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Xiant Filer for Microsoft Outlook

Xiant:

Xiant is dedicated to producing tools that make your time at the computer as productive as possible. Though we are launching our first products, our tech roots are second to none. Xiant Filer was created by technology innovator/Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen and engineers at Xiant, whose challenge was to ease management of overflowing Microsoft Office Outlook inboxes. Xiant has even more tools under development to help you be productive, organized, and connected with your stuff.

Xiant Filer

E-mail is a crucial productivity tool. As our dependency on e-mail grows and its volume increases, our mailboxes become increasingly difficult to manage. Quickly finding messages in a bloated inbox—from various senders and in multiple conversation threads—can prove difficult, if not impossible. And while there are many solutions out there to help manage and organize e-mail, each one typically requires an investment in time and effort that could be better spent on more important tasks.
If you use Microsoft Office Outlook as your e-mail application, the beta release of the Xiant Filer add-in can instantly help you more efficiently manage your e-mail.

So, if you need/want such a thing, here it is.

But please, dear God. Don't use this. In fact, don't use Outlook. I'm not saying Paul Allen is a bit out of touch, but releasing a utility for yesterday's email application these days is somewhat, well, out of touch. I realize a lot of people still use Outlook. But if this guy had his head in the right place, he'd be helping people remove the single-PC lock of such legacy applications. Your data should be available everywhere. Sorting it in a single place doesn't really obviate the underlying inefficiency of using such an application.

Comments

 

de Silentio said:

"In fact, don't use Outlook"

Unless you work in a business situation and need an application to connect to a corporate mail server.

June 23, 2009 9:34 AM
 

shark47 said:

@de Silentio: "Unless you work in a business situation and need an application to connect to a corporate mail server."

Exactly. What Paul doesn't seem to realize is that Outlook is just a tool. Just by virtue of using Outlook, it doesn't mean your data isn't available everywhere. If you use Exchange or GMail, your filters, sorts are global unless you've created local folders on your machine.

June 23, 2009 9:42 AM
 

realtestman said:

Why wouldn't data still be everywhere if you were using Outlook?  If (like me) you were using IMAP and DeltaSync, the data is everywhere by default.

In fact, this could be pretty useful for automatically filing stuff when you are on your PC using Outlook.  Obviously you wouldn't have this auto-filing method if you were accessing your e-mail account on other devices (like iPhone or Windows Mobile).

June 23, 2009 9:43 AM
 

lketchum said:

Ummm.... daffy... just daffy....

"don't use Outlook" - suggesting that your data isn't available everywhere....

That is not true at all. I use and provide Exchange services that use Outlook at the client program.

With Outlook 2007 on Exchange 2007, all folders - even those linked to any SharePoint site/list/library, appear in all instances of Outlook on however many computers one may have. Beginning with Exchange 2007, the use of "Public Folders" was depricated in favor of secure only access to extensible answer files connecting one to any number of resources - autodiscover, libraries, apps data, or any blend of these. Xiant in fact, leverages this capability quite nicely and even where it is not installed, the structure created at one location is reflected on all others.

Clearly, Paul does not use Outlook, or Exchange as they are designed. And not available everywhere? Nonsense. OWA in Exchange 2007/2010 smokes any web based email experience out there and as I do, one may have many mobile phones/devices simultaneously connected.

Finally, anyone looking at Exchange and limiting its context and relevance to 'email' clearly hasn't explored a 100th of what the platform is designed to do. We have many dozens of different phone systems for small business connected to our and an equal number of ERP's tightly integrated to it. It simply stuns me that Paul and others make such statements without even trying to understand what is possible.

June 23, 2009 9:55 AM
 

deepfry said:

Also don't forget that outlook can connect to an exchange server using rpc over http so you can access all your mail from any machine that has outlook installed. Or, as lketchum said, use the new OWA which is pretty much a complete version of outlook inside a browser, which does indeed make most other webmail clients look dated.

June 23, 2009 10:38 AM
 

yipcanjo said:

What, pray tell, should I be using, Paul?  There is NO BETTER CLIENT FOR EXCHANGE than Outlook.  None.  Zip.  Zilch.  Since a *lot* of companies also use Exchange + Outlook, don't you think the situation warrants some help?  I'm not saying that Xiant is the answer -- I've never even used it -- but the situation isn't exactly ridiculous.

C'mon, Paul -- you're off-base here.

June 23, 2009 10:44 AM
 

mikegalos@msn.com said:

lketchum

I'd expand that to also say, "Finally, anyone looking at Outlook and limiting its context and relevance to online-only products clearly hasn't explored a 100th of what the platform is designed to do."

Right now, the beta I'm most looking forward to is Office 2010 and a lot of the reason for that is for Outlook 2010.

Comparing an online-only solution like Paul's dearly loved GMail to Outlook is a lot like comparing the Photoshop Express online editor to Photoshop CS4 - if you only dabble with the top 1% of the features it may look similar but if you're any kind of serious user then comparing them quickly becomes silly.

June 23, 2009 11:08 AM
 

GoodThings2Life said:

I agree with you 99% of the time Paul, but this isn't one of them. I've used everything from Eudora to Thunderbird, and Outlook is the most productive, and flat out required for Exchange servers.

June 23, 2009 11:09 AM
 

bonoriffic said:

I use Outlook on my laptop, yet my email is also available on my smartphone and any other computer I want through OWA.

There isn't a single cloud based email app that can do 2% of what Outlook can for corporate users. Stupid advice. Just plain stupid.

June 23, 2009 11:21 AM
 

lketchum said:

@deepfry,

Sorry I should have been more clear. Yes, we use and support RPC over HTTP(s) and have for years.

The autodiscover answer files (XML) files published at the Exchange Transport Server (one of five roles) establishes a secure only listener for incoming requests. This and similar answer files are used to support a very wide variety of connections - voice, visual voicemail, conferencing, third party VoIP integration, facing internal applications, etc...

They also make connecting and managing users, clients and devices a snap - literally click a link, enter the userid [just the user ID, no domain is required] and enter the password and autocnfiguration does the rest.

Presence tokens, available in LCS/OLCS are exposed to .NET and the IDE and populate applications and SharePoint Sites with great ease. Scheduling and finding people and resources is also very simple.

And once again, I want to point out that while more difficult for the admin to set up, we've doing this since "Forced Encryption over TCP/IP" made VPN-less secure connections to Exchange possible in 2000! RPC over HTTP(s) while initially some work, was possible and common since August, 2003. After SP1 for for E2K3 Server, any decent admin could enable it.

Better admins have figured out how to answer for mobile devices in their desired domain names, vice the default first site name - we do and customers love it.

My question to Paul and many other "Just use Google - it is the way of the future in cloud computing!" is, WHAT?!?!? where have you been? We've been doing secure only distributed "cloud" computing as a service since 2000 and each year our offerings are better than anything Google offers. Microsoft and Exchange and the balance of the servers across that platform make it possible.

I suppose now the argument will be that it is too expensive.... BS. Pure BS.  Who at Google is going to do the integration or actually devise integrated solutions around what even the smallest of businesses really need? Where is it even remotely possible to make their services an integral part of a seamless and transparent enteprise solution that uses all "clouds" - yours, mine, ours and theirs?

Google doesn't speak the language and hasn't a clue and for the record, it is not about the technology at all... it is about what one does with it that matters. Paul needs to see a few companies we support leverage what I am talking about - he'd see how insulting to the mind some of his observations are.

Thanks, Deepfry for the reminder about RPC over HTTP(s). We make one small change in that we support WINS Auth as opposed to basic Auth and we co-exist with E2K3 servers to replicate what we expected many enterprise clients to have. We also use UCC vice the referral method, which we find to offer a better experience.

By the by... customers love hosted/managed Exchange services and in an instant become Outlook converts over Google's business Gmail offering. It takes about an hour for them to see the real differences. Not saying Google won't get there... I am saying that MS isn't going to sit on its backside and cede any of it to them.

June 23, 2009 11:22 AM
 

RobertC said:

It is interesting that Paul continues to parrot this rubbish with respect to Outlook. For god sake Paul, you don't even have to understand half of what Iketchum is talking about to know that none of Google's services offer anything like the power of Outlook married to Exchange.

Gmail is pathetic by comparison. If you're in the consumer sphere, then fine, but please don't be wilfully blind to reality.

June 23, 2009 11:51 AM
 

Ocean said:

I knew Paul would catch it for that advice.

Someone give us a brief bullet list of pros and cons.

June 23, 2009 12:01 PM
 

pmcgrath said:

Well said Robert and Iketchum.

God, I thought we already covered this, road it into the ground, and watched it die. Now were just beating the poor thing.

June 23, 2009 12:06 PM
 

Ribatu said:

Gmail offers everything one needs. If you disagree with that you've unknowingly allowed feature creep to infect your requirements. We successfully use Google Apps Premier for our corporate email (as does Washington DC and BioPharm giant Genetech).

Sure, RDP over HTTP is fine. But  I just don't want the headache and financial burden of supporting multiple Exchange servers, virus protection, spam filters, archiving, global searching, BES servers, etc... Cripes how many third party solutions are you gonna buy and support?

Peace and good luck with all that.

June 23, 2009 12:17 PM
 

Dipsh t Admin said:

OWA means my e-mail, contacts and calendar are available in the cloud.  It also means I can access Public Folders.   Cached Exchange Mode combined with RPC over HTTP allow for anywhere access, regardless of availability or quality of Internet connection.  When Gmail can match any of that, give me a call.  Heck, even Windows Live Hotmail with the Windows Live Mail client gives me pretty much all of the same features (no Public Folders of course, but this would be personal e-mail).

I use Gmail, Hotmail, and Outlook/Exchange.  They all serve certain purposes, but if I had to pick two, it would Oultook and Hotmail.  YMMV.

June 23, 2009 12:36 PM
 

yipcanjo said:

Paul uses Gmail?  I take back everything *kind* I've ever said about him.

Ugh.  Nasty stuff.

June 23, 2009 1:03 PM
 

wjglenn141 said:

Even if you're not on a corporate network, there are valid reasons to use Outlook. I find using Gmail a truly awful experience. The others aren't much better.

I use Outlook with (gasp) personal folders. When I'm away, I access my computer through remote desktop.

Big deal.

June 23, 2009 1:05 PM
 

lketchum said:

Ribatu,

Respectfully, you've more than made my point for me.

Customers, ours specifically, do not have to maintain a thing. We do it for them - as do many great providers CLOSE to their customers. Microsoft itself has entered the channel, but they are no CLOSER to the customer than Google is. We are.

As I stated, technologies; however powerful they may be, mean very little to people and business. How they are used does matter. How they are integrated and face people in and outside of a business is where the value is.

As to "feature creep" - read the statement above again. Requirements, not features drive what we do. This is where Exchange, Office, and other member servers provide us and others the means to fully and quickly develop solutions that exactly match the requirements driven by the actual processes and work performed by people and their businesses. The power and options are not there yet with Google, or outside Microsoft - in every area of consideration from available people to employ, to the available members, servers, tools and third party additions to the platform - to costs, time to develop and deploy and the options to add, scale, or even collapse services, must be available. Microsoft has them all covered well and Google less well.

To say and face: "Gmail offers everything one needs" demands that what one wants is placed second to what one requires and wants. It stipulates that there is a feature set as defined by another and that is it.

That is not what it is to be human - to be so constrained and really, the modern "cloud" based computing model is not about Google and a fixed "good enough" feature set at all. The promise of "cloud" based computing is about the ability to develop not just for one cloud, but all clouds at once and in any fashion that one may need, or desires to have. In this context, Microsoft is decades ahead of Google. The platform is extensible and we face it to everything in both broad and very specific ways at the same time. Of course we have a platform - a base. We have fundamentals, but each is both open and consistent with a far great set of options. The bottom line is that not any two people or companies need the exact same thing. On Microsoft's platform, which includes Exchange/Outlook/Universal Messaging/Unified Communications, it is possible to create affordable solutions that others have not begun to imagine, much less build. Fixing people in one feature set, or looking at modern communications in that context is constraining and it forces us to deprecate our aspirations.

Finally, as someone within Microsoft, who observed my opinions and examples of this not at all new “modern way of cloud based work” noted and said: “What’s ours is yours.” He meant: “exactly! Someone gets it – keep doing the important work of facing solutions close to customers. Just use our cloud, too, when it becomes advantageous to do so.” He was speaking of course of federations and solutions leveraging existing and future capabilities that allow one to use whatever resources they need – my cloud, your cloud, their cloud, becoming our cloud and ultimately “The Cloud.” In my world and via RDC and Teredo, every computer is my computer and even DirectX is rendered “in the cloud” Mark my words: “Google is going to get its backside handed to it” Not by Microsoft, but an army of individuals creating cloud based solutions of their own. Microsoft will do as it has always done,

facilitate this value and remain wildly successful for having “shared” their cloud. Google? They’re already less relevant and they’ll fade about as quickly as they rose. That’s not just my bet, that’ll happen in small part because their definition of “evil” conflicts with my own. I think it IS “evil” to suggest that anyone except a pre-defined set of features and regard them as “good enough” – nothing is good enough, or ever should be. Not among people.

June 23, 2009 1:05 PM
 

mikegalos@msn.com said:

Ribatu

It is always amusing to watch people suggest what comes down to (feel free to substitute inside the <> section):

"If <my favorite company> doesn't offer that <feature, product> you don't need it and are <stupid, tacky, "don't get it", "have no taste"> for asking for it. Sit down, shut up and do as you're told"

Of course it's only to justify their favorite company's lack of features and products but the consistant arrogance and insulting tone taken to justify a weak product is fun to watch. Especially a year or two later when their favorite company ships the missing feature and they then brag about what a great idea it is - now.

June 23, 2009 2:07 PM
 

Waethorn said:

"But if this guy had his head in the right place, he'd be helping people remove the single-PC lock of such legacy applications. Your data should be available everywhere. Sorting it in a single place doesn't really obviate the underlying inefficiency of using such an application."

Ya, you know Paul, cuz he should use his 13375K1LLZ to do what is really necessary for what you're asking for feasible and

MAKE THE INTERNET 10000x FASTER THAN IT IS!

Or maybe he's just trying to make email a bit more bearable on what is available right now.

@all:

Remember that Paul doesn't run this stuff on a day-to-day basis, so he doesn't know what businesses really need.

@Paul:

The internet isn't stable.  That's a truth that every business understands.

June 23, 2009 3:40 PM
 

winram said:

This is going to be interesting.

Paul - Outlook is not outdated.  I believe in all sincerity that your viewpoint, however, is.  Outlook is an amazing client that receives mail from email services like Exchange, GMail, and any other email service out there.  This doesn't make them outdated, it makes them REPOSITORIES.  You know, just like when you download mail with your iphone.  See?  Not the cloud, it's resident on your phone.  Or in Live Mail.  See?  Not the cloud, but still not bad.  

On some level, you can't just live on the cloud.  Things have to be resident and have to be "owned".  Corporations get that, which is why Outlook is preferred - policies, restrictions, requirements, etc can all be managed on a resident copy of the data.  Even in the personal space, sure you can use GMail, but some/most people like having access to their mail regardless of a live internet connection.

Cloud computing only goes so far.  

June 23, 2009 5:15 PM
 

robertsjoe said:

People still use Outlook? Outlook is the new Lotus Notes.

June 23, 2009 6:40 PM
 

robertsjoe said:

GMail is the best emai client (web or desktop) out there.

June 23, 2009 6:40 PM
 

tayme said:

Exchange/Outlook is so much more than just email. It has been said many times in this thread...Paule, you need to get out of the hotel rooms/trade shows/author mode and visit some real world companies that use real world tools to get real world jobs done. It this age of increasing government regulation, cloud computing is going to remain a very niche market. Try putting patient information, customer financial data, or sensitive information of any kind on Google's, Microsoft's, or any other third parties "Cloud" and see how your next audit, examination, or other regulatory visit goes...then let us know. Some sales people and tech evangelists may think that is another way of "being $h!tty at IT" or "letting my company's computing environment get stale and rot" but in reality, it is the way it really is in the US today. They just don't have any more real world experience than Paul does.

--tayme

June 23, 2009 9:14 PM
 

tayme said:

@robertsjoe - See my previous post. In real world corporate environments that fall under the increasing government regulation, GMail is absolutely not even an option.

--tayme

June 23, 2009 9:16 PM
 

rr0de74@live.com said:

Outlook/Exchange feature set just cant be beat.  

If you dont need those features, like delegates, public folders, resource management (conference rooms etc), full on calendar sharing and many more than gmail and others like MobileMe (for mac users) come close in many areas.

As many has said, OWA that come with Exchange 2007/2010 are vastly better than any webmail I have seen and as feature rich as the full Outlook 2003 fat client.  At my company 75% of the users are TS clients and all they get is OWA 2007.  We are seriously considering doing the same for almost everyone when 2010 drops.  With most of our applications shrink wrapped and home grown are web based only (People Soft, custom sharepoint applications) its very easy to do.

Hosted Exchange is the best example of a cloud computing.

June 23, 2009 10:53 PM
 

robertsjoe said:

The Outlook team don't have a clue. See for yourself: http://fixoutlook.org/

How bad is that? Outlook, the new Lotus Notes.

June 23, 2009 11:12 PM
 

RobertC said:

Robertsjoe, since you've never stepped foot outside of your mother's womb, you are not an authority on anything concerning the discussion adult business.

June 23, 2009 11:55 PM
 

robertsjoe said:

@robertc: Using Word to render HTML emais? That's horrific!

June 24, 2009 12:16 AM
 

robertsjoe said:

Microsoft Office is so retro. So 1980's

googlesystem.blogspot.com/.../retro-plastic-box.html

June 24, 2009 12:22 AM
 

Windows Weekly 113: The Rural Juror « TWiT Netcasts iPhone said:

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June 26, 2009 8:55 PM
 

Xiant Filer for Microsoft Outlook | The Software Nook said:

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June 30, 2009 8:41 PM
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