Improvements based on your feedback...

Customer feedback is essential to BlueTie. It helps us prioritize enhancements to our email and collaboration suite. To that end, we recently conducted a customer satisfaction survey, and wanted to address some of the feedback we received immediately; to let our users know what improvements are being made based on what we heard.

The feedback we received falls into four primary initiatives:

Version 6.0

We are currently in the testing phase on a number of application improvements that were noted in the open ended feedback questions. Below is a list of just some of the improvements that you will see in the next major release:

• A new, faster calendar. This includes an updated display of the calendar, especially in weekly and monthly view, and improves the shared calendar listing.
• Related to the new calendar are changes to the New Meeting Request window. Enhancements here include a number of things you've asked for, most notably:

§         The ability to send attachments as part of the meeting request

§         A button that allows you to send emails to all meeting attendees after the original invitation was sent

§         Allows (or the preference to allow) meeting organizers to receive attendee responses via email

§         Allows attendees to receive invites via email and allows attendees to respond to invites with comments

• We've streamlined our file attachment functionality and updated how files attached to an email are displayed.
• Auto-complete will be available in this release. Just begin to type the name or email address of someone in your contact list, and auto-complete will display on-the-fly matches.
• You’ll be able to automatically save the email addresses of your outbound emails to your contacts as new contacts.
• We’ve added reply flags on emails to tell if you have forwarded and/or replied to an email.
• You can set email priority to high, medium or low.
• There's a new version of the Task List where tasks are listed and details can be viewed in a separate preview pane. It also includes new printing features for printing all tasks, or only a specific group that you have selected.
• Last but definitely not least: the power to change the layout of the application and save it. Want to put your email preview pane on the right, shrink the size of the date field in your email list, add the priority field in your email list? No problem, just save your custom layout. Want to have one layout for your computer at work and another for your computer at home, no problem; you can have multiple layouts for your account.

Version 6.0 is currently scheduled to implement in late March.

Application Speed (Version 6.5)

As we've added features and hundreds of thousands of users, we've created a significant load on our systems and applications. We have already begun a project specifically to investigate options for increasing application speed for a growing number of active users. You'll see some increases in performance with the Version 6.0 release and then this project, which is currently in the planning phase, is scheduled to be completed in June. The scope of the project includes optimizing login, contacts, overall application, email delivery, email application - including not refreshing the entire screen when you move or delete an email message - and POP/IMAP connectivity.

Spam Management

Many of you noted that you're getting a lot of junk mail. Given that more than 85% of all email sent is junk mail, this is not terribly surprising. The amount of junk mail that we don't deliver to you is staggering, and is in the millions - yes that's millions - of emails every month. Even so, inevitably some junk mail gets through. We have already begun a project to increase our spam blocking, which will block more spam before it gets to your mailbox. It's going to take a couple of months to implement the necessary system changes, but you'll see improvement in the first half of 2008.

Direct Connect

The ability to synchronize with Microsoft Outlook is a popular feature. We are currently working on an enhancement to our Direct Connect application that will simplify and improve the installation process and improve synchronization speed. The engineers have already completed the coding for these changes, and we are currently testing the new version. This update is scheduled to be released before the end of March.

All of the above projects are a key focus for us in the first half of 2008. We're working hard to deliver improvements to you in a timely manner. I can't guarantee we'll hit all the dates, but I will guarantee that when we deliver, we'll deliver high quality improvements.

Feature Awareness

There were a few things that were included in your feedback but not covered above. We received feedback on several items that are already available within BlueTie. We're going to do more to raise awareness of these features and how to use them, but we wanted to cover the most common items here:

• Viewing Only 10 Emails at a Time: You can change the number of email messages displayed at any one time to a maximum of 50 in the Email - General Settings area of Preferences.
• Requiring Password Changes: The frequency at which you must reset your password is controlled by your enterprise administrator who can set the time interval between requiring a new password. They can set it to any number, 15, 20, 60 days, whatever they feel is appropriate for your business. They can even choose to not require new passwords at all. I'm not sure I would recommend that final setting, but this is something your enterprise manager sets on a per account basis. The current default setting is 30 days, which is generally recommended as a good practice for security.
• Session Timeout: The length of time of inactivity before your account is automatically logged out for security purposes is a setting that can be adjusted in two ways. One, the enterprise administrator can set the default and then determine if individual users have access to change this setting. If the administrator allows individuals to change this setting, you can change it in the General - Change Security Settings section of Preferences. Just be careful with the length of time you put in there, because, just like the password reset, a lower time is recommended for higher security.
• Email & Event Notifications: Email and event notification pop-ups are already available in BlueTie. The New Email Notification preference is available in the Email - General Settings area of Preferences. For Calendar Events, the setting for reminders is in the Calendar - General Settings area of Preferences.

Thanks to all who provided feedback! Please don't hesitate to contact us should you have any questions or comments.