FewClix e-mail plug-in may help you love Lotus Notes again

Computerworld - FewClix, the new e-mail add-on for Lotus Notes by Silicon Valley-based Synaptris Inc., is a mirror image of Xobni, the widely praised e-mail plug-in for Microsoft Outlook.

Both aim to make e-mail easier to organize and search, and users -- from Getting Things Done followers who religiously clear out their inboxes every day, to more relaxed types who prefer to let their e-mails pile (up) rather than file -- more productive.

And for the 145 million corporate and government workers that IBM claims still run Notes, FewClix could salvage a much-maligned user experience.

FewClix isn't a me-too product trailing Xobni and its cult following, according to Madan Kumar, CEO of the San Jose-based company.

"We've been in the Lotus Notes market for the last 10 years, providing data management and analysis apps [IntelliPrint and Intelliview]," Kumar said in an interview this week. In 2008, "we had a meeting with a large corporate [client] that convinced us to build a quick POC [Proof-of-Concept], which we showed at Lotusphere 2009 [though] we probably should've realized sooner since we had been getting the message loud and clear from customers over the years."

Synaptris is taking sign-ups for the public beta of the add-on starting today, on the eve of the Lotusphere show. which starts Sunday. The beta works with Lotus Notes 6.0 all the way up to the latest Notes 8.5.1.

Kumar promised users that they will save 30 minutes a day with FewClix's various productivity-enhancing features, in areas including:

• Search: Users can search for e-mail by clicking on buttons on the right-hand bar, which create "Smart Filters." Users can quickly narrow searches by clicking more buttons, such as Date Range, Only Sent to Me, Urgent only. These searches can also be saved as permanent views.

Through "Smart Filters," FewClix lets Lotus Notes users quickly narrow down e-mail searches by any combination of factors, such as To:, Date, Size, and others.
• Archiving: While Notes only lets users archive batches of e-mail by date, FewClix offers archiving by any combination of factors, such as recipient + before date + attachment. The beta requires users to search archives separate from the main inbox, but that will be changed by the general release, Kumar said.
• Folders and Groups: Rather than forcing users to set rules that route e-mails into various folders, Fewclix lets users keep their e-mails in the inbox but reduce clutter by creating different "Groups." Those groups can virtually offload read and process e-mails to "done" groups, mimicking the delete/inbox removal process advocated by David Allen's Getting Things Done regimen, Kumar said.
• Performance: A slick demo Kumar showed involved a Notes database with 12,000 e-mails. He said FewClix's in-memory index enables "very good" performance for mailboxes as large as 200,000 e-mails.
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