Xobni User Manual Version Xobni build 4022 / 4023

Transcription

1 Xobni User Manual Version Xobni build 4022 / 4023 Xobni User Manual General Overview Xobni System Requirements Cached Exchange Mode Installation and Startup Tour of the Xobni Sidebar Search Bar Person Profile Network Conversations Files Exchanged Invitations & the Invite Window Share Fun Facts Shortcuts Bar Xobni Menu Other Outlook Windows Keyboard Shortcuts Xobni Analytics Xobni Data Files Xobni Service Conclusion... 12

2 1. General Overview Xobni is a Microsoft Outlook Add-in that: Reveals previously hidden information about your interactions with people Allows you to explore your s by person and conversation Provides lightning-fast search through your Outlook data Gives you immediate access to files exchanged with people in your network Illuminates the overall flow of your traffic via Xobni Analytics 2. Xobni System Requirements Windows XP Service Pack 2 Windows Vista (32-bit or 64-bit) Outlook 2003 or 2007 Microsoft.NET Framework 2.0 A minimum of 1GB RAM A minimum of 2GHz processor Preferred monitor resolution: 1280x1024 2

3 Cached Exchange Mode Xobni recommends that users running Microsoft Exchange accounts should enable Cached Exchange Mode when using Xobni. While this is not a required setting for use with Xobni, if Cached Exchange Mode is disabled, you may experience degraded performance within Outlook. A warning panel will appear below the Search bar, advising you to enable the setting. This panel can be hidden by clicking the X button in the upper right hand corner. For further information on Cached Exchange Mode, please visit our online Support Page. 3. Installation and Startup You must have Administrator rights on your machine to install Xobni. Once installation is complete, Xobni will be available to all user accounts on the system. Please make sure that you meet the system requirements listed above before you start. Installation After downloading the Xobni installer, double-click the XobniSetup.exe icon to launch the installer. Installation will begin after you agree to the Xobni End User License Agreement by clicking the I Agree button. You ll be prompted for a location to install the application into. After clicking OK, the application will install its components, and you ll be taken to the Setup Complete screen. If you do not currently have the Microsoft.NET Framework installed, our installer will display a warning message and automatically attempt to download this component from Microsoft. You ll need to be connected to the Internet during this time, or the installation will fail. From the Setup Complete screen, you have the option to launch Outlook upon hitting exit. Most people leave this turned on so they can check out Xobni right away. You ll also see the team of brilliant people working to make Xobni so awesome! Startup Once Outlook launches, you ll see the Xobni Sidebar load into the main Mail view. If you take a look at the Outlook menu bar, you ll also see a Xobni menu item. Once Outlook has finished launching, you ll see the Sidebar indicate that it s indexing your . The initial indexing only looks at the past 60 days of your communication, so that Xobni has enough data to help you get started. If you notice that our Search feature isn t finding certain items, you may want to run the Index all mail command to complete the full indexing. The LinkedIn Integration dialog box will appear at this time. In order to provide this service, Xobni must establish communication between your installation of Xobni and LinkedIn. Enabling this setting will allow LinkedIn profile data to be retrieved using the addresses and names of your contacts. Neither Xobni nor LinkedIn store this data after it is used to retrieve the LinkedIn profile information. This data is not used for any other purposes and will not be shared with other Xobni users. 3

4 During this period, you ll see various screenshots of Xobni explaining the highlighted features. This will be followed by a series of statistical facts about your relationships, and you can send these to the people you communicate with most frequently. Clicking on the Send button will automatically send that person an with a link to download Xobni for themselves. You can customize the message body of the invitation by clicking on the Edit Message button. This information can be recalled at any time by selecting the Share Fun Facts menu item. Depending on how much you have within Outlook, the initial indexing should take less than ten minutes. If you have an IMAP account or have multiple large PST files, this can take up to twenty-five minutes. Finally, you ll arrive at the Let s Rock screen, indicating that Xobni has indexed enough of your to get started. 4. Tour of the Xobni Sidebar The Xobni Sidebar contains the following components, which are instantly loaded when you select any message inside Outlook: Search Bar Our search gives you insanely fast results from your Outlook data; of people, conversations, and attachments. With our optional web search enabled, it can also return first hit results from the Yahoo! search engine. Person Profile The person profile area displays a small graph of communication data, the user ranking, and a contact photo. From here, a single mouse click puts you in touch with people, requests contact information, and helps you schedule meetings quickly. Network This is a list of all the people you have in common with the person whose profile is currently displayed. The Network panel is an easy way to maintain connections and keep track of who knows who within your social network. Conversations A chronological list of threaded exchanges you ve had with the people in your network. Files Exchanged Catalogs all attachments sent between you and the recipient. Invitations This interactive panel allows you to invite your friends and coworkers to download and check out Xobni. Share Fun Facts Another interactive panel that shows interesting information about your relationships. Shortcuts Bar The final section of the Sidebar contains some useful shortcuts to the Xobni Menu, Invite Window, and Support Info. Most panels can be resized by clicking and dragging just above the title bar. All panels can be expanded to reveal more in-depth information by clicking on the title bar. Specific information on an individual item within the panel can be revealed by clicking on it; examples include a person s name or an thread found in Conversations. 4

5 Two navigation controls, Profile View and Back, can appear as you click on items within the Sidebar. As you continue to click through items, you ll notice different panels stacking within the Sidebar. You can use Back to return to the last selected item, and the Profile View can be used to return to the profile for the currently selected . Throughout most of the Sidebar, positioning your cursor over specific areas will reveal more information, such as contact info or the first few lines of an message body. Let s take a closer look at each of these sections and get a little more information on exactly how they work Search Bar When you begin typing in the Search bar, a search results frame will instantly slide over. Our search feature identifies words that start with the letter you initially type, and refines the results as you continue typing. At this time, Xobni does not support the use of Boolean search operators. If you have our optional Web Search enabled, the search results will include the first hit returned by Yahoo!. Clicking this result will take you to the Yahoo! search page, where you can see any additional results Person Profile The Person Profile panel is loaded when you select an within Outlook s main Mail view. Here you can get a quick overview of some essential facts about the person, such as how many s you ve sent or received from them, their Xobni rank, and what time of day you typically correspond with them. 5

6 Right-clicking anywhere in this panel will open a sub-menu with more options. If the person is already in your Outlook Contacts list, you can open their Contact card to get further information on them. You can also copy the contact info, which is handy if you need to paste that into a message to another friend or co-worker. Finally, you can open the Edit Profile window, inside of which you can add a picture of them, and enter additional contact info. Xobni will populate the Profile picture field with photos used in your Outlook Contacts. To add your own photo, just click the Change button, and navigate to the photo on your computer. A new window will pop up, allowing you to reframe the area you d like to display. Once this is correct, hit the OK button, then Update, and you ll be returned to the main Profile panel, which will now display the photo! Please keep in mind that, at this time, if you have to uninstall Xobni, you will lose any imported pictures and they will need to be re-imported. Xobni should automatically merge contacts that use different addresses. For example, if you have a friend that s you from both their personal and work accounts, both addresses will be merged into a single profile. This makes it easy to manage their profile and analyze mail traffic from them. In the Profile panel, you may see a clickable field labeled Request phone number. Clicking here will create a new to the person, asking them for their phone number. When they respond, Xobni will extract the phone number and display it, as shown in the example above. Phone numbers can also be extracted from signature files, or message bodies within an . There are some instances when Xobni cannot accurately detect the number, in these cases you can manually edit the number to correct it. If you have the Skype service installed on your computer, then clicking on the phone number will place a voice call to that person through Skype. If Skype isn t installed on your machine, then the phone number will simply be displayed. If you d like to manually add or edit the phone number, right-click in the profile, select Edit Person s Info and add it in the Voice Number field. You can change the phone number type using the pull-down menu next to the number field. 6

7 The Schedule time with button extracts data from your Outlook Calendar and autofills an with times that you are available for meetings. Xobni pulls schedule data from the Outlook Calendar to make sure you don t overbook yourself. For additional configuration options, go to the Xobni menu > Options > Schedule Time panel. The button which creates a new to the person whose profile is loaded. This is more convenient using the New Message button, as it auto-populates the To: field with the address of the person you want to contact. You can also use a keyboard shortcut (Ctrl + Alt +N) for this. Finally, there is the LinkedIn module, which combs the LinkedIn website for the person s profile information. If a profile is found, Xobni will display their current job title and place of employment. You can then click on the via LinkedIn icon to open a web browser with the person s current LinkedIn profile, and learn more about them Network Your network is based on the people you ve communicated with using Outlook. Clicking on a person s name will load their profile into the Sidebar, making it fast and easy to find s or attachments from that person. Xobni totals your list of contacts and displays it in the title bar. The small magnifying glass icon is a button that opens a filter bar. You can use this to search through your network, which is handy when you need to find someone quickly. People contained within the Network panel are ranked according to how often they re included in conversations between you and the person whose profile is loaded. As always, Xobni is focused on your perspective within Outlook. You can also find your own top contacts within the Xobni Analytics window. The icons in the Network panel have different colors. Orange icons identify people you have directly contacted, and grey icons are for people you ve never ed directly. Distribution lists have their own icon, which looks like a group of people rather than an individual. This helps you quickly determine whether an came from a specific person, or a mailing list that may reach multiple people. Despite the name, the Network panel is not network aware. This means that there is no communication between Xobni enabled machines, and your personal data (such as your list of contacts) is never shared with anyone else. 7

8 Conversations Xobni displays conversations using a threaded style similar to Google s Gmail. We group s into conversations that share the subject and the same set of people in the To and CC header fields. Each entry in the Conversations panel will show the subject line of the thread, a count of the s the thread contains, as well as an approximate time that the last in the conversation was sent. If the conversation contains an attached file, a small paper clip icon appears to the right of the subject line. The title bar also totals the number of unique conversations and also offers the magnifying glass search icon, making it easy to find a specific thread. 8

9 Clicking on any conversation entry consisting of more than one will bring up a new Sidebar frame showing the conversation thread. The entry info will be shown at the top of the Sidebar, and the s in the conversation are displayed below that. If the thread is longer than the Sidebar can contain, there s a detail slider, which can change the visible size of each entry. This way you can quickly find the right that you re looking for. If the conversation thread includes multiple people, they re listed below in a panel called People in Conversation. Likewise, if there were any attachments in that thread, these will be shown at the bottom of the Sidebar, in the Files Exchanged panel. Each entry in this view can be clicked on to further reveal the entire message. From here, you re given the option to do standard actions such as Reply and Forward. The Open button will open the original from your Outlook folders, and the View Conversation button will take you back to the previous view of the entire conversation. Aside from the standard header info, we also show you exactly where in your folder structure this resides. In the various views, you can position your cursor over the message entry to see the first few lines of the message body. This is especially useful on long threads whose detail is reduced within the thread view Files Exchanged The Files Exchanged panel displays all attached files that have been sent to you by the person in the profile, or from you to them. We ve all had times when we just can t find a specific file in our , even when you know the sender. The Files Exchanged panel fixes that by displaying the files within the Sidebar. Common file extensions, such as.jpeg, or.doc, are indicated by the icons associated with the applications used to view the attachments. You can use the right-click menu to open the attachment directly from within the panel, save the attachment, or open the containing the attachment, allowing you to read the original message body. You can also grab an attachment from within the panel, and drag it to an , to the desktop, or to any open folder! 9

10 Invitations & the Invite Window This panel appears after installation and allows you to invite friends to download Xobni. If you click anywhere inside the panel, the Invite Window will pop open, displaying a list of addresses of people you communicate with. You can close this panel by hitting the X button in the title bar, and reopen it at any time by using the Options tab in the Xobni menu (provided that you still have invites remaining). In the Choose Friends panel, you can click the checkboxes on the left to select people to invite. The list that s displayed is based on your 50 most frequent contacts who also happen to be Outlook users. If Xobni does not detect any Outlook users when we index your , then the window will appear empty. Likewise, if we detect less than 50 contacts, then we ll only display the number detected. If you don t see a person s address in the list, you can enter it in the field below, click Add, and they ll be added to the list. If you want to personalize the message before sending it, you can do that in the Add a note field. Once you ve taken all these steps, you can hit the Send Invites button to share Xobni with your friends! It is possible, in some cases, that the Invite window will be disabled. You may have run out of invitations, or Xobni may have stopped shipping invitations from our server. It does not indicate that there is a problem with Xobni. 10

11 Share Fun Facts The Share Fun Facts panel will appear after you ve been running Xobni for 24 hours, and will reappear 72 hours after installation. Xobni combs your Outlook data for unique information about your communication relationships, and presents it in a series of slides within the Sidebar. This is the same information that appears when Xobni does the first index after installation. From here, you can send s to your friends and invite them to try Xobni for themselves. When the panel disappears after 72 hours, you can always reopen the slideshow from the Xobni menu by selecting Share Fun Facts Shortcuts Bar At the very bottom of the Xobni Sidebar, you ll see a few buttons which serve as shortcuts to different functions in Xobni. The >> button collapses the Sidebar, which is helpful when you don t need to immediately view Xobni data. The Gear button replicates the Xobni menu from the Outlook Toolbar. The Heart button opens the Invite Window, provided that you still have invites left to send. This button is disabled if your invite count is zero. The? button launches a web browser and loads our Support FAQ so that you can easily find answers to any issues that you may be having with Xobni. 5. Xobni Menu Xobni installs a drop-down menu between the Action and Help menus in Outlook. The menu looks like this: 11

12 Let s take a closer look: View Sidebar: This toggles visibility of the Sidebar on and off. Share Fun Facts: Selecting this will restart the slideshow that appears during the first indexing after installing Xobni. This is another way to access the information presented by the Share Fun Facts panel. View Analytics: Opens Xobni Analytics, a program that lets you explore and visualize data about your communication behavior. Options: Opens an Options dialog that lets the user change Xobni Settings. It contains four tabs: o General: Product Improvement Program: Disabled by default; turning this on will allow Xobni to report anonymous statistics back to the mothership about which features you use regularly. There is no personal data that is transmitted to us or anyone else. Basically, this helps us determine which features are popular and which ones may be confusing, and in turn makes Xobni a more useful tool! Invitations to use Xobni: This option is turned on by default to make the Invitations panel visible. Deselecting this will turn it off, or if you ve already clicked the X button in the panel itself, you can re-enable it by checking the box. When you run out of invitations, the option will remain unchecked. o Integration: Web Search Integration: With this option enabled, any search inside the Xobni Search Bar will look for results using Yahoo s web search in addition to your . The first returned result is displayed at the top of the Search Results panel. LinkedIn Integration: With this option enabled, you can see the public LinkedIn profile of people who you, as well as their current job title and employer name. o Schedule Time: As you may remember from the Profile Panel, Xobni offers a Schedule Time With feature to easily schedule meetings with friends or co-workers. Using this tab, you can customize the days and times that you re available. This should hopefully deter coworkers from attempting to get together at 9am on a Sunday morning! There s also a drop-down menu for setting the minimum amount of time between your appointments, which is helpful for people who need a mandatory 15 minutes (or longer!) of downtime before heading into their next meeting. For those who require 24 hour time formatting, this is also an option in this tab. This is handled independently of your system time settings, so you can easily schedule meetings with people in foreign countries without altering your system setting. 12

13 o Indexing: This tab allows you to tell Xobni which folders to index or ignore. The folder tree will present all your accounts and mail folders, with a check box next to each of them. If the box is checked, Xobni will index that folder. The inverse is also true, so if the box is unchecked, Xobni will skip this folder when indexing. Holding Shift will select all folders within a parent folder. Hold CTRL to select all folders at the same level of the folder tree. Holding CTRL-Shift will combine those two modifiers. Hitting Cancel will discard your changes, so you can experiment with this feature. Keep in mind that if you choose to index your Deleted Items folder, then empty it, Xobni will lose those messages and they will no longer be displayed in the Sidebar. Additionally, if you make changes to the settings in this panel, you will have to wait for Xobni to completely index your mail before you will see the changes. You can force this process by selecting Index All Mail from the Xobni menu. Index All Mail: Selecting Index All Mail will immediately start indexing your entire body of . This process can take quite a while, depending on how much you have within Outlook. Generally, we recommend that you use this feature when you won t be using Outlook for a while, especially if there are several gigabytes of to index. However, once this is complete, all data in the Sidebar should be complete and accurate. Xobni will index any Archive folders and any additional PST files attached to Outlook during this process. At this time, Xobni does not index Public Folders. Get Help: While we hope that your Xobni experience is always perfect, selecting this option will launch your default web browser, and load the Xobni Support FAQ. The FAQ has loads of answers to typical user questions, and is a good starting point for finding information. If you don t find the answer you re looking for, you can also contact our Support Team from that page. Product Video: This will launch the short instructional video that highlights the various features of Xobni. This video is also available at the end of the initial indexing after you first install Xobni. About Xobni: This window contains useful information about your Xobni version. If you ever need to contact our Support Team, they may ask you for your build number or XMID number. The build number can be found in the top line of this window, and indicates the revision of Xobni that you re using. The XMID is a unique number, specific to your system that helps us keep track of support incidents that you may have. This window also contains clickable links to our Privacy Policy, End User License Agreement, as well as the Xobni homepage. 13

14 6. Other Outlook Windows Xobni will slide over the Last Viewed frame to show the contents of the currently selected anytime you leave the view in Outlook (e.g. clicking on Calendar in the bottom-left). This is useful because you may need to reference something contained in the you were last viewing. For example, a coworker asks if you can go out to lunch between 1 and 2pm on Tuesday. You can check your calendar to make sure you re available, and reply to the , without having to leave the Sidebar. 7. Keyboard Shortcuts Xobni provides the following keyboard shortcuts whenever the Sidebar is visible, and Outlook has keyboard focus: Focus on the Search Box: Ctrl + ~ Collapse and Expand the Sidebar: Ctrl + Shift + ~ Compose to the currently loaded person: Ctrl + Alt + N Xobni provides the following keyboard shortcuts when the Sidebar has keyboard focus: Go back one level from search results or navigation history: Backspace Go back (when a filter bar is open): Ctrl + Backspace 14

15 8. Xobni Analytics Xobni Analytics is a powerful overview of your Outlook traffic. Whether you want to see your total volume on an annual basis, or just find out how many times your boss has ed you today, Analytics is the place to find out. The most obvious place where you ll see our Analytics at work is within the Person Profile panel. The data that s displayed for the persons In and Out mail count, Rank, and s Received graph are all powered behind the scenes by Analytics. One of the most widely used features within the Analytics window is the ability to determine your own network rankings. Go to the Mail Traffic Report, and click the Rank column in the data grid at the bottom of the window. This should rank your network based on your frequency with specific people. Unfortunately, covering the rest of the Analytics window is beyond the scope of this user manual, so we ll cover that in greater detail in another document. 15

16 9. Xobni Data Files Xobni maintains its own database for the information we collect from Outlook. These files are impenetrable to anyone outside of Xobni HQ, with the exception of the Xobni log files. The log files catch error messages that occur while you re using Xobni; this should prevent you from ever seeing an error during your normal Outlook operation. The log files are useful to our Support Team if you ever run into an issue where Xobni is behaving badly. The data files can be found in these locations. Be sure to replace "Username" with your username: o o Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\"Username"\Local Settings\Application Data\Xobni\ Profile Name Windows Vista: C:\Users\"Username"\App Data\Local\Xobni\ Profile Name 10. Xobni Service After Xobni is installed, you may notice a new entry in your Windows Task Manager called xobniservice.exe. This is a discreet background process that Xobni uses to detect and install updates automatically. When a new build is detected on the Xobni Server, it is downloaded in the background. Once the download is complete, the update to your Xobni installation will occur the next time Outlook is launched. The Xobni Sidebar runs within the outlook.exe process, so there is no way to stop the Sidebar via the Task Manager. There is no personal data transmitted to Xobni or any 3 rd parties, when Xobni Service is running. 11. Conclusion On behalf of the entire team, thank you again for using Xobni. Hopefully you ve found this lovingly hand-crafted user manual helpful! If you have any further questions, please visit the Xobni Support website and Community Forum: Xobni User Manual 2008 Xobni Corp. All rights reserved. (Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Skype, LinkedIn and Gmail are trademark and copyright of their respective companies) 16