Xobni
Terry Freedman, Educational ICT ConsultantI am in love. I wasn’t expecting this to happen, it was just one of those things. I was in my local supermarket, browsing through the latest copy of PC Advisor, just going about my business. Then, one thing led to another and, well, what can I say?
The object of my affections is Outlook. I have used Outlook for my email on and off over the years, but have never really liked it. Over-featured and unwieldy, it’s slow at finding emails and hopeless at finding conversation threads. It has some good features, admittedly, which is why I stick with it, but that slow grinding away of the search function drives me insane.
However, Xobni, which is reviewed in PC Advisor, changes all that, and does so much more. In fact, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Xobni makes Outlook work as it was meant to; it’s what Microsoft should have done to make Outlook not merely usable, but useful.
What Xobni does is index your emails and analyse them, and places an extra pane in your Outlook view. Searching is incredible, because Xobni works the way people do. Take a typical scenario. I am about to phone you to discuss the ICT Vision document you’ve commissioned me to write. What will I need before I pick up the phone? Your phone number, obviously. The email containing the brief you sent me. The follow-up email you sent clarifying a couple of points. And, for when I send you an email confirming what we end up agreeing in the phone conversation, the name and email address of your colleague to whom you always cc your emails.
To obtain all this information, I simply type your name into the search box, and I see something like this, virtually instantly most of the time.
As you can see, it has collated my contact information so that I have your email address(es), phone number, Skype link, and Twitter, Facebook and Linked-In details (if I’ve added you as a friend in those applications).
A row of icons at the bottom of the panel gives me instant access to our email conversations, attachments sent, and other potentially useful information. As for the name and email address of your colleague, that’s contained further down in the panel shown in the screenshot (which I’ve cropped to avoid giving other people’s details).
Xobni can also suggest meeting timesThe application is also linked to the Outlook calendar. If I click on “Schedule time with …” an email like the one shown is automatically generated. Xobni has looked at my calendar for the next few days and suggested times when I have no appointments.
Another feature is that it gives you lots of metrics. For example, it will tell you the times of day that people respond to your emails, the purpose being to enable you to call them when they’re most likely to be in the office.
There’s a free version of Xobni that works just fine. The paid-for version costs $29.50 and has an advanced search function and works on more than one .PST file. I tried the free version, and liked it so much I bought the upgrade. I think in terms of time and my blood pressure it paid for itself on the very first use. You can find out more about the program and download it from the Xobni website.
Reader Comments (9)
I am so glad someone has got xobni to work.
For me, when I tried it months (it might even have been years) ago, it was an absolute disaster; crash, crash, crash.
So hopefully they have got it sorted now. Sorry, though, nothing you can say now will make me go back to it.
I guess it just shows that sometimes you just have to get it right first time. First time for you was right, for me.... no.
Good luck and I hope it continues to work for you.
@Doug sry to hear that, Doug. I didn't have any probs, though it slows Outlook done at the loading up stage. agree with u that it's essential to get it right first time.
Sorry to hear about your experience. Given the symptoms you describe, I have a theory of why you were experiencing Outlook crashes. I suspect that it was not a Xobni specific issue, but rather due to corrupted Outlook data files (or possibly another add-in conflict, which was more common when we relied on a third-party library prior to version 1.9.2). Since search tools like Xobni traverse the entire email tree, they may expose any pre-existing data inconsistency. The first recommended remedy is to use the built-in repair tools that ship with Outlook: SCANPST (and SCANOST). Unfortunately, this process is quite manual and time-consuming, and the scans must be repeated until no errors are found (on average 3 times for each file). Luckily we now provide an easy way to automate this with the Xobni Diagnostics tool (InspectorX):
http://xobni.zendesk.com/entries/195333-how-to-use-inspectorx-to-repair-your-data-files
(You can run this tool even without Xobni currently installed, something I recommend for *anybody* running Outlook.) If you run into issues like this or if you have other questions, don’t hesitate to contact me or submit a support ticket:
http://xobni.zendesk.com/tickets/new
Let me know how that goes!
Thanks,
Eirik
Xobni Support
I haven't tried Outlook 10 yet.
Most of us at Xobni actually use Outlook 2010 (RTM) and we've been using its new features side-by-side with Xobni (although I ended up disabling their threaded conversations, but that may be a personal preference). On the surface, I can see why the two products seem similar, but if you dig down, you’ll see they are quite different. I think the way that we are similar is that we are both bringing the social world to your inbox (Xobni has been integrating Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn for over two years, and also Salesforce and other Enterprise offerings – and OSC 32 bit only integrates LinkedIn and Facebook.
But the differences are aplenty.
1) To start, OSC has no search component. People use Xobni to quickly find the people and information in their inbox. Hands down, it’s our #1 feature.
2) There are also significant differences with the level of integration with social networks. Unlike OSC, Xobni not only allows you to see LinkedIn and Twitter updates, but you can interact with them. Today users can invite a friend to LinkedIn or post a Twitter update without leaving Outlook via Xobni.
3) (THIS IS KEY) Xobni is able to find social profiles even in the event there isn’t an email match. This is important because many people don’t have social networks set up with their work email address.
4) Xobni also automatically merges social profiles and multiple email addresses for a single person, giving us a more comprehensive search. OSC searches by email… they consider each email address as a separate person.
5) No new software is required (beyond the initial Xobni install) in order to see social activity. OSC requires a new download and .exe install for each site you want to connect to.
There are further differences (including Xobni Rank-powered AutoSuggest, which gives you instant access to any person or email address instantly as you compose emails), but think this gives you a bit more to think about.
I hope this helps.
Thanks,
Eirik
I was in a similar situation, I had to work with outlook, but never really liked it! But then I found Lookeen, also a search tool for outlook. It is unbelievably fast! But the best is that it is so small that in nearly doesn't need any system resources! I am really happy with outlook since I've found this tool, especially because it is perfect for business with a lot of helpful features, like GPOs and more!
If you also wanna test it someday here is the url: http://www.lookeen.net