OK, enough of that. Let's get to the tools. When you first start up, you'll see the message in Figure A.

FIGURE A

This message let's you know what's happening before you begin. Click picture for a larger image.

As you can see, it's clear and understandable, before you begin. That's a definite Macintosh influence.

Add appointments by email
The first add-in, shown in Figure B, is the Add Appointments by Email add-in.

FIGURE B

You can have the software automatically add appointments by email. Click picture for a larger image.

At first, this seems kind of funky. If you're using Outlook, why would you want to add appointments by email? But the idea is that you're not always going to be in front of your main Outlook screen. You might be on a trip, carrying an email-equipped phone, or a PDA. If so, you can send a message to your own email address with some code words, and an appointment will be automatically added.

This is not exactly a tool everyone's going to use, but those who need this sort of feature would likely kill for it.

Add email address
Next up is the Add Email Address add-in, shown in Figure C.

FIGURE C

Automatically add email addresses to contacts. Click picture for a larger image.

This add-in is pretty cool, although it definitely requires thought before indiscriminately turning it on. The Add Email Address add-in will automatically add email addresses to your Contacts database whenever you either send a message or flag a message in some way. All of this is quite extensively configurable.

The care that's required is to be sure you're only adding the sorts of contacts you want, otherwise you'd have a whole lot of new contacts that you weren't necessarily expecting.

These add-ins give you a great deal of power. With that power comes responsibility.

Attachment forget-me-not
You've got to know the add-in shown in Figure D is something requested by a user who never, ever wants to make the same mistake again.

FIGURE D

Do you need reminders? Click picture for a larger image.

The Attachment Forget-Me-Not (great name!) add-in makes sure when you intend to send an attachment, you don't forget to do so. You may think that this is funny, but we're guilty of this here. Last year, we sent out a very important sales mailing to all our advertisers around Christmas time, but forgot the attachment that was the whole purpose of the mailing.

This tool might have prevented the panic that naturally ensued. Of course, all our advertisers were cool about the mistake; they'd all made it, too. But it was sad watching our head of sales break down into a pile of messy goo for about ten minutes after she realized the attachment wasn't enclosed.

Auto CC/BCC
I'm not sure I'm a big fan of the Auto CC/BCC add-in, shown in Figure E.

FIGURE E

Who knew CYA (you can figure it out) could be designed into software. Click picture for a larger image.

If you've ever been involved in corporate politics, you know that you're likely to get on CC and BCC lists, meaning you're going to get all sorts of internal corporate crapola from every employee who wants to make sure that each and every person who might have an interest (or who might be on their side or who might make for good insurance) gets a copy.