A New Way To Work Old Email?
How does Big Blue's new cloud-based email service, IBM Verse, compare to Gmail and the Microsoft offerings?
Ed. note: Please welcome our new technology columnist, Sean Doherty, who will analyze and review technology products and services for lawyers, law firms, and corporate legal departments. You can read his inaugural column here.
When IBM sent me an invitation to try IBM Verse, Big Blue’s new cloud-based email for companies and individuals, I asked, “Why do I need another messaging application?”
I took a deep sigh and surveyed my Outlook, brought to me by the Microsoft Corp. With over 1,000-messages in my inbox, a burgeoning task list bleeding in red font from overdue deliverables and missed deadlines, and a contact list aging by the moment (see “CRM For Legal: Relationships Are Not Easy”), I answered IBM with my usual enthusiasm: “It depends.”
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SD: Can I try it for free for at least 30 days with no cost or obligation?
IBM: Yes.
SD: Is the trial a full-featured preview of what I can expect in the licensed version?
IBM: No. The trial includes IBM Verse Basic, which previews the program’s top features available from the Web browser user interface. You can upgrade to IBM Verse starting at $5 per user per month.
Well, they got half that right.
Verse makes some big promises for its new way to work: to learn my behavior and adapt to how I work; to focus my inbox on things I need to accomplish; and to keep me connected to people that matter. The new offering competes with Google Inc.’s Gmail and Microsoft’s Office 365 and Outlook.com.
The licensed version of Verse includes the ability to: collaborate with colleagues in a private environment; set up ad-hoc private work spaces; manage the Verse environment for the organization; control security policies; integrate Verse with local infrastructure, including Single Sign-On software; and access Verse from mobile devices and tablets. IBM envisions a Watson add-on to Verse that will receive queries and return answers ranked by confidence intervals.
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The full license supplies a 50-gigabyte mailbox and 30 gigabytes file storage per user, the ability to use a custom mail domain, and send and receive unlimited email. The Basic or freemium version is limited to sending 100 emails per day to up to 10 recipients and a message box size of 500 megabytes and sharing files up to 2 gigabyte in size with colleagues. See the IBM Verse FAQ for all the differences between the freemium and paid versions of Verse.
The Basic Web UI displayed the people whom I frequently communicated with across the top of the interface and made it easy to review all their message threads. One click on a person’s icon, which displayed their profile picture or initials, listed their message threads in the left window pane and selected message content in the right window pane.
Messages were easily turned into action items. When I clicked the clipboard icon above message content, Verse listed time frames to accomplish action: today, tomorrow, one week or anytime. I clicked tomorrow and added a note for the required action. More often than not, message content described the required action. Then I clicked the minus sign in the message listing pane to make the message disappear from my inbox. It was moved to the All Documents folder (or filtered view) of email.
Verse takes lessons from mobile users who prefer a clean Inbox design. Who wants to navigate 1,000 messages on their mobile device? IBM makes it easy to remove non-critical messages from view and automatically put critical messages in your face, wherever it is.
The next day the action message I created returned to the Inbox to ensure I took the action before it became due. This is similar to Outlook.com’s Defer feature that removes mail from the Inbox until set times. But with Verse I added text to a note field that displayed after the subject in the message listing. The note field, however, was not searchable via the main search box located to the right of the Compose message button. See Figure 1.
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Figure 1. IBM Verse Web user interface with people you frequently communicate with across the top. If Verse profiles contained a user’s photograph, the icon would display his or her face rather than initials. Click image to enlarge.
When I sent outgoing messages, I had the usual delivery options for high priority and return receipt. But like incoming mail, I set time limits (today, tomorrow, one week, anytime) for recipients to get back to me and added text in a note field. It would be nice to search for text in the action note fields.
I set my communication preferences for preferred people at the top of the UI. I dragged the icons that Verse identified as recent talkers from the right of the bar (carrot) to the left to make the icon sticky. If a preferred contact was not visible at the top of the UI, I clicked on the plus sign in the upper-right corner to select him or her from a list of senders. The minus sign selectively removed people from the top bar.
In the upper-left corner of the UI, the total number of messages in the Inbox is contained in a circle. One click in that circle reset the Inbox to view the full list of available messages. The circle next to the Inbox circle with the clipboard icon filters the message listing to those requiring action. Next to that, a circle filtered all sent messages waiting action. Mouse-over text describes each actionable circle.
Although the Verse UI appears spacious, a lot of options are packed into the single browser view. The Compose command pops up a new dialog box to send mail and optionally lists draft messages to select from the adjacent pull-down menu. The status bar below the two window panes displays a daily slice of my calendar. One click on any time frame in the slice popped up the event window for review. Access to daily, weekly and monthly calendar views appears above the slice along the right edge of the browser window, where I set an out-of-the-office message and created new events from scratch.
Like action items I created calendar events from messages in one click. From the message content in the right pane, I clicked the calendar icon and an event window popped up. The event had the same subject line as the message and all the people in the To field became required participants for the meeting.
I found Verse’s presentation of calendar features easier to use than Outlook. I viewed available times for all participants in my organization, added optional attendees, set custom start and stop times (with time zone support), entered a meeting location, configured a reminder, sent recipients not attending an FYI, and set delivery options (return receipt, delivery report, message priority).
I bulk loaded into IBM Verse more than 180 contacts exported from Outlook. Big Blue accepted all of them without error. It correctly found no duplicate contacts but neither IBM Verse nor Outlook identified many near-duplicates.
Verse’s design in putting the right people, messages and actions in my face in a clean UI are appealing vis-à-vis my current Outlook on work where Inbox message threads and their content are separate from tasks. Will I switch from Outlook to IBM Verse? It depends. At the least, Verse warrants further investigation with a licensed version.
Attorney Sean Doherty has been following enterprise and legal technology for more than 15 years as a former senior technology editor for UBM Tech (formerly CMP Media) and former technology editor for Law.com and ALM Media. Sean analyzes and reviews technology products and services for lawyers, law firms, and corporate legal departments. Contact him via email at sean.doherty@ibmverse.com and follow him on Twitter: @SeanD0herty.
