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Hi,

My name is Melissa MacBeth and I design features for Microsoft Office Outlook. Specifically, I have been working on the task and time management features for the next version – Outlook 12, which has recently been released for Beta testing. For those of you interested in time management, there are a lot of new features that you will find especially useful including the To-Do Bar, the new time based flagging system, pervasive color categories, an updated Calendar with tasks, and the integration of tasks and flagged mail. More on those to come…

With this blog I hope to accomplish two things:

1. Provide some insight into how we came up with the Outlook 12 time management system

2. Provide suggestions on how to use the system; show users how to make it work.

See more posts coming soon!

-Melissa

 

P.S. Adding Technorati Profile

Comments

  • Anonymous
    November 28, 2005
    I look forward to your posts! I've been an Outlook fan for many years, but have been a bit flustered with some of the recent changes (such as the security blocks) and some stuff that just has never been addressed (such as better handling of multiple PST calendars). Outlook is a great tool with many untapped capabilities. I hope your blogging can bring them to light!
    JMH
  • Anonymous
    November 28, 2005
    I am not sure that this blog will really help you in the areas of security blocks and better handling of multiple psts. As more blogs come online from the Outlook, I will add them to the list at right.
  • Anonymous
    December 09, 2005
    I want to post a thank you to Kevin Boske who encouraged me to blog about my features. I hope I don't disappoint him.
  • Anonymous
    January 04, 2006
    I'm very excited about development in the tasks/to-do area of Outlook and that GTD, Julie Morgenstern, Sally McGhee etc. are being used as a research foundation. The screenshot looks looks extremely promising!

    If you haven't already, I'd also reccomend checking out the GTD-Add in from Netcentrics and some of the great visual basic forms that have been created around projects: http://www.davidco.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4201
    (most of the deleted threads are still in the google cache)
    The Bollinger form for projects
    http://www.davidco.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3822&page=1&pp=10
    and
    GTD-police with the mod for automatically loading/prompting for the next step in a project when a previous action is checked off.

    I would dearly love to see a relational tagging function in tasks, ala spurl, furl, del.icio.us
    I've set up a number of overlapping categories to simulate this but it doesn't really have the ability to show the narrowest desired slice.
    i.e. I can't slice by finances/taxes/next actions. I can only display all next actions, all taxes, all finances items.

    I also want to make a plea for project managemet in Outlook. I don't need the massive overkill of MS Project for managing my personal/work projects. But I do need the ability to link my goals to supporting projects to next actions to contexts and linking to documents etc. so I don't spend more time reviewing and organizing than doing. I'm ramping up on OneNote but am not sure how that will work out (really, really, want a tagging relational functionality in OneNote)

    Keep blogging on!!!



  • Anonymous
    February 15, 2006
    My firm just upgraded to Outlook 2003. I am considering switching from the Palm Desktop for managing tasks but was having trouble getting Outlook to do things that I am used to (e.g. push off an undone task for "tomorrow", "next week" etc.

    I came across your blog which looks promising.

    How can I get Outlook 12 to try out?

    Mike
  • Anonymous
    July 30, 2006
    Only one of my PST's files' To do lists are showing up in the To-do list.  How do I get all of the folders to show their task lists?
  • Anonymous
    July 31, 2006
    Mark,

    Funny you should ask. Check out my latest post: http://blogs.msdn.com/melissamacbeth/archive/2006/07/31/684619.aspx

    -Melissa
  • Anonymous
    July 20, 2007
    Hi Melissa MacBeth, I am developing web based management system for some employment agency. How can I connect the agency task system to Outlook tasks?