Let's talk business

Mars Attacks Microsoft Exchange

If you've had a frusting experience with Microsoft Exchange then this might be tempting? Have a go at NetDisaster. Thanks to Dennis Howlett.

OfficeTalk - almost there

Just a quick entry to update all OfficeTalk customers on the latest stage of our development in the new-look OfficeTalk.

We decided, after receiving some good customer feedback, that we needed to improve appointment reminders. In the current v4.5 beta 2, there are problems with snoozing reminders and you get a seperate modal-style popup for every reminder. So we have re-written appointment reminders for beta 3 to make them a lot more flexible.

The reminders window is now a seperate non-modal window. It is shown whenever an appointment, task, event or email reminder becomes due. The window can show  multiple reminders. You can choose to dismiss any or all of the reminders, or request that you are reminded later (snooze). You can also pop up the reminders window at any time to see appointments, tasks, events and emails that are due for reminding.

We have also responded to requests to improve the way that tasks are added. In the current 4.5 beta 2, you must scroll to the bottom of the task list and click in a blank area in order to add a task. Then, when you add the task, the focus is lost, making it difficult to add another task. In beta 3, we have added  a strip at the top of each task list (including project task lists), which lets you add new tasks by clicking on it and typing in the task description. On pressing Enter, the task is added and focus is set back to the new task strip. This makes it more obvious and simpler to add tasks.

Another request from several customers was to have the option to order the modes in the new-style mode bar and optionally remove certain modes. A couple of customers also wanted the ability to remove the new-style mode bar altogether and to be able to construct their own mode bar at the top of the application. This is now possible in beta 3.

Beta 3 also addresses a few upgrade glitches. We're still in the process of testing these. We clearly won't meet our deadline of mid-Feb for a release of 4.5. This is mainly due to our decision to make the improvements to reminders and tasks. However, those changes have now been made and they just need to go through our usual quality assurance cycle. Once that is done, we will release 4.5 beta 3 (in early March). We will then look for your final feedback, before going ahead with the version 4.5 release.

Thank you but now who'll help us polish our trophy?

On behalf of everyone at Softalk I'd like to say a big thank you to YOU - our customers. You see in the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Awards we've been ranked as the 138th fastest growing technology company in Europe.

We couldn't possibly have achieved this without the support of you our customers. These are exciting times as there is huge potential in the number of small and medium sized businesses and organisations who want to benefit from messaging, collaboration and contact management but simply can't afford the time and money needed to run Microsoft Exchange and other enterprise software solutions that are more suited to big businesses.

Incidentally the award also means we're officially the fastest growing messaging and collaboration software company headquarted in Europe.

How to become an email Ninja

43 Folders has a round-up of some of its most popular posts about using email more productively - from tips on writing email through to dealing with messages that you receive. Worth a look if you, like me, have to deal with a lot of email.

I'll also put together a post about how you can use OfficeTalk to manage your email. If you've got any tips that you want to share then please comment or email me and I'll include them in my round-up (with full credit to you of course).

Small businesses get four times as much spam as large companies

Small Business Pipeline reports that small businesses receive almost 50 spam emails per day per user, which is four times the amount  received by employees of large organizations who receive about 12 per day. The amount of spam received by small businesses has increased from 36 in 2004.

One reason for the problem is that many small businesses don't have the appropriate security barriers in place. Employers who fail to protect employees from offensive spam are potentially opening themselves up to damages claims from staff.

That's why Softalk has built-in spam filtering as a standard feature of WorkgroupMail (and therefore of Softalk Collaboration Suite and the soon to be released OfficeTalk 4.5, which both include WorkgroupMail). In addition you can add an additional level of protection by subscribing to SpamCleanser which automatically detects 95% of spam.