OfficeTalk progress update

Thanks for all your comments so far on OfficeTalk. I wanted to keep everyone up to date with how development is progressing and to comment on some of the feedback to the previous OfficeTalk blog.

Over the months, we’ve been hearing a number of requests for improved mail server functionality, especially related to multiple ISPs, anti-virus and anti-spam. John Prior of Waterfields also posed this question in feedback on the previous OfficeTalk blog. Well, we’ve decided that the most sensible way to solve this is to include, for free, our WorkgroupMail product with OfficeTalk 4.5. WorkgroupMail is our mature messaging server that we have been selling for a number of years. It is currently on version 8. This would provide you with a complete set of mail server features, such as multiple ISPs, spam filtering features, content control and message archiving. It also provides anti-spam and anti-virus, although these are optional features that you can optionally purchase.

Robert, at Finders Heath, commented on being able to add people to the black list from the mail client. This sort of thing is possible with WorkgroupMail, using the content control feature. You can set up an internal black-list email address to which you can forward all your junk mail and this will automatically add the senders of the spam message to your blacklist, causing future messages from those people to be quarantined or deleted.

WorkgroupMail would not be integrated with OfficeTalk, but providing it to you will enable you to set OfficeTalk to send and receive mail from WorkgroupMail and then use WorkgroupMail as your mail server. Of course, if you already have a separate mail server, that’s no problem. What do you think about this? Let us know your feedback.

There is still more work to do on the UI, however it is starting to take shape and beginning to look like a 21st century product. Work has now just begun on bug fixing and one or two speedups.

Florian of Between the Lines commented on fonts when replying to email messages. In 4.5, it will be possible to specify the default font for composing messages and this will also be used when replying.

We also heard from someone who said that searching of appointments displayed the wrong time in the search results. This has been fixed.

Reply to all now no longer includes your own email address.

We’re also starting to look at bugs to do with OfficeTalk failing to decode messages correctly. If you have specific examples, please zip up the raw MIME of such messages and email it to support@softalkltd.com.

Mike Spencer of upholsterers.co.uk raised a bug relating to embedded JPEG images in messages. We are unable to repeat this. Are you able to provide any more information? We were also not sure how to repeat your offline sending of mail problem. More information would be great.

Stuart Bruce, our PR guru, who is also an OfficeTalk customer, has been at our offices this week trying to reproduce the problem of duplicate messages and having to press F5 to refresh before you can delete messages, but to no avail. Can anyone provide a reliable method of reproducing this?

December is looking more likely as a release date. Given the (deliberate) short release cycle, it is not going to be possible to include everyone’s bug fixes, but we’re certainly trying to include as many of the annoying ones, that are straight forward to fix as we can in that time period.

More detail to follow in future posts.

Comments

[Dan Pope]

One of the biggest problems I have with OTalk is installation. You can’t install as a user which is good but even when I install as an administrator, then log back in as a user it won’t let me use OTalk. The only way I can use it is to make the user an administrator, for obvious reasons I don’t want to do this, I also don’t want to have to play around with reg settings etc like sareen have told me to do I just I don't have the time and patience, I want to install it as admin then let any one who is logged on as a bog standard user as long as they have an OTalk login be able to use the product. Even though we use sp1.1 of Otalk v4 we still have to install the program and the copy a working copy of spell.API file in to the windows folder then make a reg change or you are unable to use spell check. All in all I find OTalk a headache to install, why can't it just work like every other 3rd party piece of software out there. I hope this is going to be solved in the latest release or I’m of to exchange.

[Simon Bates]

Thank you Dan Pope for your comment. Dan raised the issue of only being able to install OfficeTalk for the current user. We've heard this from a number of existing customers and we will aim to fix this for version 4.5

[JD Wilson]

Dear Simon,

I am delighted to hear that OfficeTalk 4.5 is going to be released soon. This is my first post and I have a LOT of questions. I will try one.

"Will there ever be a relationship between companies and contacts independent of groups? For instance, in directory view I would like to select all companies in England and when I go to contacts, only the contacts for companies in England are displayed. Then when I scroll through them, they are in order and sequential. Ditto for selecting contacts and browsing companies"

Thank you in advance for your time and attention to this question.

[Simon Bates]

Thank you for your comment JD Wilson of Selenetix. In answer to your question, we haven't considered such an enhancement. If we did, it is probably more likely that we would enhance the contact groups list to contain saved filters. For example, you would be able to create a filter "Country == United Kingdom". You could then select that filter and it would apply to Directory view and Company and Contact view. Would this function be useful to other users? Please comment.

[Florian]

Hi Simon,

We have started using some Windows Mobile Edition PDAs at our company and I am being asked whether users can syncronise their device with OfficeTalk in the same way as they can with Outlook.

As we are desperate to stay with OfficeTalk and away from Outlook it would be really helpful if this could be done in some form, rather than everybody having to enter appointments and contacts twice.

I know it's probably asking a lot but hey, I'm known for that ;-)
Thanks - looking forward to 4.5!
Florian

[Simon Bates]

Thanks Florian for your comment about PDA connectivity. This is something we consider absolutely necessary for the product. We are hoping to get OfficeTalk to integrate with ActiveSync. Work is planned to begin in Q1 2006. Can other customers please confirm that integration with Pocket PCs is of high importance for you.

[Florian]

Great news about the ActiveSync integration Simon, really feels like our beloved OfficeTalk is finally receiving the TLC is has been lacking for a few years.
Florian

[Graham]

Couple of things I would bring to the discussion

1. When a £ sign is entered into a notify note when the notify is received the £ sign becomes an L

2. In directory view of Contacts I can get the companies to show in directory view but the contacts list is blank

3. Has there been any discussion on how existing customers will be charged for the new version and what is happening about support. As we dont have an existing sareen support contract as it ran out just before the change over and they wouldn't renew. Obviously if we had a current support deal in place we would have received updates/fixes free of charge. Or is this being seen as a major release which will be charged for?