OfficeTalk 4.5 Beta 1 Release Notes (23/12/2005)

Major Enhancements

• Version 4.5 introduces a new user interface for OfficeTalk. The OfficeTalk mode toolbar has been replaced by an Office-style shortcut bar. The OfficeTalk shortcut bar is now replaced by a top of window graduated toolbar. Dockable toolbars and menus and graduated backgrounds and headers all combine with a fresh set of icons to make the product feel a lot more contemporary.
• If you are viewing the same mail folder as another user and you make a change, such as marking a message as read, or replying to an email or deleting an email, the other user will now see in real time the changes that you make.
• It is now possible to add a follow up to a message. You can now right click on a message and select Follow Up and then either choose a certain colored flag, by which to mark the message, or you can bring up follow up dialog box, which lets you associated a small note with the message and a deadline. When the deadline passes and the message has not been marked as complete, the message will turn red, indicating that it is overdue.

General

• Setup now gives the choice of installing OfficeTalk to a Microsoft SQL Server database. It now automatically creates a database called OTDB in SQL Server.
• SCView is now packaged with version 4.5 and a shortcut is added to the Programs | OfficeTalk folder.
• dbcis9.dll is now shipped with 4.5. The absence of this file was causing some upgraders to fail to start the ASA 9 engine.
• A forwarded marker is now shown on all messages that have been forwarded. Now, when you reply or forward a message, the appropriate marker is immediately added. In previous versions, to see the reply marker, you needed to refresh the view.
• In previous versions of OfficeTalk, if you changed mode, the expansion of folder trees and item selection would not be remembered. This is now resolved in version 4.5.
• The speed of changing between modes has now been improved.
• In previous versions of OfficeTalk the horizontal and vertical alignment buttons would not work when in layout view in either company or contact view. This has now been resolved in version 4.5
• Sybase ASA 9.0.3 is now shipped with OfficeTalk 4.5. This overcomes performance issues in previous versions of OfficeTalk relating to negative IDs.
• The sender column in mail mode used to show the user name rather than the actual sender name of the message. This has been resolved in 4.5.
• The To / Name / From / Phone No fonts in Notify mode are now configurable from the display profile.
• The Profile dialog box now condenses the number of display attributes in the Format page. Most of the OfficeTalk colors and fonts can now be controled by changing attributes in the Application and General sections. It is now also possible to apply vertical graduations as well as horizontal graduations to certain attributes.
• A Mail mode crash bug has been fixed in version 4.5. In previous versions, if you clicked on a link in an HTML encoded mail message and then immediately selected a plain text message, OfficeTalk would crash. This is resolved in version 4.5.
• In previous versions of OfficeTalk, if you pressed the Previous or Next buttons in mail mode, as soon as the selected message moved on to a message outside of the currently scrolled view, the view would not scroll to ensure that the selected message was always in view. This has been resolved in version 4.5.
• Previous versions of OfficeTalk could not be run by non-power users. This was because they did not have write access to the program files\officetalk folder. OfficeTalk v.5 no longer requires write access to this folder and so non-power users are able to successfully run OfficeTalk.
• OfficeTalk can now function over a TCP/IP link. Previous versions of OfficeTalk required access to the Program files\OfficeTalk\_local folder and so were unable to connect over a raw TCP/IP link. This has been resolved in version 4.5. Also, some users who unsuccessfully tried to run OfficeTalk over a VPN link may now find that they can do so in version 4.5.
• In previous versions of OfficeTalk, a formatting toolbar would be incorrectly shown in both contact more and mail mode. This has now been resolved in version 4.5.
• In previous versions of OfficeTalk, it could take a long time to start up the application, resulting in a database error specifying a timeout in the MailHeaders table. This has now been resolved in version 4.5.
• History view has changed to provide a neater user interface and also to allow the user to optionally select whether to search on Email, conversations, tasks, appointments, meetings and documents. A Subject field is also provided to allow the user to search for results containing specified words / characters in the subject of the history item. The speed of searching has also been improved.
• The Deleted Items view has changed to become a mode and has been given an improved UI. You can now also filter the deleted items by a date range.
• Event reminders now popup appropriately rather than just on startup, as was the case in previous versions of OfficeTalk.

Mail

• Plain HTML email from certain mail clients was sometimes showing in OfficeTalk as raw HTML. This occurred where the multipart/alternative order was HTML followed by TEXT. It could also occur where a multipart/alternative part was followed by another text part, e.g. a message signature.
• Previous versions of Officetalk failed to properly decode some BASE-64 encoded messages containing attachments. The message could be viewed but if the attachments of the message were opened they would appear corrupted. This has been resolved in version 4.5.
• In previous versions of OfficeTalk, if you searched for a message such that it appeared in the search results window and then tried to drag the message to a folder, you were told that drag and drop from the search results window is not permitted. This has now been rectified in version 4.5, such that you can now drag from the search results window to a folder.
• A folder column is now available in the Search results columns. This lets you see which folder a message belongs to.
• The Spell Checker would sometimes fail to correctly highlight words in HTML formatted messages in previous versions of OfficeTalk. This would happen when the HTML message contained images. This has now been fixed in version 4.5.
• You can now choose a font for composing mail messages in version 4.5. This can be done from the Compose page of the Options | Preferences property sheet in Mail mode. It only applies to HTML formatted messages, not plain text formatted messages.
• Pressing Enter will now open the selected mail message in Mail mode.
• The items "Mark as read" and "Mark as unread" have now been added to the context menu for a mail message. This allows you to select multiple mail messages and mark them all as read or unread.
• Now when you reply to an HTML formatted message, a more asthetically pleasing reply header is added to the message. This overcomes problems in previous versions relating to messages that have been replied to many times causing the original message to shift further and further to the right each time due to the inclusion of a left hand border.
• The speed of searching for mail messages has been improved. Version 4.5 now properly adds indexes to the relevant fields in the MailHeaders table in order to considerably improve the performance.
• Version 4.5 fixes a buffer offerun crash in Mail mode. This could happen if you entered a very long string into the Bcc: field in the Compose Message window and then press Ctrl+K to check the recipients and then clear down the Bcc: field and subsequently try to send the message.
• The font used to display the mail list window and the folder list is now configurable from the Profile dialog.
• There is now a size column in mail mode. This will indicate in bytes, KB or MB, the size of each message in the message list. For older messages, received prior to installing version 4.5, the size field will display "Unknown".
• It was sometimes possible to have the To:, Cc and Bcc: fields become corrupted if you tried to cut and paste the contents of the fields. The recipients would end up becoming fragmented, shown as two or more recipients and offsets would be applied. This has now been resolved in version 4.5.
• Reply to all used to include the address of the person who received the message in previous versions of OfficeTalk. This has been resolved in version 4.5.
• Version 4.5 can now properly decode MIME RFC822/message attachments. These are where someone attaches another mail message as an attachment to the message.
• OfficeTalk could sometimes crash when receiving mail from an ISP. This was occuring when messages contravened the BASE64 line length. This has been resolved in version 4.5.

Calendar

• Tasks are now shown underneath the calendar in the Activities window. This gives more width to the task list and the calendar.
• When you create an appointment, a reminder is now always added.
• Version 4.5 fixes a bug where the wrong date was being displayed when searching for appointments. The date shown in previous versions was the creation time of the appointment rather than the start time of the appointment. This has been resolved in version 4.5.
• The speed of entering monthly view has been dramatically improved in version 4.5