It is not often that I find an add on or plug-in that I feel warrants my full attention. With that said, Xobni definitely deserves some paying attention to. This plug-in for Microsoft Outlook is a fantastic way to manage your email, social media connections and professional networks in one place. Below are a few features I like about this product and why you should at the very least try it out for a few days. I promise, you will not want to use Outlook without this plug-in!
Threaded Conversations:
Xobni give Outlook the ability to thread conversations and at the same time display and index attachments. This is a fantastic feature if you are like me and need an attachment you received from someone 3 months ago but don’t want to dig through months of messages to find the one with that specific attachment.
Social Media Integration:
This is perhaps the most valuable part of Xobni. When you highlight a message in your inbox, that persons information is displayed in the sidebar. This means one click access to their Linked-In, Facebook and Twitter information. Along with information on the company they work for provided through a connection to Hoovers. With this feature you can know more about who you do business with and also stay on top of your social networks through Outlook. You can even update your own information such as posting something to Twitter right from Outlook.
Search / Index Ability:
Let’s be honest, while Outlook is a great mail client it is horrible at indexing and searching in a timely manor. This is why I love Xobni. It only took 10 Minutes to index my 700MB PST file and I have instant search capability! The search results are detailed, efficient and give me instant search results from all emails, calendars and contacts within Outlook. The new “Plus” version even allows for full phrase search within Outlook! Trust me, if you have Outlook, you need this plug-in to organize your data and actually have search features that work.
Auto Suggest:
Everyone I meet who gets a new computer complains that the auto suggest is gone when they type in an email address to compose a message. This is because Outlook bases that list on who you reply to and is built over time. This is a great feature when you have had your email configured for a couple years, but what happens when you get a new one? Xobni eliminates this frustration because it not only indexes like Outlook does but it also has an auto suggest bar that is based on your contacts and the messages that have been indexed. This means if you get a new computer you have all of your auto suggest names again within minutes of getting Xobni installed.
Statistics:
The last point I want to touch on is the integrated statistics. Xobni will not only index your mail and search etc… but it also gives you the stats on your inbox. For example, if you want to know the average time it takes a particular person to reply to your messages, it will display that. It will also tell you what time of day you spend the most time sending mail and what time of day you receive the most mail. This is a very valuable tool when trying to plan out your day and can help you to know if email is a good medium to use in certain circumstances. If you have a critical item to communicate to someone but it usually takes them 9 hours to reply to your emails, you know a phone call might be better.
These are just a few reasons why I love Xobni. Try it for yourself and take a look at their demo video from their website at www.xobni.com. Once you use this program you will never want to use Outlook without it.
Don: Thanks for the nice review of Xobni. One thing I few more things I love about AutoSuggest:
1) it is “everyone” not just people you have emailed recently. It is about 5-10x more people available
2) You can recall a person by their first or last name, by their email or even by their company – Outlook’s AutoComplete can’t do this
3) It is ranked. So if you type “matt” you see your most important and most likely Matt’s at the top.
4) We don’t eliminate Outlook results. People often believe that our Auto Suggest is somehow suppressing Outlook’s own. It isn’t true. We allow their results to show above ours. People are blown away when they see how meager the default results are for AutoComplete vs. Xobni.