How Xobni Solved Some of My Pet Peeves With Email
I don't usually rave about specific technologies but Xobni is one of those tools that I can no longer work without. When I teach courses on information access, I tell my students to build functionality that solves critical problems and that becomes a “must have” tool. Build the things that users will scream about (or at least complain loudly) if you take them away.
Xobni fits that requirement. I had to remove Xobni once due to a problem with Outlook and kept missing its ability to find contact information, the contents of email messages, conversations that I had with prospects and colleagues, and, my favorite, the ability to locate messages when you don’t know the format of a person’s email address.
How often do you find that someone uses last name first, or first initial last name, or some variation on their email address which makes it maddeningly difficult to locate all of the messages (such as when using multiple email accounts).No worries, with Xobni simply type their name in the search box and all of the possible matches show up making it simple to locate the person I need – even when their email address does not contain their name! Xobni has enough intelligence to mine email messages for phone and contact information that may be spread out in multiple messages and builds acomplete profile from prior communications- automatically.
Here are my top pet peeves about email communications, how one typically needs to deal with the issue and how Xobni helps solve the pain point:
|
Pet Peeve |
How I dealt with this before Xobni |
How Xobni helped |
|
Finding contacts in light of variable email address formats |
Try sorting on From field and type in variation after variation. Scroll through similar email addresses until the correct one is found. Sometimes without success |
Xobni automatically searches on name variants. If the person uses last name first, typing in the first name will pull up the correct email address. Here is a link to a video about this feature http://www.xobni.com/learnmore/video?id=search |
|
No signature or contact info in an email |
Search through multiple messages for signature (people don’t use them consistently or sometimes not at all) or for contact info that they may have included in one message buried among dozens |
Xobni uses a form of entity extraction to derive contact information. Once a single email is located Xobni displays a compiled profileincluding any phone numbers, email addresses etc., that were found in messages. |
|
Lost attachments |
Sort according to emails with attachments and then scroll through page after page |
Xobni provides a list of every attachment exchanged with a contact as a single list that can be further searched according to file name. Associated actions can be performed like opening the attachment or opening the email that contained it. |
|
Forgotten appointments |
Sometimes an accepted appointment is deleted and it is very difficult to find the date (need to scroll through the calendar and look for the subject line) |
Xobni has a list of past and futureappointments associated with a contact |
|
Lost links |
People send links but there is no easy way to search for these. Really need to browse each message |
A tab is presented that contains a list of exchanged links |
|
Forgotten contact – but can recall the name of the person who introduced you |
This happens a lot when assistants are introduced or a contact refers me to another person in their organization |
A view of your shared network with that person is generated and presented so everyone that’s in a message or cc’d is listed. Fantastic! |
|
Address book management. Constantly adding and editing contacts in my Outlook address books. |
Locate a prior message from someone, find the info I need and manually add it to the address book |
Xobni builds your address book of “Xobni Contacts” by harvesting every email that you have received or sentwith any person. The Xobni Contact is presented with their picture, contact info, updates from LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter as all the emails, attachments. Worth price of admission |
|
The same problem is even worse on the Blackberry. |
Have to open an existing message, copy and paste the address into the message you are editing or click “email” from Blackberry menu if a new message. |
The Super Address Book syncs email addresses, phone numbers and contact info and makes it available on the BlackBerry. Even better than the prior feature |
|
Want to connect with a new contact on LinkedIn |
Copy email address, open a web browser, go to Linkedin, search for the person or add the contact using their email address. Too many steps if pressed for time |
The Xobni profile that is generated using entity extraction from prior emails is also connected to LinkedIn, Facebook, Hoovers, and Twitter |
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Xobni
Xobni which is "Inbox" spelled backward literally does run backward circles around Outlook in the search area. It magically harvests information from most social media applications like Facebook and Linkedin and continues to amaze me with it's speed, smarts and "friendliness". Now theres a term you don't hear very often in a convesation about software. I started with the free version and just purchased the $25 upgrade. I believe they are offering a beta Android app. as well to the Pro users.
Seth, thank you for getting down in the bushes to reveal some of the more detailed aspects which I am just discovering as they pop up. I hope to see you at NAB next week.
Michael Schunk