Kent Compton : Windows Live Essentials

The Outlook Connector Part 2

Kentc — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 02:42:21 GMT

For those of you who want to only download the Outlook Connector you can go to http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9A2279B1-DF0A-46E1-AA93-7D4870871ECF&displaylang=en.

THE Outlook Connector

Kentc — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 05:30:00 GMT

In addition to the product planning I do for Windows Live, I also work with the Microsoft Office Outlook team on the Outlook Connector. What is the Outlook Connector you ask? It is a grossly underutilized sync solution for people who are both Hotmail users and who have Outlook 2003 or 2007. If you’re interested in the technical details of what it does, take a look at, Omar’s blog (my coworker in Windows Live). Basically, it syncs your Hotmail email, calendar, and contacts via a technology called DeltaSync (multiply the functionality of IMAP by 10x <g>).

Sadly, doing a search in your favorite search for the words “sync Outlook with Hotmail” (no quotes) yields very few results (other than Omar’s) for the Outlook Connector, so I doubt many people can find it. That’s a shame because I know from my research that people want to easily interchange work and personal items (mainly calendar and contacts). The Outlook Connector makes that possible! I use it on each of the 7 PCs I frequently use. Its incredibly powerful. If you receive an email to your work email account that is really personal when you reply you can change which account its sent from to be your Hotmail account. With Outlook’s side by side calendar support (see link and picture below), you can drag an appointment from your work calendar on the left to your Hotmail Calendar on the right.

You can get the Outlook Connector from http://download.live.com. If you install the entire Essentials suite and have Outlook on your PC it’ll be automatically installed. You can also just pick the OLC if for some reason you didn’t want the rest of Windows Live Essentials.

Here’s my cheap way of increasing the likelihood that someone will be able to find this post:

sync, synchronization, Hotmail, Outlook, 2003, 2007, Exchange, e-mail, calendar, contacts, Microsoft

:-)

Updated: What would you like changed/improved in Windows Live?

Kentc — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 22:58:55 GMT

Updated Post (posted on March 4, 2009):

Several keen observers sent email to me about my newly established livewish email address gently reminding me of an already established communication vehicle to get feedback to the Windows Live team.

The official and preferred feedback mechanism to connect with and give ideas to the Windows Live teams is via: https://feedback.live.com/default.aspx

Mea culpa. The feedback.live.com system does a terrific job and I was remiss in not pointing it out in my original post. I still believe in frictionless communication so the email address will still be active but you should only use it as a last resort (e.g. you’re at 30K feet on a non-WiFi connected airplane and just have to get your suggestion queued for us). I simply won’t be able to keep up with the emailed suggestions I’ve been getting so the feedback site is a much better choice.

Its also worth noting, if you need support for any of the Windows Live services, please go to https://support.live.com/default.aspx and if you have Hotmail specific questions, go to http://windowslivehelp.com/Default.aspx I’ve mentioned it before but the official Windows Live team blog is http://windowslivewire.spaces.live.com/default.aspx

My original post below has been updated in a few places (denoted via the red font). I never anticipated my simple blog post would get picked up so far and wide (I feel like Scoble <grin>). THANK YOU to those of you who have already sent in your suggestions.

Your humble planner,

Kent

Original Post (posted on March 3, 2009):

Most people feel it is too hard to give someone at Microsoft their feedback for how they’d like to see the product’s work. I know I felt that too when I was a non-Microsoft employee (and I still feel that way as a consumer of other company’s goods and services). I believe this has changed for the better in recent years with the proliferation of blogs (which allow comments), Help | Send Feedback (for Windows Live products), etc.

My goal as a product planner is to remove any interference/resistance between the great ideas you have and our ability as the product group to implement them.

Invariably, after a company puts in place a feedback system there are a few people who say “why should I give my ideas to company x just so they can make money from them”. They have a valid point, and for those people who have the inclination and talent to write software, maintain it, support it, globalize it, etc. I encourage them to get coding—the world needs more great software developers and applications. However, the feedback we want as a product group is much more granular, think feature-level or simplifying the steps it takes to get x done, not ideas for an entirely new product.

If you have an idea that you think would make, for example, Windows Live Mail, work better please submit the idea to http://feedback.live.com If you send email to the following email address you’ll receive an auto-reply email asking you to submit your ideas via the feedback web site.

I’m sorry for the image. Its a hack to lower the likelihood of spam bots easily obtaining the actual email address. I chose this email address because its easy to remember and it allows several of us (starting with me) to read the email and then forward the email onto the appropriate planner in Windows Live. However, the email address’s backend process (me!) simply won’t scale to meet the number of suggestions its receiving.

Please understand, that we receive numerous ideas just because you’ve sent your suggestion doesn’t mean it will make it into the product in question in the next version, or the version after that, or the version after that version. This is due to a process called prioritization where the release’s theme, overall usefulness in lieu of another feature is determined (since resources such as developers and their time are finite), a target audience is defined (a power user feature versus an average user feature), etc.

We’re always looking for ideas that impact a wide swath of people and with great frequency. AutoCorrect is one of the greatest features that positively impacts hundreds of millions of users each day that we probably get enough credit for. In fact, I wish that Windows Live Writer (and lots of our other apps) supported AutoCorrect because while I type fast I have an incredible knack for mistyping or misspelling the same words over and over. That’s a feature idea that I’d like to see be implemented in more of the Windows Live Essentials products.

Long story short, we’re listening… (even if it via https and not as much via SMTP :-) )

Thank you for using Windows Live.

The NEW Windows Live Essentials is now available!

Kentc — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 08:00:00 GMT

The “gold” version of the Windows Live Essentials applications (e.g. Mail, Photo Gallery, Writer--which I’m using to write this blog, the Outlook Connector, etc.) are available now at http://download.live.com This final version was in beta when I joined the WL team a couple of months ago. Anyone who is running the version that came out ~12 months ago will really enjoy the added functionality and integration.

My personal favorite is Windows Live Photo Gallery because my family has 40K+ photos. WLPG makes it super easy to organize, categorize, and do minor edits (e.g. fix red-eye) on photos. If you use Windows Live Messenger, Facebook, LinkedIn and a number of other cloud services you’ll probably appreciate the ease at which you can tag photos that include people.

Oh, and did I mention that Windows Live Essentials is free? Don’t take my word, you be the judge.

Enjoy!