Fast and easy email management: Xobni Review

By this time you must be knowing about Xobni, if you are a user of Beta version of Microsoft Outlook 2010. Well, for those find the term unfamiliar, I want to give a brief description of Xobni. Xobni is a plugin for Outlook 2010. The Outlook plugin makes searching your inbox and finding information about your contacts fast and easy. Two types of Xobni — Xobni Basic and Xobni Plus are there. While, Xobni Basic is a free product, you have to afford $29.95 for Xobni Plus. Xobni Plus helps in advance search, filtering, indexing in Microsoft Outlook. It’s main feature is to clear up the cluttered Microsoft Outlook Inboxes.

There are two tab on Xobni. On this tab you get a graphical representation of when you exchange email with the emailer, other people who exchange email with the emailer, conversations being held with the emailer, and files that have been exchanged with the emailer. This tab really helps see what is going on with the person.

The Organize Tab in Xobni is like a small dashboard. You will see on this tab section, your Upcoming Appointments, and Tasks. There is also a section at the bottom of the tab showing people that you haven’t emailed recently so that you can “stay connected”.

Key Features

1. Advanced Search

The most striking feature I found in Xobni Plus is advance search. Xobni provides user a way to find e-mail by typing keywords or person’s name. But what happens if the e-mail contains a single word or name? It needs user to go through a lot of e-mails. Here lies the importance of advanced search. The Advanced button in Xobni Plus appears under the search bar as soon as the user begins typing in a query. If you click on ‘Advanced’ , the options to search From, To and Has Attachments will be shown. Clicking the + button next to the Has Attachments option added search filters for CC’d, All, With, Date, Body, Subject. This is an efficient tool for easing your tedious job for e-mail searching. For example, when I searched for the word “Twitter” and typed my colleague’s name “Partho” in the From header, all 20 mails that Partho wrote to me referencing Twitter popped up, without giving me the chance to press the Enter. Then I felt curious to see those “Twitter” related documents I’d sent to Partho. So, I copied his name and paste it to the “To” filter, then clicked “yes” for Has Attachments. I was taken aback for a while to find out all those stuffs.

2. Indexing e-mails

Another important feature of Xobni is indexing. Xobni Plus indexes appointments after indexing e-mails from user’s Outlook calendars. The idea behind is to do searches on top of searches to find that proverbial e-mail needle in the inbox haystack.

3. Autosuggest feature

The autosuggest feature in Xobni, shows users all those contact that have ever appeared in any e-mail in the Inbox. You can access them in the compose window, right below the original contacts Outlook suggests. This is more advantageous than Outlook’s autocomplete feature, which provides only those contacts a user directly e-mails. The other point is, when you type first letter of a contact, the autosuggest feature presents you with a few e-mail contacts. I want to share my personal experience here. When I typed “S” for my friend Soumitra, a few e-mail contacts starting with “S” appeared. Furthermore, the Xobni Rank System provides me the frequency at which we have been exchanging the e-mails.

4. Filtering Conversations

Xobni Plus includes option for filtering conversations bar, letting users to view e-mails only from those they have direct conversations with. It’s a great thing for corporate people, who need to weed out hundreds of annoying e-mails. Most importantly, Xobni gives you space to improve your search session and provides a better way to handle junk e-mails.

5. Social Connector

Xobni plays an amazing role in building up social network. Now you can get information from social web into your Inbox, thanks to Xobni. Xobni connects to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Salesforce and more to give you a full picture of your Outlook contacts.

Xobni to pull Facebook info

After installing Xobni, you will see Facebook profile pictures for many of the people who send you email. Xobni will also display your contacts’ Facebook status and recent photos. Xobni makes it easy to add a new friend or jump directly to their Facebook page.

Xobni gives access to Twitter

Now it’s easy to follow Twitter from your Outlook. Using Xobni you can view Twitter updates of your contacts, right next to their emails. You’ll also be able to update your Twitter status staying within Outlook. Want to tweet? You can retweet a message, you see in your contacts’ Twitter stream by clicking Xobni sidebar.

Xobni boosts LinkedIn communications

If you are a business professional, then you must be using LinkedIn. Xobni empowers LinkedIn with some unique communication features of Outlook. Once you start using Xobni, you’ll be able to see LinkedIn profile data at the time of sending or receiving e-mails. Xobni automatically pulls the sender’s employer, job title, and photo into their Xobni profile. You’ll have a direct access to their complete LinkedIn profile and can add them as a LinkedIn connection, without leaving Outlook.

Pros and Cons of Xobni

Pros

Xobni is most powerful in e-mail management. The search functionality, that allows viewing of most recent e-mail exchanged is great. The speed at which it shut out thousands of less useful e-mails from my Outlook Inbox is just amazing. All other features that I’ve covered above are the good things you can expect from Xobni.

Cons

While, I haven’t found any noticeable cons in Xobni, some reviews reported slight slowdown in Outlook performance due to use of Xobni. I hope, it would not be a big issue for Xobni users.

Are you acquainted with some more information on Xobni? Please add those in the comment section below and also let me know whether you like the review. Waiting for your feedback.