Event Calendar Competitive Analysis

Event Calendar Competitive Analysis

Event Calendar Competitive Analysis: MS Outlook 2002

2/9/04

MS Outlook 2002

  1. View Events
  2. (+) Sort by Day/Week/Month, Day/Week/Month w/ AutoPreview, Active Appt, Events, Annual Events, Reoccurring Appt, By Category, Define Views

  • (+) Ability to change column widths and sort by column headings once in list view

  • (+) Ability to search events

  • (+) Ability to color code events by list of categories (i.e. personal, business, birthday, etc.)

  • (+) Week or day view includes thumbnail of month highlighted to show current week or day. Thumbnail also shows date with events in bold.

  • (-) No year views
  • (-) Can not easily jump to specific date. Must go to View>Go To>Go To Date.
  • (-) Not easy to return to current date. Must go to View>Go To>Today.

  • (-) Month view shows start time and title. However, title gets truncated event where there is more space in the cell. Each event only takes up one row in the month cell.
  • (-) In month view, the month only appears on the 1st. Sometimes difficult to see what month I’m looking at.
  • (+) System remembers last view and returns to it the next time it launches.
  • (+) Preview pane shows event at a glance.
  1. Add Events
  2. (+) Easy to double click on date cell to trigger Add Even dialog box. Also, start time and end time fields in dialog is pre-filled with date cell data.
  3. (+) Start time/End time field allow users to select from a month view thumbnail
  • (+) Users can see duration of event when specifying end time
  • (+) Highlighted message notifies users when event occurs in the past or conflicts with another event. It does not stop users from entering event.
  • (-) Some menu items in the add event dialog don’t seem to apply, or are too complicated to use.
  1. Delete Events
  2. (-) Single click event triggers title text edit. Must right click and select delete or single click and press delete on keyboard quickly
  3. (+) For reoccurring events, system asks whether user wants to delete single event or entire occurrence.
  1. Modify Events
  2. (+) Easy to return to same dialog as Add Events by double clicking on event
  3. (+) Easy to drag and drop event to different date
  4. (+) For reoccurring events, system asks whether user wants to modify single event or entire occurrence.
  • (-) Not really sure what happens once user modifies single occurrence. Will it not be part of series anymore?
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