AwayFind has been one of our favorite tools here at Lifehack for keeping you out of your inbox and concentrated on the important work that you have to do.
If you aren’t familiar with this excellent tool, it is a service that allows you to be notified of certain events or emails based on rules that you have defined. For instance, if you only want to see emails from a certain person or even certain domain, you can set up a rule where AwayFind will notify you when you receive messages from the filtered user or domain.
Today, AwayFind is adding even more functionality to the platform; multiple calendar alert support and the beta release of their new Outlook plugin.
Multiple Calendar Support
Currently in your AwayFind account you can add a calendar that can be used to help notify you of invitee changes. For instance, say you have a meeting with bob@me.com at noon but Bob doesn’t really want to meet you anymore (how could you be so mean to Bob?). If Bob emails you with the same email address that the calendar invite was made with, then AwayFind is smart enough to say “hey, you have an upcoming appointment with bob@me.com, I’m going to alert you of this email. It may be important.”
Even if bob@me.com isn’t on your filter email list, you will still get the notification. This is a great feature for people that have a lot of meetings and want to be notified of last minute changes. But, before today you could only have setup one calendar to track.
Now AwayFind lets you track multiple calendars from multiple email addresses so you can be notified of appointments from all facets of your life.
Beta Outlook Plugin
Let’s face it. If you are in the corporate world, you probably run on Exchange and Outlook whether you like it or not. Personally, I kind of like using Outlook, especially Outlook 2010 for email when I’m using Windows.
All that aside, AwayFind found that many corporate customers that were using Outlook would like some extra functionality, so starting today you can get an Outlook plugin (currently in beta) that will integrate nicely with your AwayFind account.
Instead of keeping your Outlook open all day long and being beaten to death with alerts, you can “follow” a message with the new plugin and setup alerts to be delivered to you via SMS, phone call, iPhone or Android app, etc. You can even set a time that you would like to “follow” this sender (for the next day, week, month, or lifetime).
This is a super fast way to be reminded of something important without having to be tied to your inbox all day long. Definitely something that I will be using at work! The beta Outlook plugin will work with Outlook 2003-2010.
We don’t usually do too many product announcements here at Lifehack, but like I said before, AwayFind is one of our favorites. If you want to give AwayFind a try head on over to their site and start a free trial. If you get a lot of email, AwayFind is a game changer.
