Messaging & Collaboration - eWeek

Messaging & Collaboration: LABS GALLERY: Liaise Leverages Outlook for Project, Task Management


There are many systems available today that are designed to help workers manage tasks and projects, ranging from classic project management platforms to portals to SAAS-based business collaboration tools. But nearly all of these applications force users to leave the collaboration platform in which they are most comfortable—namely, e-mail. Liaise, a new product that debuted at the recent DEMOfall show, addresses this by letting users stay in e-mail—building tasks and action items based on what a user types in an e-mail. But while Liaise is intriguing, the current beta is still fairly limited and works only as a Microsoft Outlook plug-in.
 
  • LABS GALLERY: Liaise Leverages Outlook for Project, Task Management
    By Jim Rapoza
  • Text Scan
    As a user types an e-mail message in a Liaise-enabled Outlook system, Liaise scans the text in the e-mail to detect the KeyPoint (whether the e-mail is intended to take action or handle an issue), who the participants are (the sender and the recipients), if there is a due date associated with the task, and the priority or importance of the task.
  • Automatic Categorization
    Liaise attempts to automatically categorize data points for the e-mail (for example, the use of words like "urgent" increases the priority of the message), but users can also click on the individual Liaise data points to manually edit them.
  • Customization
    Users of Liaise can carry out some very basic and limited customization and settings configuration for Liaise.
  • Basic Info
    Basic information on Liaise is accessible from the Liaise manager window.
  • Status
    The Liaise manager window also lets users view all of their Liaise tasks and issues, as well as their status. Users can change status here or in the e-mail itself. Also, a Liaise toolbar at the bottom of the screen offers information on highlighted e-mail messages.
  • Getting the Message
    If a user sends a Liaise-enabled message to another Liaise user, both will be full participants in a task. If a user sends a Liaise-enabled message to a user who doesn't use Liaise, the latter user will receive a normal message with some Liaise artificats intact.
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