Taglocity General Discussion Forum

Hi,

I have installed Taglocity 3 days ago. I thought I might share some of my observations.

- Installation went smooth (German Win XP SP2). As an improvement I think it might be good if the installer closes an open Outlook instance (it did not in my case), because Taglocity is only visible after an Outlook restart anyway. So before the user gets confused, do the work for him.

- I opened the "Tag Search" pane and didn't find a way to close it. That was a scary experience :) Now I closed it by choosing a mail folder in the outlook bar, but I had expect a  Close button within this pane or a very obvious way to get rid of it.

- "QuickFilter" or "TagCloud" appear when you click the corresponding button in the toolbar. But to let them go away you have to press the little "X" in the window. I would favour closing them the same way you opened them: by pressing the "QuickFilter" or "TagCloud" button again (you did it half way- the buttons stayed highlighted after pushing like a toggle button, but they didn't let me toggle :) )

- the "Cancel" button in "QuickFilter" did not work for me (it just did nothing)

All in all a very interesting software which opens new ways to categorize your messages. I have looked for something for quite a while.

FYI: Outlook 2007 will contain a feature which lets a user assign multiple tags/labels/categories to a message, so you should go beyond this (I don't say you do not go beyond- I just wanted to tell you so you are prepared).

To add to my observations:

When I select a Tag in "QuickFilter" it seems Taglocity displays only those messages whithin the folder I'm in. This is not really usefull. I would like to tag messages with "DoIt" for instance all over the place and then let Taglocity figure out where they are. So, am I doing something wrong or is this a beta problem or known behaviour?

Torsten.

It does look like the quickfilter is just for the folder you are in.

It looks like the plan/ workaround is to use Outlook 2003 Search Folders being able to consolidate across folders- there is a "create search folder" button on the Quick Filter for this.

This does highlight a more generally idea of having a virtually folder structure based on tags.  I have been playing around with this by using a Search Folder, but grouping by Tags.  It is 'ok', but not really that optimal an experience... eg: you can't 'copy' into the other 'folders', etc.

Tim

Yes, the Quick Filter is just a quick filter on the current folder. Tim is right that the Search Folder creation is another way.

Also, don't forget the Tag Search feature also brings togther anything from anywhere, and for Beta 2, uses the MSN Windows Desktop Search to do that, so it is quite quick.

For the other feedback (thank you Torsten, this really helps us) :

- The install is being updated to be nicer is asking for things to be shutdown, dependancies etc.

- We'll look at some sort of navigation away from the Tag Search screen. At the moment we are thinking of preference that shows it as a separate window or 'in outlook'.

- The QuickFilter and TagCloud toggles recently changed in behavior as a lot of earlier beta users were just closing them with 'X'. At the moment 'toggling off' the Quick Filter will clear any filter from the current folder (a handy thing to do sometimes without opening a new window), and the TagCloud press (either mouse or ALT-0) puts the window focus back to the TagCloud - this is useful for those not wanted to use the mouse at all.

- The Cancel button looks like a bug, now filed. Normally it should clear out any filters and close the window - I think if no filters are there it gets 'stuck'.

Outlook 2007 Futures - Yes, as you can imagine, I am very familiar with it and I've been using it for a couple of months pre it's Beta 2. One of the reasons I went ahead with Taglocity was the lack of AI classification, 'collaborative' (traveling) tags and more the mindset that '10 categories is enough for anyone' in OL2007. Also, a lot of our future plans extend far beyond what you see in Taglocity Beta 2, but we're not quite ready to hint about that just yet. :-)

Thank you very much for the observations Torsten - it helps us a great deal.

I'm glad I can help with my rants...

I have tried "Tag Search" now- it does not work.
Now I'm pretty sure I don't have MS Desktop Search installed (that's that new downloadable thing, right?) But "Tag Search" does not complain or anything.

I'd suggest this requirement should be checked during installation and when the user tries to enable "Tag Search". I'd suggest a popup that tells that "Tag Search" does not work because MS Desktop Search is not installed. You should also provide a link to the download for the search engine.

Yes, good idea. The installer will give you the option of downloading the compatible desktop search utilities.

If you want to try the Tag Search the URL to download this Microsoft utility is here:

http://toolbar.msn.com/

For the next drop it will support the (new) Windows Desktop Search (v2.6, it's the standalone one) ), plus (possibly) Google Desktop.

Just to pipe in... I downloaded the MSN toolbar hoping to get the TagSearch feature to work.  While the installation appeared to be successful, I still could not get the TagSearch to work.  I will spend some more time with this for testing purposes however I prefer google desktop so far and am looking forward to seeing how it will work with TagSearch.