Outlook Synchronization

[bkonia]

Ultra Recall should be able to sync contacts, tasks, datebook, memos with Outlook. The user should be able to map Item Attributes to corresponding Outlook fields.

Response from Kevin:

"When you say 'sync' do you mean a way to import them, or rather a way to keep them in both places and in sync? We currently are not using the Outlook libraries (users may nor not have Outlook installed, and many different versions exist, etc) which would be required to actually keep info synchronized between the two applications (and would introduce very tight coupling between the two products). Obviously emails can be imported now, but the other Outlook items are not currently supported (and are on the list for future implementation). Having Ultra Recall stay fully in sync with Outlook is probably not something we intend to provide any time soon..."

My response:

"Yes, I was suggesting full two-way synchronization. To me, the ultimate killer app is something that would integrate with Outlook and complement its weaknesses while avoiding duplicating its strengths. For example, Outlook is an excellent email client and has good task management and datebook functionality built in. However, it's terrible for organizing and managing data. UR is ideal for data management, but has very limited time/task management functionality and of course no email. Putting the two apps together, you have something that could literally manage your entire life.

While it's true that not everyone uses Outlook, it is without a doubt the dominant email and datebook application in the corporate world, which is obviously your biggest market. A lot of users, particularly corporate users, wont even consider purchasing a data management application unless it syncs with Outlook. The other benefit of doing Outlook integration is that since Outlook syncs with the Palm and Pocket PC, you indirectly get synchronization with those platforms. This greatly expands the marketability of the product, because now you can specifically target Outlook users, Palm users and Pocket PC users, which are three enormous markets. I also feel that UR is uniquely suited to Outlook synchronization because of the fact that it's object oriented and has user-definable fields. It would be very easy to establish a one-to-one correspondence between an Outlook object and a UR object."

[igoldsmid]

Right Now I have bought Ultra Recall - BUT at the same time I am using the beta version of OMEA Pro (www.jetbrains.com) - which completely sync's with Outlook and provides quite a lot of the same functionality as Ultra Recall.

OMEA Pro is way advanced in its Outlook integration and its concept of Workspaces - as well as providing quite sophisticated views and filters across all the data.

Ultra Recall has a nicer user interface - but I'm struggling to really use it seriously due to the lack of Outlook Sync. What would be truly great is if it had full Outlook Sync plus its ability to add further information management dimensions to all the data with its current capabilities.

I realize Outlook sync is very hard, partly due to all the variations - but OMEA Pro is nearly there, give or take a few bugs. I don't think it is possible for a product to really compete now without Outlook sync / integration...

Regards, Ian

[bkonia]

Originally posted by igoldsmid
Right Now I have bought Ultra Recall - BUT at the same time I am using the beta version of OMEA Pro (www.jetbrains.com) - which completely sync's with Outlook and provides quite a lot of the same functionality as Ultra Recall.

Very interesting application. However, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see any way to do outlining internally within Omea. It seems like it would be great for organizing documents that were created in other applications, but other than "Tasks," it doesn't seem to have its own internal data objects.

For example, if I wanted to create an outline for a project and within that outline I had various notes, pertaining to different aspects of the project, I don't see how you would create those notes internally. It seems like you'd have to create a separate text file in notepad for each note and then drag those text files into Omea.

One of the strengths of Ultra Recall is that you can create objects internally and each of those objects can have its own unique attributes.

[srdiamond]

Originally posted by bkonia
Ultra Recall should be able to sync contacts, tasks, datebook, memos with Outlook. The user should be able to map Item Attributes to corresponding Outlook fields.

Response from Kevin:

"When you say 'sync' do you mean a way to import them, or rather a way to keep them in both places and in sync? We currently are not using the Outlook libraries (users may nor not have Outlook installed, and many different versions exist, etc)

Applications that work with Outlook often work only with the latest version, Outlook 2003. It would seem to make sense that if someone demands the latest technology, they buy the latest version.

[igoldsmid]

Originally posted by bkonia
Very interesting application. However, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see any way to do outlining internally within Omea. It seems like it would be great for organizing documents that were created in other applications, but other than "Tasks," it doesn't seem to have its own internal data objects.

For example, if I wanted to create an outline for a project and within that outline I had various notes, pertaining to different aspects of the project, I don't see how you would create those notes internally. It seems like you'd have to create a separate text file in notepad for each note and then drag those text files into Omea.

One of the strengths of Ultra Recall is that you can create objects internally and each of those objects can have its own unique attributes.

Having started using Ultra Recall intensively over the past 2 days I am getting a sense of how important those - as you call them - "internal data objects" are. In some sense then, OMEA is a bit like a wiki in that it allows you to link everything to everything - but one still ends up felling 'lost' in a maze of links, as OMEA does not provide a means to create and see data structures - or to visually organization all the links in a conceptually meaningful way - and in a field of vision one can readily grasp - Ultra Recall does. It that central visual data organization that seems to be key to productivity.

Like you Brad, I've tried everything - I thought I had found it in OMEA - I must admit to being very impressed with the extensive Outlook syschronization - but I've found an unexpected and highly satisfactory productivity improvement using Ultra Recall today, a sense of getting rapidly organized with vast amounts of data that I have never really experienced before.

Very promising!

Ian

[VincentPeppe]

Dear All,

I am trying UR today. It is great, but I don't believe it is the right product for some of the tasks that I need to do on a moment to moment basis.

First, I need to be able to save anything in my browser, organize it within a flexible structure, and search it by keyword. As I am only running the trial version of UR, I elected not to have a "Send to UR" option added to my IE menu. Had I done so, I suspect UR could be a great web research/storage/retrieval tool.

I've tried ASKSAM's SurfSaver, OnFolio (a nice product) and an online service called Furlit. The online service is the perfect approach because we all need access to our data - and the ability to manage it - wherever we are (whatever computer or device we are using). But Furlit is a lousy client. UR is an excellent client. Perhaps if I ran UR on a personal server, I could accomplish this remote storage method - so that when I do web research at work, I could save to my UR server and access the data from my home machine as well. Would this be possible?

Next, I need a way to save and organize the 30 daily online newsletters that I receive. Many newsletters are in the form of email messages. Now, I do not want to be limited to running Outlook in order to search 5 years of email newsletters. There are some search/retrieval programs out there, like X1 - is that the way to go? There is the new MSN Desktop search - perhaps that will be a way to search and organize email and attachments. Anyway, I guess I am seeking an integration between UR and Outlook messages. That being said - I know how hard it can be to work with Microsoft, which does not always provide the "whole story" about how their programs work - some developers have told me that it is hard to work with them. And isn't some of the excitement we feel about UR the fact that it doesn't smell like Redmond?

As an outliner - a text outliner for creating the project plans and checklists that I like to use - it would seem that CaseSoft's Notemap is better suited than UR. I raise this issue becuase I'm hoping someone will inform me that there is a way to solve the problem described below. I can't see how to work with text in UR any better than OMEA, as described below:

"For example, if I wanted to create an outline for a project and within that outline I had various notes, pertaining to different aspects of the project, I don't see how you would create those notes internally. It seems like you'd have to create a separate text file in notepad for each note and then drag those text files into Omea."

I would appreciate any suggestions the members of the forum might offer.

BRAVO TO KEVIN

And hats off to Brad Konia and Stephen Diamond. Your individual knowledge of PIM/Outliner software is incredible. (Not too many people know what Zoot is. By the way, whatever happened to that open-source project Mitch Kapor started? Was it based on Python?)

[PureMoxie]

You can create text items in UR. Just insert a child item of type "Text" anywhere in the tree. You don't have to create text files outside of UR and then import them in order to keep text/RTF notes.

Also, many other item types besides "Text" allow you to enter text directly in the item details pane. For instance, a task or project can have notes directly within that item, or you can create other subordinate text items as needed.

Hope that helps.

[srdiamond]

You could store the file remotely, but since the program only holds what it needs in memory, I would think you would need a broadband connection or performance would degrade too much. I haven't tried it myself.

An alternative to remote storage is to use flash memory. You could get a USB flash memory key, holding I think up to 256 MB, maybe more, and just plug it in to access your data wherever you are.

There's currently a discussion at outliners.com on the effectiveness or lack thereoff of two-pane outliners for straight textual outlining tasks. I think if your outlining needs are simple, there would be no problem doing ordinary outlining in UR. NoteMap would give you more control over formatting in the outline itself as well as access to advanced outlining techniques like hoisting.

I don't understand your question about internal creation of notes. OMEA lacks a text editor, View:Item Details, if you've hidden it

Stephen R. Diamond

Originally posted by VincentPeppe, selectively quoted her
The online service is the perfect approach because we all need access to our data - and the ability to manage it - wherever we are (whatever computer or device we are using). But Furlit is a lousy client. UR is an excellent client. Perhaps if I ran UR on a personal server, I could accomplish this remote storage method - so that when I do web research at work, I could save to my UR server and access the data from my home machine as well. Would this be possible?
As an outliner - a text outliner for creating the project plans and checklists that I like to use - it would seem that CaseSoft's Notemap is better suited than UR. I raise this issue becuase I'm hoping someone will inform me that there is a way to solve the problem described below. I can't see how to work with text in UR any better than OMEA, as described below:

"For example, if I wanted to create an outline for a project and within that outline I had various notes, pertaining to different aspects of the project, I don't see how you would create those notes internally. It seems like you'd have to create a separate text file in notepad for each note and then drag those text files into Omea."

[VincentPeppe]

Right, NoteMap's hoisting is very useful.

While UR enables you to enter text about an item in the detail pane, I don't think I can use the Data Explorer tree view to "write" outlines, because it has very limited formatting options. UR seems more of a data organizer that uses an outline structure - one more flexible than Windows folders. Should I be importing my NoteMap Outlines into the details pane?

[srdiamond]

You have four major options in UR, but for this purpose; importing is probably best, but you have two ways to import.

You can add the .cnm extension to Optionsocuments:Open readable versions. Then you won't see the NoteMap outline directly in UR; there will be a link instead, but nevertheless the outline will be stored in compressed form within UR database. When you click on the link, NoteMap will open the document stored in UR, and you can develop the outline further.

But if your outline is a finished product that you want fast access to, you can save it as rtf instead of cnm. You might have to put it through MS Word to do that. Then when you import it, the outline appears as a UR document, with perfect formatting.

Stephen R. Diamond

Originally posted by VincentPeppe
Right, NoteMap's hoisting is very useful.

While UR enables you to enter text about an item in the detail pane, I don't think I can use the Data Explorer tree view to "write" outlines, because it has very limited formatting options. UR seems more of a data organizer that uses an outline structure - one more flexible than Windows folders. Should I be importing my NoteMap Outlines into the details pane?

[VincentPeppe]

Thank you. So I would be running Notemap (to outline my writing pieces), which is a single function program. And I would be running Outlook, for email, but not for project management, because it is fails there.

As for organizing my incoming information, NewsGator has a promising newsreader that works with Outlook, so if I shift to receiving most of my information by RSS feeds (which would appear as Outlook email messages), that will help.

But I still need a program to save and search for web clips and other data types. I can see how UR could be great for that.

I'm an in-house attorney focused on deals and other business projects. The company does not use a dedicated practice management program like Time Matters (which is great - Version 6.0 even has an outliner integrated into it. http://www.timematters.com). So I am left to create my own project management system. Currently, I'm using Excel, of all things, and making extensive use of the Sort function.

Incidentally, I downloaded Omea, but it won't run - an error messages says I've downloaded an outdated build. Frustrating.

Vincent Peppe

[gqmaxim]

The lack of an efficient outlook-link is the only thing holding me back from purchasing UR.

Kinook:
Are there any solid plans to implement any outlook-link in the near future? (E.g. a "Send to UR" button" like the one in Mindmanager..)

Regards,
Thomas

[srdiamond]

This discussion should be "logically linked" to this: http://tinyurl.com/6pnul.

Stephen R. Diamond

[kevina]

Better Outlook integration and some ability to link Outlook messages (and other items such as contacts, etc) are items on the todo list. I can't provide a timeframe for when these will be available at this point.

[igoldsmid]

For me, the most important Outlook integration would be linking tasks - to keep tasks synchronized between the two programs....

Else - have a reminder/tickler function in UR to alert me of tasks with a time specific setting.. rather than having to remember to perform a search...

IG