Most requested features missing from Outlook?

[Tony Gravagno]

As a developer I'm curious about what people want to get out of
Outlook that isn't already built in. It would be interesting to see a
list of features that people really want and need.

For example, many people including myself have lots of issues with the
Rules Wizard, spam, etc. I wrote a replacement for the Rules Wizard
which gives much more control over filtering than the default Rules
setup. It allows for custom regular expressions and complex AND/OR
patterns. Filters can be shared, imported like automatic anti-virus
definitions, etc. I know there are many such products already
offered, so this doesn't have a lot unique value-add for this market.
(My code isn't ready for sale, but if it seems like it can fill an
unfilled niche, sure I'll keep working on it.)

So what else do people really want from Outlook?

Thanks.
Tony
(e-mail address removed)
(Offering custom development of MS Office solutions)

 

[Tony Gravagno]

I use the Journal extensively to track what I do during the day. I would
like to see more flexibility in tracking other activities in the Journal.

What kinds of activities? For contract work I've created a lot of
custom Categories like Research, Coding, Testing, Diagnostic, Bug,
Billable, Non-Billable, DoNotBill (for billable work that I've decided
to not bill for some reason), Invoiced, etc.. I then use the Journal
to help locate specific activity, and generate detailed invoices for
clients; all invoiced entries are flagged Invoiced so that I know I
didn't miss any detail. Remember that you can have multiple Journal
folders to track activity for various clients, departments, tasks,
etc.

Now if you'd like to tie other applications into your Journal, that's
the sort of thing I can do. As an example, you can click a button in
Word to create a Journal entry when you've read documents to some
milestone points. You can also create a Journal item if you update an
Excel sheet and a designated cell achieves a defined state. Or if you
fix a specific bug in Visual Studio you can automatically create or
update a Journal entry, or notify the bug reporter that the issue has
been addressed.

Tony
(e-mail address removed)
(Offering custom development of MS Office solutions)

 

[Derica]

I would love to be able to create custom reports in Word very eaily fro
the Journal or evn print decent looking reports from with Outlook.

Maybe by telling you what I do will help.

I am a computer tech in a school, I have to track all the work I do.
use Outlook to track all my jobs timed ones as well at just regula
tasks.

I have to track the following, the school I am at, the location withi
the school, the system serial number, the problem, and the solution.

I was using PocketJournal that does a very good job at syncing wit
Journal in outlook, but as the reports in Outlook are no good I gave u
using it and have since switched to DayNotez for the time being.

So yep, being able to creat custom reports from the journal would b
great. The table layout is a total waste of time and the memo style i
to restrictive and wastes paper as it prints one journal entry pe
page.

I know this would make the journal a bit bigger than it actaully i
supposed to be, but if Microsoft wants to create and all in one wor
system by enhancing journal they woule go a long way.

Thanks for taking an interest in what the user wants.

Derek Bowe