Freeware of the Moment- Xobni

I spend what seems like my whole life in Outlook and as one who gets 200- 300 emails a day without fail I'm always finding myself looking for not just an email from months ago but the entire email conversation.  The search feature in Outlook is good but the way I work I can usually remember who the conversation was with and I need to see the whole thread in context.  I first heard of Xobni (what's that spell backwards?) back in January but like most things I hear about I quickly "filed and forgot" it as just more fluff.  Today I got an invite to the Xobni closed beta from good friend Steven Hughes and decided to give it a shot.  Boy am I glad I did as it has already made a big impact on my productivity.  Xobni has come under the scrutiny of Microsoft as Techcrunch was reporting a month ago that Microsoft might be looking to buy them.

The Xobni sidebar to the right.

The beauty of Xobni is the type of information it presents to you when you click on any email in your folders.  The Xobni sidebar shows everything related to email about the person who sent you that email and makes accessing that information, including any threaded email conversation, just one click away.  There is a degree of social networking (a phrase I have come to hate) to this information as you also see everyone who has participated in any of that contact's email conversations.  I can't overstate how powerful this is for those times when you are looking for that nugget of information that was sent to you oh so long ago.  You also get a pane that shows you every file attachment that a given contact has ever sent you which is also one click away from opening.  Rarely have I run across a utility like Xobni that started doing its magic mere minutes after installing and then impacted my work so greatly.  That is why Xobni is our Freeware of the Moment.  It is currently in a closed beta but you can put your email address on their waiting list to get an invite.  I have used all my invites already so don't ask, they're gone.  Maybe the folks at Xobni will see this and give us a bunch of invites to share.

Threaded conversation- just click one and the whole email is previewed in the window.

Comments

[Jose R. Ortiz]

This looks like the solution to so many of those "where is that e-mail" problems. I've added my name to the list. Hopefully I can get a copy soon as this would be incredibly useful at work.

[Matthew Miller (aka palmsolo)]

I signed up with an invite from James and have 6 invites available. Ping me at palmsoloATgmailDOTcom if you need one.

[Kevin Hughes]

This is really useful to have sitting next to your inbox.

What would be even better is if you could hook it up to a CRM system and have your whole company's emails included...

By the way, theres a facebook group here if you are interested in speaking to the developers:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Xobni/30867760600

[lsbeller]

just sent you an email Matt.

Steve

[Jake]

What's the difference between this and the built in "Find all related messages" function in Outlook?

[James Kendrick]

Jake, xobni is instant and these are already displayed in the sidebar. You don't have to do anything to see them, they're always there.

[benz145]

I'm guessing Gmail doesn't have some of the features you need? It obviously has great search, and emails are written out like a forum thread, very nice. I'm sure you've probably given it a try before but I suppose some aspects of it don't quite cover your needs (offline access?)

[Jake]

Ah, I see. Thanks James.

[Matthew Miller (aka palmsolo)]

That was quick. All my invites have been taken now by jkOnTheRun readers.

[WORD-SMITH]

My first question, now that you've turned my head, can you say if you think this is a better idea than MailStore (which can manage several mail apps at once), but more importantly, do you think this will tax outlook in anyway that might add sync problems with Active sync and pocket outlook, etc. Just curious what you've seen so far. Thanx.

[Shawn Roberts]

It looks like a good program. However, it requires Outlook 2003 or 2007 and our firm still used 2002!

[Shawn Roberts]

It looks like a good program. However, it requires Outlook 2003 or 2007 and our firm still used 2002!

[James Kendrick]

I'm not comparing xobni to other programs, just saying it works well for me. It doesn't impact Outlook in any way, in either performance nor does it alter the PST. Thus it won't impact syncing.

[travis]

I tried xonbi early in its beta (outlook 2007 and imap) and it really bogged me down. Anybody have a similar setup that can report performance impressions? I liked the app but it was too flawed back then. I may have to give it another go.

[Thax]

Matt tossed me one of his invites and I loaded it yesterday, thanks Matt!
It is highly recommended to be in cached mode for speed indexing purposes.
Although it took the installer a little over an hour to index my mailbox and pst files (I get a lot of mail) after that no processor load detected while using it.
So far I really like it, helps track long email threads and groups of users efficiently. The phone number portion is still buggy though.
The analytics are great for engineering nerds like me, but a little alarming to see how much actual email grows month to month.
Great find guys, thanks for keeping me up to date on lots of stuff!

[Thax]

Matt tossed me one of his invites and I loaded it yesterday, thanks Matt!
It is highly recommended to be in cached mode for speed indexing purposes.
Although it took the installer a little over an hour to index my mailbox and pst files (I get a lot of mail) after that no processor load detected while using it.
So far I really like it, helps track long email threads and groups of users efficiently. The phone number portion is still buggy though.
The analytics are great for engineering nerds like me, but a little alarming to see how much actual email grows month to month.
Great find guys, thanks for keeping me up to date on lots of stuff!

[Leo]

Put my name up for the Xobni testing invitiation, and within hours I got an email invite from xobni. What a joy! :)
I've immediately installed the app, and lo and behold... Outlook started with the following error "Cannot open your default email folders", and closed right away.

Grrrr.

[Russ Dyer]

I signed up for the xobni beta also but havnt heard back yet.

[Al Whitehead]

This sounds like what I have been looking for for a long time. I probably send and receive 200 emails a day and I use X1 extensivly for its advanced indexing and search functions. It does the job but I am still searching for something better. If anyone has an invite please send it across (al.whitehead[at]gmail.com). Thanks.

[MonteVale]

With so many different conversation that span back and forth I have been relying on the search function in Outlook 2007.
If this piece of software can actually display all my threaded conversation with the clients withouth the need to install a completely different progarm...? Sounds too good to be true. Though if it really works my whole office here will be lining up to get a copy.
I have posted a request on xobni but they are probably swamped already. If someone has an invite would you please share montevale/at/hotmai/dot/com
Thanks.

[Chris K]

I've been using Xobni for a while now, and while it's not without some minor warts, overall, it's pretty good at finding emails that I nearly forgot about.

On that front, however, I have similar luck with Outlook 2007. Both have pretty speedy search capabilities, but Xobni's just a little quicker and searches a little deeper by default.