Xobni Insight

Review submitted by William Lefkovics, March 26 2008      

Full report in PDF format

Review of Outlook Add-on, Xobni.

Tested: Xobni Insight 1.2.3.2952 on Windows Vista with Outlook 2007

There are so many Outlook add-ons (http://www.slipstick.com/addins/index.htm) available to extend and enhance the user experience. Xobni Insight is really one that I see as a must have.

I have always had a fascination with patterns and trends. Within an Exchange mailbox, or Personal Folders (.pst) file, there lies a web of interactivity between objects with various attributes referenced against time. This interaction generates statistical relationships not obvious in the limited Outlook interface. Xobni reaches into the data, gathering values that are already there and presents them in a different way. Rather than describing a sender in Outlook, Xobni describes the sum of interaction between the user and the sender, quantifies that interaction relative to others, and presents that information in a valuable format. Figure 1 displays Xobni Insight within a standard Outlook inbox view. The Xobni pane is collapsible, like the To-Do and Navigation bars, and it can also be removed from the Outlook interface through the Xobni menu added at installation.

As I used it, I found four distinct components to Xobni Insight:

  1. Real time relationship information with an associated address of a message when it is selected.
  2. An organization window showing appointments and To-Do items
  3. A comprehensive search window to query message content
  4. Statistical presentation of historical use of e-mail

Xobni itself parses the Outlook data files to create its own custom index from which the Xobni content is assembled. The Xobni indexes are maintained on a per profile basis. If multiple accounts exist within a single Outlook profile, then those accounts share the same Xobni indexes. Xobni stores indexes in the user profile path in Windows. For Vista, this would default to:

C:\users\<user_name>\AppData\Local\Xobni\<outlook_profile_name>\

On my test profile with three separate accounts (one IMAP and two POP3) plus an archive folder, the .pst files totaled 2GB and the corresponding Xobni indexes, logs and other data files totaled 650MB.

Xobni uses these indexes for its statistical presentation as we as its own search functionality. When a message in the Inbox view is selected, Xobni automatically presents data on the sender of that message. It uses a bar chart to display relative e-mail volume from that sender for the hours of the day. Figure 2 shows that the sender is most likely to send messages to this user in the morning, probably when he arrives at the office. This image also shows the conversations with this sender as well as the names of attachments that have been sent between the user and the sender. It also lists people associated with this sender, most likely through the CC: and BCC: fields of e-mail messages.

While Xobni search is very fast, faster than Outlook with Windows Desktop Search, it does not include aspects outside of messages and basic contact information pulled from message bodies. It does not index folders other than mail item folders and it does not index attachments, though it effectively presents their file names. It is great for searching e-mail correspondence and displays search results in a more valuable format than Outlook does. Figure 3 shows search output for Xobni. This search is profile-wide, so it covers multiple accounts. It has the option of a mini web search, too, using Yahoo! search.


 

Xobni Insight has gathered metrics and properties from messages stored in Outlook. This data can be presented in various forms and against various attributes. Xobni Analytics is a separate menu command in the Outlook menu bar. Xobni | Xobni Analytics will open a secondary window with several report options:

  • Today’s Summary
  • Mail Traffic
  • Response Times
  • Unique Contacts
  • Flag Complete Times

Figure 4 shows a Xobni Analytics window with a daily mail traffic report selected. The set of basic reports listed above is not as comprehensive as enterprise level message reporting at the server, but it is a good guideline for users to gauge their own email activity. The Response Times report was somewhat unique showing how long recipients took to respond to an email message sent to them by the Outlook user. Overall, the results do depend on the messages being present. If messages are deleted, then the historical view of these reports gets skewed. This also means that Xobni cannot index or report on messages that are managed outside of Outlook. If a user works in a Web mail client for the same mailbox and deletes or sends messages, then Xobni within Outlook is not going to be able to add value from those communications.

Xobni picks up contact information from email messages. If contact information changes in Outlook contacts, Xobni has no way of automatically updating that information. While Xobni updates its indexes, there is no obvious impact on regular Outlook use; however, even with my modest testing, the manual synchronization took some time - about 45 minutes for my test. Using the menu to request synchronization parses the entire data store or stores; whereas, Xobni only indexes about 60 days when initially run. IMAP seems to take longer than the POP3 .pst files for indexing, possibly because it must access the message body by downloading from the server when only header information is initially pulled down by Outlook.

Xobni Insight is still in beta, so the final product may have some improvements. Sometimes it is necessary to disable an Outlook add-on to troubleshoot another issue. This is especially true of beta products. Normally, I use the registry to disable Outlook add-ons by changing the LoadBehavior key to 0 for the specific application in the following location:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins\

Xobni does not want to adhere to this setting. After changing the LoadBehavior to 0 for the application XobniMailConnectorShim.Connect, Xobni seems to move it right back to where it was previously and pretends as though nothing is amiss. It loads the Xobni add-on even when it has been asked nicely no to do so. Hopefully this is something that can be remedied.

Finally, Xobni does save log files of certain choices, such as a manual synchronization. You can send these logs to the folks at Xobni for analysis if needed, but you can also do a little troubleshooting based on the content there. The log(s) is stored where the indexes are - deep in the user profile path. Figure 5 shows a sampling of a Xobni log file for synchronization between the Xobni indexes and the local message stores.

Summary

Xobni Insight is a breath of fresh air for Outlook. It presents information in a different and meaningful way relative to Outlook. It provides a fast search mechanism that is extremely responsive, but only returns matches from email content, except for attachments, which are not indexed. It analyzes emails to provide real-time relationship information with other addresses. It also presents a few handy reports for users to learn how they use email as well.

What Xobni Insight does:

indexes email to present relationship information between the user and the sender of a selected email.

provides a rapid search interface for querying message headers and bodies

presents statistical data on email usage per profile

provides an Organization summary listing appointments, to-do items, and addresses that have not been used recently.

What Xobni Insight does not do:

Does not index folders other than mail items.

Does not index all message content unless manually synchronized, otherwise only recent (60 days) content

Does not index attachments

Does not manage data beyond the local Outlook installation

Does not currently follow protocol for disabling an add-on for Outlook

 

 

William Lefkovics, BSc, MCSE, A+, is the Technical Director for Las Vegas based Mojave Media Group, LLC. He is a contributing author to Windows IT Pro Magazine online and is a co-author of Microsoft Exchange 2007: The Complete Reference published by McGraw-Hill.
 
Updated May 11 2008
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