Suggestions and Feature Requests

[Ryan Lederman]

Just a reminder - we encourage you to post your thoughts about our applications. Good or bad, we'd like to know what you're thinking.

If you have a suggestion for improvement of an existing feature, or you've got some features in mind that you'd like to see in future builds, let us know by posting it in the associated forum!

We actively watch forums for precisely this thing, and it is very likely that if your suggestion or feature request is viable that we will implement it very soon.

The future features and usability of our applications depend greatly on your feedback, so don't be shy!

[Matthew]

First and most important, there is one limitation that makes this potentially great little plug-in all but unusable for guys like me. I use Outlook *a lot*, and I have many Outlook items (particularly tasks) stored under different categories. I need the ability to sync only a subset of items, as specified by a pre-defined Outlook category. For example, in order to sync a contact, task, or calendar item from Outlook to the server, that item would need to be assigned to a category called SyncWorks. Any item created on the server would be automatically synced to Outlook under this category name. Maybe this use of the SyncWorks category name could be optional; if it's turned 'off', then the program would sync everything--which would be fine for some people. Of course, it would be great if categories could be synced, too, but then you could end up with a lot of non-standard categories in the database; and how would you manage 'public' items?

Second, and almost as important, there needs to be a better way of dealing with 'private' and 'public' items. Instead of relying on the Outlook property for this, or by globally choosing to mark EVERYTHING as 'Private', I would expand on the category idea: Instead of one SyncWorks category, have three:

1. SW Public for items visible to all staff.
2. SW Restricted for items visible to any staff with access to the department of the person creating the contact.
3. SW Private category, for contacts that are entirely restricted to the author.

My third suggestion relates to how data is prepared for synchronization. Again, if you have many Outlook items, the process of prepping three different types before anything can be done is unnecessarily time-consuming when you only want to sync, say, your contacts list. Can this be broken into discreet scripts?



Lastly, something simple: start the sync window minimized so that user can continue using their Outlook as usual while the sync occurs in the background.