E-mail Organizer

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Anonymous

Guest
There's much talk of the GTD plug-in, and FC PlanPlus - when the GTD plug-in arrives we can all review it's qualities - for now, I need my e-mail organized better than Outlook does on it's own (I have about 300 folders and 50 rules, so it's not for a want of trying that it frustrated me).

I've found the NEO tool from Caelo to be very helpful in this regard - it has radically improved my 140+ message per day inflow. As it appears not to have been mentioned here, I thought I'd point others to it.

It is basically a comprehensive index for Outlook, which automatically files all messages by time, contact, etc. regardless of their location within the Outlook folders. For someone like me, that means no 'lost' messages because they got filtered and I didn't notice. It also means you can see every correspondence to and from an individual (regardless of how many e-mail addresses they have) as well as everything they were 'copied' in on. All of this greatly improves productivity.

But the best thing about it, is the tray icon - which reports the sender of each e-mail, as it arrives. So without even opening the inbox, you can chose to ignore the message until later - now wiht heavy inflow of both important and less so (at best), this is a real time saver.

If you're interested take a look http://www.caelo.com/a/rl.php3?i=4G0TV
(that's an affiliate address by the way, I get credited for your visit if you buy - if you really think I should not then simply go directly there www.caelo.com).
 
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whkratz

Registered
I'll second this endorsement of NEO. Some of you may have noticed a subtle reference to the program in the most recent Tip on my GTD with Outlook website.

If you experiment with NEO, I recommend that you go into it by discarding all of your current thinking about how to handle e-mail. If you hang on to any of your old inbox habits, you likely will not get the full benefit of NEO.

Best Regards.....Bill Kratz http://home.attbi.com/~whkratz
 
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Anonymous

Guest
Nelson Email organizer

Great Program! --been using it for almost a year--
I have it set up so messages from my boss and 3 closest associates arrive with a special voice greeting --

Fastest outlook search engine I've ever seen--individual folders for date sorting --name sorting --junk mail sorting etc.

Definitely worth the money!
 
H

Headhunter Bill

Guest
You mention 300 folders, 50 rules and losing emails because of the auto filters. You didn't hear this from me but I would say the GTD police are staking your house out!

With 50 rules, if your emails are filing into 50 different folders, you have 50 different "in baskets". You are not "processing" the items one at a time from one in basket.

I would say 86 the 50 different rules and process GTD-style:
What is it?
Is it actionable?
What is the next action?
Do it, delegate it, defer it.

My 2 cents.
 
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pd_workman

Guest
Thanks for the referral to NEO. It is a great program for sorting/retrieving e-mail. I often have to look for "an e-mail that ABC sent me last week that had an attachment" for my boss, and this is a real timesaver.

Can anyone recommend a similar tool for organizing the file system (hard drive/network)? I know there are a number of document management/retrieval systems out there. Anyone using something they really like? Preferably for less than $100?

Pam
 
R

randystokes

Registered
OT: scopeware vs. enfish vs. dtsearch

I know we're straying a bit off topic, but can someone give me a description of how these three programs differ from one another? Any recommendations?
 
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pd_workman

Guest
I checked out Scopeware earlier in the week, but the current version does not support indexing over a network, and seemed to slow down my system quite a bit (to the point that I could not be productive).

I glanced at Enfish, but the network version is over $200 USD, which would be $300+ Canadian and my boss would never approve it.

Any others?

Pam
 
K

Kudzu2u

Guest
Pam, have you checked out Zoot? I believe it is at Zootsoftware.com. I don't know about the network thing, but many swear by it. There is an article that you might benefit from at www.eccorocks.com, which compares a number of information organizers.

HTH,
 
C

ckennedy

Registered
Another Email Organizing Option

I've been playing around recently with an Outlook plug-in called ClearContext.

As a long-time user of NEO, I was initially curious about what advantages ClearContext (CC) would offer that NEO didn't to help me come to terms with my often bloated inbox.

The chief advantage I've found with CC over NEO is that CC prioritizes and color codes my emails as the arrive. So emails from my boss or key clients jump to the top of the stack and appear in red while jokes my friends send my way get triaged to the bottom of the stack.

As well, CC allows me to tag each email with a "topic" and then file it away at the touch of a button. It will then capture each subsequent email in the thread and apply the same topic to it.

One downside to the program is the fact that it does not include a search capacity like NEO, but I also use Copernic Desktop, so I'm covered there.

The trial is well worth a test ride. I notice on their blog today that they have a GTD implementation startegy listed using ClearContext. I going to give that a test run tonight!

The Clearcontext blog is located at http://blog.clearcontext.com/
 
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