I mentioned last week that communication management tends to be the hardest part about project management. I have also mentioned in the past that I am a big fan of Mac… but I use a PC as my primary computer for various reasons. One of those reasons is the productivity of Outlook.

Communication management is a bear, so there are companies that have added efficiency tools for Outlook. TechHit.com contacted me and asked me to do a review of their product… they gave me a free license on three of their products so that I can put them through the paces. I told them to be aware that I will give an honest review… even if it is bad. I’ll talk about the first tool today.

SimplyFile is the first Outlook plug-in I have tried from TechHit. Installation is pretty straight forward. When you restart Outlook, you get a new toolbar that appears:

First, I need to tell you the basic premise of the application. The idea is that you spend a lot of time filing away your emails into separate folders or scheduling appointments and tasks from an email message.

For example, I know that when I want to file away messages into various folders, I have to first find the folder and then drag and drop. Or, if I want to schedule an appointment, I  will copy the body of the email and then paste into a new appointment.

This toolbar adds some pretty cool functionality to Outlook. It took a little for me to figure out the best approach since I am averse to reading instructions (just ask my wife). But, the first thing you do is click the SimplyFile button on the far right and click "Train SimplyFile…" It will pop up the window on the right here.

When you click "Start Training" it will look at all the messages in your inbox and all your folders and start to figure out how you file messages. If you have a lot of messages, be patient, it will take some time.

After you have trained SimplyFile, you will have a lot of options available in your toolbar to file those messages away. You will notice that when you click on a message in your inbox, the tool bar drop down message will change to indicate where SimplyFile thinks you want to file that message to.  SimplyFile does a pretty good job getting the location right, but you have the option to change the folder location. As you change the locations, SimplyFile will learn your habits and become more proactive at suggesting the right one.

If you get an email that you just want to file away quickly that SimplyFile doesn’t know what to do with, you can click the QuickPick button. What I like about this is that you can refresh the folder list and see the current folders. It shows the full path of the folders, so it takes a little to get used to it, but it does make it easier in the long run.

Of course, there are the "Task It" and "Schedule It" Buttons. I don’t set many tasks from an email (although I probably should - I am still on a pad of paper for my tasks - I know what you are thinking, "That dumb web developer and blogger uses paper for tasks?!?"). But, I do set a lot of appointments from an email. This saves a lot of copying and pasting time. This is a great feature.

My favorite feature, though, is what you can do with sent items. Typically, you have all of your sent items go to one Sent Items folder. Many times, you want to save a sent item for a certain client saved in a different place (some people I know save them in the same folder for one client - all messages for one clients in one folder whether sent or received.)

You can turn this feature off, but I have kept it on. There are many times that I don’t want to save a message when sent. But, it gives you a lot of options that you didn’t have before.

So, my overall thoughts? If you are accustomed to filing messages manually, without Inbox rules, this may be a good product for you. If you use Inbox rules and are happy with them, this probably won’t work for you because this doesn’t route messages automatically, as far as I can tell but you may find that changing some habits can actually increase your efficiency.

The other con: it doesn’t help you with email management if you don’t really have a good strategy for what you want to do or don’t want to take the time to put one in place. If you are happy with keeping your messages in one location or don’t have the discipline to click a button and have it automatically file for you, then it may not be right for you. That is the biggest problem I have. I move on to the next message so quickly, that I forget to file it away.

In my opinion the only real con is the price. It costs $39.95 per user. That seems like a hefty cost. I like some of the features, but I don’t know that I personally would gain enough to cover the cost.

The pitch is that you don’t have to change your filing habits but just make them better. I have to change my habits to make this worthwhile because I am so inefficient in the way I handle email. I am going to use this as the impetus to become more efficient, so later I may think it worth $40… but not right now.

My recommendation to TechHit? Give away a lite version of the app. Strip it down to one or two features that people would like and then sell the rest of the features. Or even sell the stripped down version for $10 with a $30 upgrade. $40 is a lot to bite off when you will likely need to change the way you do things to become more efficient. After all, that is what they are asking their clients to do… change habits to become more efficient.

Try it out on their 30 day free trial and let me know what you think.

Tags: Communication, Outlook, Tech Review, Tech-Tip

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