It will auto-update in the next 24 hours, or you can download it right now from http://www.activeinboxhq.com/install.php

I always find it slightly disappointing that bugs often take a very long time to track down – lots of work – but they deny me the opportunity to give them a fun write up!

They include:

ActiveInbox loads faster in Gmail. Short & sweet!

No one should get the 414 hanging error in Gmail anymore. It was caused by searches being too long, particularly when you click ‘Overdue’ on the Review Bar (any search over 1450 characters, it geekily transpires). To remedy it, it is no longer a default to include Overdue items in Today (you can re-enable this preference if you wish), and I’ve broken Overdue into date ranges, e.g. “Overdue in the last 2 months”, “Overdue older than 2 months”. Of course, no one should have Overdue items over 2 months, right?

All communication with our server is now completely secure, via https.

You can install right now from http://www.activeinboxhq.com/install.php (or wait a few days for it to auto update).

The big thing I’ve been hearing over the last few weeks is that in certain circumstances, ActiveInbox has got slow.

We do go through a fairly common cycle (for us): several months of refinements and improvements where the focus is on improving the way you can work, followed by the realisation there’s some bug or performance issue we’ve introduced but not closed yet, and then we focus on cleaning everything up to make it hum along beautifully.

So I donned the breathing apparatus, bought a flash light, and went exploring the deepest recesses of the engine room.

The flagship result? I yielded an almost 10x improvement in speed when opening a conversation or adding a status/deadline.

There was also talk of the Review Bar tally counts being wrong. I’ve not been able to repeat any of this – frustratingly, it always works flawlessly here. But I used the Debug Reports you submitted to try and fix any minor problems that were reported in the hope one of them will fix it. If you still think you have issues, just let us know again and I’ll get straight onto it.

It will auto update in the next few days, but to install right now, just go to http://www.activeinboxhq.com/install.php

Next up, Mark, Lisa & I are listening to what you’re requesting, and we’re going to continue to try and focus ActiveInbox around the one benefit that really matters to you, and refine how you do that thing especially.

Update +4 Hours Later

Thanks to Brad, Tim & Mike I’ve found there was a nasty bug affecting a small % of users (alas not me!), where if you clicked Today and it had 30 items, you’d only see 1 in Active Results. As of 4.0.4.14, I’ve got it fixed.

But the bigger change is that I’ve moved the Move-Nexters to the left-hand side of the HAB!

This might have a momentary shock, but I’ve been using it for a week and I think it’s a big improvement.

The reasons are simply:
1) The Move-Nexters have to be in a fixed place, so as you move from email to email they don’t jump around. (I.e. it wouldn’t work to put them to the immediate right of the Notes button, as changing project names can push that further right).
2) When they were fixed to the right hand side of Gmail, anyone with a high resolution had to move the mouse very far to reach them. It became very inefficient.

So I took a gamble and tried them to the left of the status buttons, and it just feels like it works.

(There IS a preference to move them back if you hate them… but please stick with them for a while… it’s ‘Put Move-Nexters (e.g. Archive & Move Next) To The Right of the Horizontal Action Bar’).

It will auto-update in the next few days, but you can try it right now from http://www.activeinboxhq.com/install.php

Just a heads up…

I’m out of the country for the next week. Lisa will be right here on support (and able to reach me if anything really bad happens); and Mark is on stand by to handle any Gmail changes that break ActiveInbox… but we will be going a little slower than normal. I’ll be back on March the 3rd to resume at full speed!

Get Events Out Of Email And Into GCal

Is your email actually an event? Get it out of Gmail and into a more specialized system like GCal where it can be managed much more smartly.

Just click the export dropdown on the Action Bar, select “Export to GCal”, save the event in the new tab, and ActiveInbox will update your Notes to link to the new event.

Better Deadlines On Mobiles – And Less Clutter

Historically, we’ve always used 3 labels for each deadline, a generic deadline label, a day label, and a month label. So today, the 14th February, would be D/Deadline, D/M/2, D/D/14.

But this was a terrible idea for mobile devices, because they can’t show you the search results of multiple labels.

So now we just use a single label in the format ZD/yyyymmdd. Today would be ZD/20120214.

The ZD prefix is handy because it pushes deadline labels to the back of any label list, so they stay out of your way. AND… ActiveInbox will remove any deadline labels no longer in use.

Active Results: Simple, Intuitive… At Last!

We’ve done a BIG overhaul to the Active Results (those just containing a status or deadline).

First, any link from the Review Bar opens straight into Active Results (this is a preference); and then once you’ve got them open you can sort or group by Project, Contact, Deadline, Status and more.

It gives you a very flexible to focus just on the work that matters to you right now.

Pin The Tail On The… Review Bar

We finally have proper pin icons on the Review Bar drop downs! This should make it a lot more intuitive (it no longer looks like a h-bomb!).

You can even pin hot projects to the Review Bar so they’re permanently visible.

The Action Bar That Shadows You

The Action Bar now stays with you wherever you scroll in a conversation, so it’s always within reach for a click.

Always Staying Note-ified

There’s a new options for displaying Notes on the Action Bar… if you click the Note button (the pencil), you can select ‘Show Notes on Action Bar Only If Note Written’.

Which rather literally will put the note very visibly on its own row, only if you’ve written it. The rest of the time the Action Bar is only on one row.

Getting All Warm & Fuzzy

You’ll notice a lot of new little nudges and helpers. They can all be dismissed, but I thought you might like to see what a new user will now see – perhaps it can help introduce something we forgot to mention when YOU were a new user

Install Now

It will auto-update in the next day or so, but to get it right now just hop over to http://www.activeinboxhq.com/install.php and simply click Install.

I’ve just been informed by our hosting company of what happened, essentially we were unfortunate enough to be located in the rackspace in New York that was affected by a server software problem that if triggered, would consume all resources and bring the server down. I understand they knew about it ahead of time, had scheduled the fix, but hadn’t yet rolled it out when the problem hit. They have now.

The bits of ActiveInbox that are dependent upon our server:
* The Plus registration and verification; meaning that if the server drops Plus features may temporarily disappear
* Your preferences
* Your Notes

We are constantly upgrading our server infrastructure for robustness, in the last month we have:
* Upgraded to a far more powerful set up to handle more users, and faster
* Added secure communication (SSL), which is not yet rolled out but will be within the next two releases
* Added an additional backup mechanisms to the existing solution (extra redundancy)
* Begun re-factoring our server systems to be more component-like, so we have more flexibility for increasing redundancy

And Mark & I are discussing ways we can improve things still more.

But ultimately, we’re sorry.

* Including Overdue in Today is now a preference
* Some people were not seeing the HAB work correctly in conversations, which should now be fixed
* The ‘kilometre wide Gmail conversations’ bug has been fixed
* You can now pin sub-folder labels to the Review Bar (and search Active Results properly)
* People with dark themes can now see Notes and warning messages more easily
* ‘old’ no longer appears in Group By and Sort By

What’s that Skippy? You want to easily export emails to GCal?

This has been a much-request feature on Get Satisfaction for aaages, and we’ve now got it!

You’ll see a new icon on the Horizontal Action Bar for exporting an email to GCal. It’ll create a new event, and then back in Gmail, try to detect a link to that event and add it to your Notes. So, the email links to the GCal event, and the GCal event links back to the email.

Mark (who lead development on it) & I would love to hear about the usability of it in the comments please

Installing 4.0.4.6

Just pop over to http://activeinboxhq.com/install_preview.php and install as normal!

Fixed A Major Issue With Migrating Deadline Labels

So, some of you could not migrate your labels (the migrate button did nothing), and some of you found ActiveInbox was giving you 0 active results after migration.

It transpires the problem was the same in both cases, and something I’d completely failed to foresee (which is why we do preview releases!).

I won’t bore you with the geeky details, but essentially it was caused by “too many” deadline labels.

The good news is I’ve fixed and so thankfully, there’s no longer an issue with “too many” deadline labels! Everything should be fine now.

Remember Group By and Sort By For Each Type Of Result

Your choice of Group By and Sort By is now saved for Statuses, Deadlines, Projects and your other label types.

So for example, you can organise Statuses by Project, and organise Projects by Deadlines.

Overdue Items Are Included in Today

This might be controversial? Let me know in the comments if you disagree!

Installing It

You can get 4.0.4.5 from http://www.activeinboxhq.com/install_preview.php

Please forgive any terseness in this post, I’m seeing in the early hours of a new day and I’m experiencing that distinctive creative block you get when your brain starts behaving like a petulant toddler who’ll do nothing until you put him to bed. I will try and add screenshots tomorrow.

But I REALLY wanted to get this live and share the tasty morsels of goodness within:

Active Results Simplified (and given sorting)

The Active Results have been cleaned up (including removing that irritating line that stopped you clicking Compose), so that it’s a lot easier to focus on the actual email results. The old, restrictive hierarchy of results has gone away, to be replaced by an intuitive and flexible combination of “Group By” and “Sort By”.

Review Bar opens straight into Active Results

This feels like a really clean interaction and brings an end to a lot of confused emails I receive (I hope!). Now when you click any link on the Review Bar, the Active Results view is the one and only choice. (Note you can change this Preference back to Gmail Results).

Pin Projects to the actual Review Bar

Another much requested one, there is now a checkbox in the Projects (and other label types) dropdown to “Put pinned items on the Review Bar”. This means they really are ever-present and ready to be viewed.

Bug Fixes

4.0.4.x so far has been a preview release – as is this one – and you have been kind enough to report some issues.

The most hair raising one was the people for whom Today/Overdue links disappeared (and had other weird behaviour connected to that), which I *hope* is fixed, but I don’t experience it so I’m working blind. Thanks especially to Blake & Jason for giving me details. Let me know if it still gives you trouble!

Installing 4.0.4.3

As it is still a preview release, I haven’t made it auto-update. You can install it from http://activeinboxhq.com/install_preview.php

Please let me know what you think of the updates in the comments…

Thank you to everyone that reported problems this afternoon!

It includes the more irritating bugs:
* The Overdue link now sticks to dates, you know, that are actually overdue
* The Active Results can group by Deadline