S N A I L Final Presentation
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This document describes SNAIL, a plugin for Outlook that aims to improve email usage by making emails faster to find and frequently contacted people easier to identify. It does this by extracting metrics from emails, aggregating contacts, integrating social networks, and developing a sidebar interface. The plugin was tested and found to accurately determine important contacts and provide a new way to write and find emails by seamlessly integrating into Outlook. Areas for future work include evaluating additional sorting mechanisms, integrating social contacts into scoring, and connecting to a context framework via XML-RPC.
S N A I L Final Presentation
- 1. SNAIL – quick accesstoSocial Networks in EmAILFinal Presentation
- 2. The Problem
- 4. The Goals
- 10. Our PlanExtractrawmetricsGatherdataConsolidate Email MessagesAggregate byContacts
- 11. Link threadedEmailsIntegrateintotheContext FrameworkHook on to Email Events
- 12. Perform XML RPC Calls on EventDevelop Outlook Plug-InGrab Mail Information
- 13. Hook on to EventsProvideConvenient InterfaceSidebar Style
- 14. Contact List
- 16. Concept Design
- 17. Tools OfThe TradeC#.NetModern object-orientedprogramminglanguage
- 18. Requiresthe .net frameworkVisual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO)Provides Access to Microsoft Office
- 19. Datatypes
- 20. Events
- 22. Whatwewant
- 23. SidebarHere
- 24. But!
- 26. VSTO providesform regionsfor Outlook, but no Sidebar featureHowTointegrate a Sidebar?Use Win32 methodsP/Invoke
- 28. NewMail EventTriggers when a new Email isreceivedItemAdd / ItemRemove / ItemChangeTriggers whenan Item isaddedto a folder /removedfrom a folder / changed in a folderItemSendTriggers when an Item issentHookingUp Events
- 29. Gettingthe DataGenerateStatisticsfrom Outlook User DataIterateover all folderstoretrieve all Mail items
- 30. Pull Information from Mail Item Object
- 31. Sender
- 32. Recipient
- 33. Subject
- 34. Create a Hashtablewhere Messages arestoredwithContactsas KeysOutlookFile SystemFolders objectsrepresent Outlook FoldersMailItemobjectsrepresent Email ItemsAre identifiedbytheiruniqueEntryID
- 35. Contain all relevant Information forthe EmailContactItemobjectsrepresentContact ItemsAre identifiedbytheiruniqueEntryIDOutlook Object Model
- 36. Gettingthe MailsIn Outlook Mails aresortedcontained in foldersEachconfiguredprofileis a folderandhas subsequent subfoldersIteration over all Folders necessary
- 37. TheProblemNo simple waytoretrieve all MailItemsatonceIteration over all Items hastobedone
- 39. Save all MailItems in a DictionaryContact ClassDisplayStringContactStringContactMessages ClassLastMessageReceivedLastMessageSentLastMessegeReceived/SentToMessagesFromMessagesContactMessage ClassEntryIDMailDateSavingrawmetrics
- 42. Adding Outlook ContactsCorrelationofgeneratedContactswith Outlook ContactsFind existing Outlook Contactsand link themwithgeneratedContactsCreate new Outlook ContactsfromgeneratedContactsDevelopmentGet all Outlook ContactItemobjectsRetrieveEntryIDSave EntryID
- 43. ConnectingWithFacebookContactscan also befound on socialnetworksDevelopmentFacebook SDK pullsinformationfromyourfacebookuserprofile
- 44. SerializationOutlook Items can not beserialized!But insteadtheEntryIDcanbestoredRetrieve Outlook Items fromEntryIDInvokeGetItemFromID(stringEntryID)Store onlytheEntryIDofthe Outlook Item.NET Serializationtakescareofautomaticsaving & loadingofdata
- 45. SortingTechniquesConcept 1:Order ByUnreadyes/noScore = 1−Sent+0,00001Received+0,00001+0,1Sent+0,00001 The smallerthebetterConcept 2:Order ByUnreadyes/noLast Message received / sentSent Mails
- 46. Provide Property for Score calculationSortContactlistwith Lambda ExpressionsSampleContacts = Contacts.OrderByDescending(x => x.UnreadMails).ThenBy(x => x.RatingsScore).ToList();Developingit
- 47. Score samples
- 48. EvaluationEvaluation of Concepts yielded the following ResultsConcept 1very efficient at finding organic contacts (contacts that are perceived as important)But does not take time into account, e.g. an old friend with tons of old emails can only slowly be topped by a new organic contactConcept 2Not very efficient at finding organic contacts (irrelevant contacts can be on the top of the list, only due to lastmessage)Concept 1 is more efficient than Concept 2 (Relevance estimation is more accurate)A mixture of Concept 1 & Concept 2 is even more efficientDetermine Score on the basis of all sent/received mails in a certain timespan
- 49. Outlook 2007 Plugin – Main Window
- 50. Outlook 2007 Plugin – Thread View
- 51. Conclusion&Test ResultsSNAIL has been able to improve email usage by makingEmails faster to findFrequently contacted people easier to findHandle incoming mails by contact priorityShowing Social graphingConnecting social networks to emailUsers testing SNAIL have saidThat the contact rating is surprisingly accurateThat it provides an interesting new concept of writing & finding mailsThey like it because it integrates seamlessly into their existing Outlook Clients
- 52. OutlookEvaluation of alternative sortingmechanismsmaybedone, consideringTakingsocialcontactsintoaccountwhencalculating scoreManual biasingof score bytheuser (votesystem)
- 53. Graph VisualizationShow Contactrelationshipswith an InterfaceUseNodeXLforVisualizationofSocialConnectionsUseConnectedContact Property as Data
- 55. Tracks a user’s activitiesGets informations from various sensorsIs accessed via XML RPCThe context Framework
- 56. XMLRPCRequirement to interact with the context FrameworkConsumption of XMLRPC services via C#Use XMLRPC.NET libraryCreate a proxy and define functionsWire up to Outlook events and trigger XMLRPC calls
- 57. CodeplexMicrosoft‘sSourceforge (mostly .NET stuff)SNAIL ishosted onhttp://snail.codeplex.com/