. I shouldn’t have to say anymore about search, if I do, its probably too complex.