Chaos Software’s Intellect - Why I Like it
Started by Steve
on 3/3/2014
Steve
3/3/2014 11:38 am
Chaos Software’s Intellect Review
For many reasons, it’s time for me to share what tools I use for my daily work. Like many of you there is not one side of me that a PIM needs to be useful to help with. There is the work side, the personal side, and the general messing around side. So the tools I use generally need to work in all those sides (environments) as much as possible.
I’m a travel agency owner and a travel agent. I’ve done this since 1984. Some of the duties, or tasks, that I need to manage include:
Communicating with clients, suppliers, friends, and church.
Managing business, personal, and client tasks.
Managing client research and general information.
Managing databases of contacts for business, fraternity, church, and personal.
Managing schedules such as appointments and other related due dates.
Managing recurring tasks, appointments, meetings, due dates.
I’ve been through a few PIM’s over the years. I’ve liked all the ones I’ve used, each has its own forte that gives it that special use for the target market. Maybe target market is the wrong description – most good PIM’s seem to be a very small operation so the PIM has the developer’s personal stamp on it.
My favorite PIM is Above and Beyond (1soft.com), others have been; Lotus Organizer, iambic’s Agendus (http://www.iambic.com/ and some other’s more on a test basis.
Email has become the number one item that moved me to a new PIM around 2008. Supplier’s had moved to electronic documents, much of marketing was electronic, keeping up with client’s contact changing required integration with one dataset. Eudora was dying, my Palm OS was dying, so I had to do something. I rediscovered Chaos Software.
You can read the laundry list of features and benefits at Intellect (http://www.chaossoftware.com plus they’ve posted some of the hidden features on their blog. What I like is:
Contacts are the hub from which everything else connects.
Tasks, emails, files, etc. are linked to contacts. This means I can display a contact and find all the emails, tasks, files, whatever related to the contact.
Contacts can be linked together. This means friends, business, groups, etc. are easy to find.
Backups are simple and pretty much text based so I’m not locked in to proprietary problems. Same for Email.
Clean, clear workspace for the day. Not a cluttered mess.
Field names are customizable. This means I can not only have my own field names for contact usage, but also multiple email addresses. This is important because when people change emails I can add the new, keep the old so old emails are still linked to the contact.
Export contacts for marketing.
Activity series; check out http://www.chaossoftware.com/university/ and view Intellect 505. Example; I book a trip and now I have a number of tasks that need to be done in the future. I have a series set up to do that.
Email merge marketing – just like the old mail merge letters only this one merges email. Personalize those messages but the other important feature is each email is sent separately.
Search is fast and can be done via a simple .
Search can be done via the same but can target tasks, contacts, etc. only.
Restore individual records from a backup. Example, mistakenly delete a contact – you can simply restore just that contact.
Backups are individual – meaning each time I backup, the contacts, tasks, etc are done contacts1, contacts2, etc so I’m not overwriting the previous sets.
Custom copy; in each “module” (meaning contacts or tasks, or projects, etc) you can have your own way of copying data fields to the clipboard. Example for me is I can right-click on a contact then copy the first, last, street address, phone, passport number, expiration date, and credit card data since I have that data in their own named fields.
I think the price they charge is more than reasonable for what they offer. For contact based software that isn’t bloated, I have not found anything better.
Tip; I know people who use it for projects. They use the same linked contact activity but replace the contact with the project name.
Next up; AskSam for client research.
Steve
For many reasons, it’s time for me to share what tools I use for my daily work. Like many of you there is not one side of me that a PIM needs to be useful to help with. There is the work side, the personal side, and the general messing around side. So the tools I use generally need to work in all those sides (environments) as much as possible.
I’m a travel agency owner and a travel agent. I’ve done this since 1984. Some of the duties, or tasks, that I need to manage include:
Communicating with clients, suppliers, friends, and church.
Managing business, personal, and client tasks.
Managing client research and general information.
Managing databases of contacts for business, fraternity, church, and personal.
Managing schedules such as appointments and other related due dates.
Managing recurring tasks, appointments, meetings, due dates.
I’ve been through a few PIM’s over the years. I’ve liked all the ones I’ve used, each has its own forte that gives it that special use for the target market. Maybe target market is the wrong description – most good PIM’s seem to be a very small operation so the PIM has the developer’s personal stamp on it.
My favorite PIM is Above and Beyond (1soft.com), others have been; Lotus Organizer, iambic’s Agendus (http://www.iambic.com/ and some other’s more on a test basis.
Email has become the number one item that moved me to a new PIM around 2008. Supplier’s had moved to electronic documents, much of marketing was electronic, keeping up with client’s contact changing required integration with one dataset. Eudora was dying, my Palm OS was dying, so I had to do something. I rediscovered Chaos Software.
You can read the laundry list of features and benefits at Intellect (http://www.chaossoftware.com plus they’ve posted some of the hidden features on their blog. What I like is:
Contacts are the hub from which everything else connects.
Tasks, emails, files, etc. are linked to contacts. This means I can display a contact and find all the emails, tasks, files, whatever related to the contact.
Contacts can be linked together. This means friends, business, groups, etc. are easy to find.
Backups are simple and pretty much text based so I’m not locked in to proprietary problems. Same for Email.
Clean, clear workspace for the day. Not a cluttered mess.
Field names are customizable. This means I can not only have my own field names for contact usage, but also multiple email addresses. This is important because when people change emails I can add the new, keep the old so old emails are still linked to the contact.
Export contacts for marketing.
Activity series; check out http://www.chaossoftware.com/university/ and view Intellect 505. Example; I book a trip and now I have a number of tasks that need to be done in the future. I have a series set up to do that.
Email merge marketing – just like the old mail merge letters only this one merges email. Personalize those messages but the other important feature is each email is sent separately.
Search is fast and can be done via a simple .
Search can be done via the same but can target tasks, contacts, etc. only.
Restore individual records from a backup. Example, mistakenly delete a contact – you can simply restore just that contact.
Backups are individual – meaning each time I backup, the contacts, tasks, etc are done contacts1, contacts2, etc so I’m not overwriting the previous sets.
Custom copy; in each “module” (meaning contacts or tasks, or projects, etc) you can have your own way of copying data fields to the clipboard. Example for me is I can right-click on a contact then copy the first, last, street address, phone, passport number, expiration date, and credit card data since I have that data in their own named fields.
I think the price they charge is more than reasonable for what they offer. For contact based software that isn’t bloated, I have not found anything better.
Tip; I know people who use it for projects. They use the same linked contact activity but replace the contact with the project name.
Next up; AskSam for client research.
Steve
Dr Andus
3/3/2014 5:51 pm
Steve wrote:
Steve - thanks for taking the trouble to write the review. I've been looking for something similar in the past as well, and this sounds promising.
I think the price they charge is more than reasonable for what they
offer. For contact based software that isn’t bloated, I have not
found anything better.
Steve - thanks for taking the trouble to write the review. I've been looking for something similar in the past as well, and this sounds promising.
Paul Korm
3/3/2014 6:57 pm
Steve
Thank you for your very helpful post. Did you migrate your work to Intellect -- or are you in evaluation mode?
I evaluated Time and Chaos about 6 or 7 years ago, and at the time I was concerned about migrating much of my work into a new tool that might prove to be a niche or dead-end application. So, I've tended to stay with Outlook, which is more "mainstream". It also seems that the feature set for Outlook 2013 (which is my current work platform for contacts and work tasks) has a strong congruence with the feature set for Intellect. I also like that Outlook "plays well" with OneNote.
Did you look at Outlook -- and if so was there anything in particular that steered you away from it.
If you are in process of migrating from one tool to another, how are you approaching it? Spend a week moving everything over and having done with the old platform -- or a gradual, piecemeal process?
This is a relevant problem for me know and your advice is welcome.
Paul K.
Thank you for your very helpful post. Did you migrate your work to Intellect -- or are you in evaluation mode?
I evaluated Time and Chaos about 6 or 7 years ago, and at the time I was concerned about migrating much of my work into a new tool that might prove to be a niche or dead-end application. So, I've tended to stay with Outlook, which is more "mainstream". It also seems that the feature set for Outlook 2013 (which is my current work platform for contacts and work tasks) has a strong congruence with the feature set for Intellect. I also like that Outlook "plays well" with OneNote.
Did you look at Outlook -- and if so was there anything in particular that steered you away from it.
If you are in process of migrating from one tool to another, how are you approaching it? Spend a week moving everything over and having done with the old platform -- or a gradual, piecemeal process?
This is a relevant problem for me know and your advice is welcome.
Paul K.
Steve
3/5/2014 11:25 am
Paul Korm wrote:
Steve
Thank you for your very helpful post. Did you migrate your work to
Intellect -- or are you in evaluation mode?
Not evaluating - own it. I bought a license in May 2008 and have used Intellect exclusively since. Not only for my tasks, emails, etc. but also has the database for my fraternity chapter (550+ members), business mailings (printing labels or mailmerge from Stamps.com), etc.
Did you look at Outlook -- and if so was there anything in particular
that steered you away from it.
I did look at Outlook somewhere around the late 1990's (seriously). At that time the hardware I could have (long story) wasn't powerful enough for it. Also, I recall that the full-blown Outlook was geared for big business and no one else.
Around 2003 I could finally have my own hardware (prior to that the airline reservation system owned the hardware). I looked at Microsoft Office and Lotus Smartsuite. I went with Lotus Smartsuite because; a) I had the whole office (6 terminals) networked (token ring thank you very much) on WordPro (remember Ami Pro?). b) All of my marketing pieces templates were in WordPro. c) Microsoft license for my little office was $600+ d) Lotus Smartsuite (Included WordPro of course) was a $69 CD.
True, Smartsuite did not offer any Email program but Organizer played well with Eudora.
So, believe it or not, I have NEVER had MS Office installed on any computer.
If you are in process of migrating from one tool to another, how are you
approaching it? Spend a week moving everything over and having done
with the old platform -- or a gradual, piecemeal process?
What I migrated from was Palm desktop to Intellect. I'm talking of about 2000+ contacts, but not Email. Email storage at that time was importing from Eudora into AskSam.
The exporting and importing of contacts was not too hard.
This is a relevant problem for me know and your advice is welcome.
I've never used Outlook so I'm not a good judge of which is better. I do know there is some kind of Outlook addon or something from Chaos Software. Check their website again under the products page and scroll down.
From what I know about Outlook, if it were me, I'd first think long and hard why I am considering changing Then I'd download the trial of Intellect and see if it addressed what I want. Shoot, if I needed a long time to decide or cut over the $60 license is cheap.
Paul K.
Paul Korm
3/5/2014 6:23 pm
Steve, thank you!
22111
3/6/2014 6:58 pm
"Next up; AskSam for client research."
Steve, I join the "thank you" 's. And I viewed the video you refer to: Well, it's quite daunting (I have "mouse arm", as said, even without jumping into such mouse excesses as displayed there).
As I see it from what I read, you did not integrate AS with ChI, and I understand there is no real need to do so. But from another pov, AS would allow for extensive automatization, by macros, whilst ChI presumably isn't as good as that: Some commands are underlined = accessible by Alt-xyz, but not all; similar for menus, but a good macro editor (like AHK) could access those menus notwithstanding.
So it seems to me that for the time being, you do a lot of manual work in ChI, since there is no time to do all the necessary macroing work, for a full week long? ;-) This will probably give you "mouse arm" some day in the future! ;-((( (I hope, not, but chances are for this to happen!)
One thing's for sure, "out of the box", it's quite neat as a program, it offers some tweaking (as I had said, and as you confirm, from an immediate utility pov from real-life use, there are some 20 or so record fields that can be individualized), and it's functional for the use you make of it - and with proper macroing, even strain on your hands could be avoided (and it's a pleasure to look at).
So I fully understand that you're happy with it (well, except for the abusive mouse thing ;-) ), and I acknowledge that there might be lots of other uses where it's as good as it is in yours.
This being said, consider b2b. There, it's many "contacts" with a given "contact", often over many months, if not over years, for a FUTURE project (whilst in your case, it'll be then, with existing customers, for NEW projects), and here, multiple "contact" record fields would be necessary, and to mix those ("done") "contacts" up with "tasks", is not a real solution, all the less so since in the same scenario, you also would need real "tasks", i.e. things to BE done, vs. things that HAVE been done, on that particular project.
Now for price: The most elaborate version is 60 bucks, which indeed is "nothing" for crm sw, and whenever the functionality is sufficient for the tasks at hand, this offering might indeed be one of the best there is (except for the name "asking" for all sorts of ridicule, as we have seen lately, here), all the more so with that price asked: If some other crm sw does SOME thing better, in your workflow, but is 600 bucks, I fully understand ChI is the sw of choice.
Of course, the non-integration of the work you do in AS, into ChI, "speaks for itself": ChI simply is a quite simple, not elaborate prog: Whenever there is "more" to do, you'll have to combine it with some other tool. (I very much hope you're in a two-screen set, with ChI and AS each running in its own screen?! ;-) If not yet, that would be the best 30 bucks (and then 30 bucks each year for energy) investment you'd done in your life.)
Seen to it from "reverse" pov: AS (in which so much else would be possible) has got such a substandard email functionality, and would demand so much external scripting, in order to become fully functional, that for professional use, users need additional applics, here ChI, in order to have their work done, whilst in AS, it would be possible, but a real pita from every possible pov, except when you first go into extensive macroing...
and to begin with, every AS user, in order to bear AS, will need a macro that closes down the "Want you save this changed item?" dialog whenever it pops up, after you just perhaps changed one little iota there, i.e. AS has the particularity of NOT offering a default saving function whenever you did some work on some item - compare this with your usual outliner: It's one of the elements that make AS almost unusable for anybody. (And then, I asked them for such a default about 10 or 12 or 15 years ago, to no avail, and OF COURSE, it would have been possible (and sensible) to introduce another, menu, command for "Leave this item WITHOUT saving the edited version", just in case. But you'll need such a command once in 200 instances, whilst AS forces you in 199 instances to enter "Yes" to the pop-up dialog - and yes, if they are almost bankrupt today, yes, there are valid reasons to this state of their affairs.)
Whilst in my imagination, ChI better cost 600 $ instead of just 60, but should integrate any functionality you currently realize with AS, as additional tool.
This being said, I fully acknowledge that ChI is a brilliant example for the need to judge applics in relation to their respective price, and for many uses, it might be a brilliant solution.
And again, the prob with AS is the same as (and worse than) with Ultra Recall, e.g. - all those progs miss two facts:
- today, email is a core function of your workflow, and thus has to be fully integrated
- "normal" users don't want to spend months with scripting, before their respective PIM is half-way functional (except for the email-function that no scripting could ever really fully integrate), and that's ironic, since from their respective potential, both AS and UR would (except for email) be so much more powerful... but only AFTER heavy scripting, in both cases.
Steve, I join the "thank you" 's. And I viewed the video you refer to: Well, it's quite daunting (I have "mouse arm", as said, even without jumping into such mouse excesses as displayed there).
As I see it from what I read, you did not integrate AS with ChI, and I understand there is no real need to do so. But from another pov, AS would allow for extensive automatization, by macros, whilst ChI presumably isn't as good as that: Some commands are underlined = accessible by Alt-xyz, but not all; similar for menus, but a good macro editor (like AHK) could access those menus notwithstanding.
So it seems to me that for the time being, you do a lot of manual work in ChI, since there is no time to do all the necessary macroing work, for a full week long? ;-) This will probably give you "mouse arm" some day in the future! ;-((( (I hope, not, but chances are for this to happen!)
One thing's for sure, "out of the box", it's quite neat as a program, it offers some tweaking (as I had said, and as you confirm, from an immediate utility pov from real-life use, there are some 20 or so record fields that can be individualized), and it's functional for the use you make of it - and with proper macroing, even strain on your hands could be avoided (and it's a pleasure to look at).
So I fully understand that you're happy with it (well, except for the abusive mouse thing ;-) ), and I acknowledge that there might be lots of other uses where it's as good as it is in yours.
This being said, consider b2b. There, it's many "contacts" with a given "contact", often over many months, if not over years, for a FUTURE project (whilst in your case, it'll be then, with existing customers, for NEW projects), and here, multiple "contact" record fields would be necessary, and to mix those ("done") "contacts" up with "tasks", is not a real solution, all the less so since in the same scenario, you also would need real "tasks", i.e. things to BE done, vs. things that HAVE been done, on that particular project.
Now for price: The most elaborate version is 60 bucks, which indeed is "nothing" for crm sw, and whenever the functionality is sufficient for the tasks at hand, this offering might indeed be one of the best there is (except for the name "asking" for all sorts of ridicule, as we have seen lately, here), all the more so with that price asked: If some other crm sw does SOME thing better, in your workflow, but is 600 bucks, I fully understand ChI is the sw of choice.
Of course, the non-integration of the work you do in AS, into ChI, "speaks for itself": ChI simply is a quite simple, not elaborate prog: Whenever there is "more" to do, you'll have to combine it with some other tool. (I very much hope you're in a two-screen set, with ChI and AS each running in its own screen?! ;-) If not yet, that would be the best 30 bucks (and then 30 bucks each year for energy) investment you'd done in your life.)
Seen to it from "reverse" pov: AS (in which so much else would be possible) has got such a substandard email functionality, and would demand so much external scripting, in order to become fully functional, that for professional use, users need additional applics, here ChI, in order to have their work done, whilst in AS, it would be possible, but a real pita from every possible pov, except when you first go into extensive macroing...
and to begin with, every AS user, in order to bear AS, will need a macro that closes down the "Want you save this changed item?" dialog whenever it pops up, after you just perhaps changed one little iota there, i.e. AS has the particularity of NOT offering a default saving function whenever you did some work on some item - compare this with your usual outliner: It's one of the elements that make AS almost unusable for anybody. (And then, I asked them for such a default about 10 or 12 or 15 years ago, to no avail, and OF COURSE, it would have been possible (and sensible) to introduce another, menu, command for "Leave this item WITHOUT saving the edited version", just in case. But you'll need such a command once in 200 instances, whilst AS forces you in 199 instances to enter "Yes" to the pop-up dialog - and yes, if they are almost bankrupt today, yes, there are valid reasons to this state of their affairs.)
Whilst in my imagination, ChI better cost 600 $ instead of just 60, but should integrate any functionality you currently realize with AS, as additional tool.
This being said, I fully acknowledge that ChI is a brilliant example for the need to judge applics in relation to their respective price, and for many uses, it might be a brilliant solution.
And again, the prob with AS is the same as (and worse than) with Ultra Recall, e.g. - all those progs miss two facts:
- today, email is a core function of your workflow, and thus has to be fully integrated
- "normal" users don't want to spend months with scripting, before their respective PIM is half-way functional (except for the email-function that no scripting could ever really fully integrate), and that's ironic, since from their respective potential, both AS and UR would (except for email) be so much more powerful... but only AFTER heavy scripting, in both cases.
Terry
3/6/2014 11:54 pm
I bought Intellect but now only use Time & Chaos (fortunately the Intellect license allows this). I was very drawn to Intellect's ability to link emails to contacts but have decided against using it because (in POP3 mode) it automatically deletes emails on the server after a number of days not exceeding 180.
A key part of my email strategy is to pass all my emails through (more than one) gmail POP3 accounts in order to:
1) Clean spam (their filter is the most reliable and trouble free I have found)
2) Keep backups which I can't lose!
3) Use as WebMail from any browser
In correspondence with Intellect support I was told the only way to keep emails on the server forever using Intellect is to use IMAP. Unfortunately I have tried IMAP and do not get on with it.
So I shall continue to use Opera Mail, now stand alone as well as free. It stores emails in a database giving lightning fast searches and allowing the setting up of "contacts". This is their way of keeping an email address book and has the associated advantage that clicking on a contact immediately returns all related emails. In contrast to Intellect, Opera Mail has no difficulty leaving all messages on the gmail server forever in POP3 mode.
Intellect does what it does nicely, but you may want to know what you are getting into if you need to keep all emails on the server.
A key part of my email strategy is to pass all my emails through (more than one) gmail POP3 accounts in order to:
1) Clean spam (their filter is the most reliable and trouble free I have found)
2) Keep backups which I can't lose!
3) Use as WebMail from any browser
In correspondence with Intellect support I was told the only way to keep emails on the server forever using Intellect is to use IMAP. Unfortunately I have tried IMAP and do not get on with it.
So I shall continue to use Opera Mail, now stand alone as well as free. It stores emails in a database giving lightning fast searches and allowing the setting up of "contacts". This is their way of keeping an email address book and has the associated advantage that clicking on a contact immediately returns all related emails. In contrast to Intellect, Opera Mail has no difficulty leaving all messages on the gmail server forever in POP3 mode.
Intellect does what it does nicely, but you may want to know what you are getting into if you need to keep all emails on the server.
Steve
3/7/2014 3:04 pm
Terry, you address an issue with all PIM's in my opinion - they are "personal" in nature and you can't really determine how usable or not that PIM is until you delve into it for an extended period. There are some parts of Intellect that I don't use much - Projects is one. If I have time I'll share why I don't sometime.
For me, online storage of Email is not a viable option for many business security issues. POP3 mail therefore has been just fine for me. I did move to IMAP last month due to my new Blackberry Q10 - it's a much happier device with IMAP. I do not store mail (I'm with Zoho.com as my mail host) via IMAP. Backups are done via Mozy Pro.
Steve
Terry wrote:
For me, online storage of Email is not a viable option for many business security issues. POP3 mail therefore has been just fine for me. I did move to IMAP last month due to my new Blackberry Q10 - it's a much happier device with IMAP. I do not store mail (I'm with Zoho.com as my mail host) via IMAP. Backups are done via Mozy Pro.
Steve
Terry wrote:
I bought Intellect but now only use Time & Chaos (fortunately the
Intellect license allows this). I was very drawn to Intellect's ability
to link emails to contacts but have decided against using it because (in
POP3 mode) it automatically deletes emails on the server after a number
of days not exceeding 180.
A key part of my email strategy is to pass all my emails through (more
than one) gmail POP3 accounts in order to:
1) Clean spam (their filter is the most reliable and trouble free I have
found)
2) Keep backups which I can't lose!
3) Use as WebMail from any browser
In correspondence with Intellect support I was told the only way to keep
emails on the server forever using Intellect is to use IMAP.
Unfortunately I have tried IMAP and do not get on with it.
So I shall continue to use Opera Mail, now stand alone as well as free.
It stores emails in a database giving lightning fast searches and
allowing the setting up of "contacts". This is their way of keeping an
email address book and has the associated advantage that clicking on a
contact immediately returns all related emails. In contrast to
Intellect, Opera Mail has no difficulty leaving all messages on the
gmail server forever in POP3 mode.
Intellect does what it does nicely, but you may want to know what you
are getting into if you need to keep all emails on the server.
Steve
3/7/2014 3:17 pm
I hope to get to my AskSam review this weekend.
You do point out a usability issue with Intellect that just bugs the .... bugs me a lot! But it's not unique to Intellect - the constant mouse need. A real waste of time and function - my fingers are on the keyboard typing information, then I HAVE to move my hand again to the mouse to navigate.... way, way too much "clicky, clicky and not enough worky, worky." But, my industry (travel) has moved BACKWARDS over the years from form pages that were designed for data entry to ones that are designed to entertain. Shoot, there I am at an entry form page and there is NO way to find the cursor with that stupid mouse - cursor positioned in the first data entry field? Oh no, can't have that...... Sorry, ranting .....
Now, to hopefully address this I purchased a license at Bitsdujour for Quick Macros recently. I have only installed it so it will be a while before I can really see if it works.
Lastly, my quick comment about AskSam as a CRM; I came very close to doing so somewhere around 2007. There was a guy on the dead AskSam forums that talked about how he did it. Made a lot of sense and I was moving towards that. What stopped me was a time issue learning how to really use AskSam AND the discovery that I could not do a search and replace in a field. I use field search and replace frequently in my marketing to flag which contact I last sent what marketing piece to and when.
Steve
22111 wrote:
You do point out a usability issue with Intellect that just bugs the .... bugs me a lot! But it's not unique to Intellect - the constant mouse need. A real waste of time and function - my fingers are on the keyboard typing information, then I HAVE to move my hand again to the mouse to navigate.... way, way too much "clicky, clicky and not enough worky, worky." But, my industry (travel) has moved BACKWARDS over the years from form pages that were designed for data entry to ones that are designed to entertain. Shoot, there I am at an entry form page and there is NO way to find the cursor with that stupid mouse - cursor positioned in the first data entry field? Oh no, can't have that...... Sorry, ranting .....
Now, to hopefully address this I purchased a license at Bitsdujour for Quick Macros recently. I have only installed it so it will be a while before I can really see if it works.
Lastly, my quick comment about AskSam as a CRM; I came very close to doing so somewhere around 2007. There was a guy on the dead AskSam forums that talked about how he did it. Made a lot of sense and I was moving towards that. What stopped me was a time issue learning how to really use AskSam AND the discovery that I could not do a search and replace in a field. I use field search and replace frequently in my marketing to flag which contact I last sent what marketing piece to and when.
Steve
22111 wrote:
"Next up; AskSam for client research."
Steve, I join the "thank you" 's. And I viewed the video you refer to:
Well, it's quite daunting (I have "mouse arm", as said, even without
jumping into such mouse excesses as displayed there).
As I see it from what I read, you did not integrate AS with ChI, and I
understand there is no real need to do so. But from another pov, AS
would allow for extensive automatization, by macros, whilst ChI
presumably isn't as good as that: Some commands are underlined =
accessible by Alt-xyz, but not all; similar for menus, but a good macro
editor (like AHK) could access those menus notwithstanding.
So it seems to me that for the time being, you do a lot of manual work
in ChI, since there is no time to do all the necessary macroing work,
for a full week long? ;-) This will probably give you "mouse arm" some
day in the future! ;-((( (I hope, not, but chances are for this to
happen!)
One thing's for sure, "out of the box", it's quite neat as a program, it
offers some tweaking (as I had said, and as you confirm, from an
immediate utility pov from real-life use, there are some 20 or so record
fields that can be individualized), and it's functional for the use you
make of it - and with proper macroing, even strain on your hands could
be avoided (and it's a pleasure to look at).
So I fully understand that you're happy with it (well, except for the
abusive mouse thing ;-) ), and I acknowledge that there might be lots of
other uses where it's as good as it is in yours.
This being said, consider b2b. There, it's many "contacts" with a given
"contact", often over many months, if not over years, for a FUTURE
project (whilst in your case, it'll be then, with existing customers,
for NEW projects), and here, multiple "contact" record fields would be
necessary, and to mix those ("done") "contacts" up with "tasks", is not
a real solution, all the less so since in the same scenario, you also
would need real "tasks", i.e. things to BE done, vs. things that HAVE
been done, on that particular project.
Now for price: The most elaborate version is 60 bucks, which indeed is
"nothing" for crm sw, and whenever the functionality is sufficient for
the tasks at hand, this offering might indeed be one of the best there
is (except for the name "asking" for all sorts of ridicule, as we have
seen lately, here), all the more so with that price asked: If some other
crm sw does SOME thing better, in your workflow, but is 600 bucks, I
fully understand ChI is the sw of choice.
Of course, the non-integration of the work you do in AS, into ChI,
"speaks for itself": ChI simply is a quite simple, not elaborate prog:
Whenever there is "more" to do, you'll have to combine it with some
other tool. (I very much hope you're in a two-screen set, with ChI and
AS each running in its own screen?! ;-) If not yet, that would be the
best 30 bucks (and then 30 bucks each year for energy) investment you'd
done in your life.)
Seen to it from "reverse" pov: AS (in which so much else would be
possible) has got such a substandard email functionality, and would
demand so much external scripting, in order to become fully functional,
that for professional use, users need additional applics, here ChI, in
order to have their work done, whilst in AS, it would be possible, but a
real pita from every possible pov, except when you first go into
extensive macroing...
and to begin with, every AS user, in order to bear AS, will need a macro
that closes down the "Want you save this changed item?" dialog whenever
it pops up, after you just perhaps changed one little iota there, i.e.
AS has the particularity of NOT offering a default saving function
whenever you did some work on some item - compare this with your usual
outliner: It's one of the elements that make AS almost unusable for
anybody. (And then, I asked them for such a default about 10 or 12 or 15
years ago, to no avail, and OF COURSE, it would have been possible (and
sensible) to introduce another, menu, command for "Leave this item
WITHOUT saving the edited version", just in case. But you'll need such a
command once in 200 instances, whilst AS forces you in 199 instances to
enter "Yes" to the pop-up dialog - and yes, if they are almost bankrupt
today, yes, there are valid reasons to this state of their affairs.)
Whilst in my imagination, ChI better cost 600 $ instead of just 60, but
should integrate any functionality you currently realize with AS, as
additional tool.
This being said, I fully acknowledge that ChI is a brilliant example for
the need to judge applics in relation to their respective price, and for
many uses, it might be a brilliant solution.
And again, the prob with AS is the same as (and worse than) with Ultra
Recall, e.g. - all those progs miss two facts:
- today, email is a core function of your workflow, and thus has to be
fully integrated
- "normal" users don't want to spend months with scripting, before their
respective PIM is half-way functional (except for the email-function
that no scripting could ever really fully integrate), and that's ironic,
since from their respective potential, both AS and UR would (except for
email) be so much more powerful... but only AFTER heavy scripting, in
both cases.
Steve
3/7/2014 3:24 pm
BTW, I have not shared the tools I primarily use for my work flow. Without much description, here's what I have fired up here at the start of my work day:
Intellect
Roboform
MailWasherPro
Firefox (browsing without flash and java enabled)
IE 11; work
Atlantis Word Processor
Notetab Pro (minor text manipulation and to remove all crappy html formatting)
AskSam
MyInfo (more about why later)
FinePrint (well, that's always running in the background - print manager extraordinaire)
There's other items I use during the day but those are not essentials.
Steve
Intellect
Roboform
MailWasherPro
Firefox (browsing without flash and java enabled)
IE 11; work
Atlantis Word Processor
Notetab Pro (minor text manipulation and to remove all crappy html formatting)
AskSam
MyInfo (more about why later)
FinePrint (well, that's always running in the background - print manager extraordinaire)
There's other items I use during the day but those are not essentials.
Steve
Arnold
3/7/2014 5:40 pm
Chaos Intellect has rather poor IMAP support, very basic and broken (do not try to use more than one account i.e. Google mail and Fastmail).
If you really wish to use Intellect with POP3, you can setup your own mail server that can pull all external accounts to this local server. Then rules are setup to archive all emails (in/out). Yes a bit of a pain to setup initially, will need a normal WinXP -Win7 desktop (250gb hd, for mailstore and 2-4gb of ram if under 50 users). Mercury Mail is free, easy to setup/admin, good docs and works well.
Found the basic Time and Chaos for PIM, basic CRM with Pegasus/Sypheed as the mail client. Played a bit
askSam is a great application, once the forms and reports are generated of course. Support is now suspect from what can be seen of the website and/or calls. Have been using the application from DOS days (version 3 of askSam) up to the latest Pro version. Have just over 18gb of data across approx 15 databases. When it works it works great. Investigating move to another database, but have not had much luck finding something even close to the features without spending many weeks in the design.
If you really wish to use Intellect with POP3, you can setup your own mail server that can pull all external accounts to this local server. Then rules are setup to archive all emails (in/out). Yes a bit of a pain to setup initially, will need a normal WinXP -Win7 desktop (250gb hd, for mailstore and 2-4gb of ram if under 50 users). Mercury Mail is free, easy to setup/admin, good docs and works well.
Found the basic Time and Chaos for PIM, basic CRM with Pegasus/Sypheed as the mail client. Played a bit
askSam is a great application, once the forms and reports are generated of course. Support is now suspect from what can be seen of the website and/or calls. Have been using the application from DOS days (version 3 of askSam) up to the latest Pro version. Have just over 18gb of data across approx 15 databases. When it works it works great. Investigating move to another database, but have not had much luck finding something even close to the features without spending many weeks in the design.
Alexander Deliyannis
3/8/2014 8:46 am
Terry wrote:
I think you should not worry about it if you use Gmail as intermediary, i.e. Gmail fetches the mail from your original POP addresses, and then you use POP to get the messages from Gmail to Chaos Intellect.
According to https://support.google.com/mail/troubleshooter/1668960?hl=en#ts=1665119,1665162
Unless you're using recent mode to download mail to multiple clients, make sure you've opted not to leave messages on the server. Your POP settings in Gmail settings are what determines whether or not messages stay on the server, so this setting in your client won't affect how Gmail handles your mail.
I was very drawn to Intellect's ability
to link emails to contacts but have decided against using it because (in
POP3 mode) it automatically deletes emails on the server after a number
of days not exceeding 180.
I think you should not worry about it if you use Gmail as intermediary, i.e. Gmail fetches the mail from your original POP addresses, and then you use POP to get the messages from Gmail to Chaos Intellect.
According to https://support.google.com/mail/troubleshooter/1668960?hl=en#ts=1665119,1665162
Unless you're using recent mode to download mail to multiple clients, make sure you've opted not to leave messages on the server. Your POP settings in Gmail settings are what determines whether or not messages stay on the server, so this setting in your client won't affect how Gmail handles your mail.
Steve
3/8/2014 12:47 pm
I have Intellect grabbing mail from 4 IMAP (one is Gmail) and 2 POP3 accounts.
Steve
Arnold wrote:
Steve
Arnold wrote:
Chaos Intellect has rather poor IMAP support, very basic and broken (do
not try to use more than one account i.e. Google mail and Fastmail).
Steve
3/8/2014 12:51 pm
I thought I had problems finding a replacement... You win!
Steve
Arnold wrote:
Steve
Arnold wrote:
askSam is a great application, once the forms and reports are generated
of course. Support is now suspect from what can be seen of the website
and/or calls. Have been using the application from DOS days (version 3
of askSam) up to the latest Pro version. Have just over 18gb of data
across approx 15 databases. When it works it works great. Investigating
move to another database, but have not had much luck finding something
even close to the features without spending many weeks in the design.
Steve
3/17/2014 3:11 pm
I mentioned earlier that one of the challenges of testing software or just using it for that matter is there may/are features you didn't know about. Over the weekend I discovered one if Intellect.
A task can be created from an Email by drag-and-drop onto the Task button. The email is linked to that task. Other emails can be added to that task as reference material or for conversation threads. Not a unique thing I think. This weekend I opened up a task with an attached email. I replied to that email plus forwarded that message to someone else. Both messages were added to the linked emails section of the task. I never knew / thought about doing that.
Kind of nice to keep threads in one place.
Steve
A task can be created from an Email by drag-and-drop onto the Task button. The email is linked to that task. Other emails can be added to that task as reference material or for conversation threads. Not a unique thing I think. This weekend I opened up a task with an attached email. I replied to that email plus forwarded that message to someone else. Both messages were added to the linked emails section of the task. I never knew / thought about doing that.
Kind of nice to keep threads in one place.
Steve