Product Feature
In Situations where the success of certain projects is depending on a number of participants, it is important that all information is highly available and without redundancy.
For many years companies use the so called groupware in such matters. Groupware is supposed to alleviate the working process in the teams and enable the project coordination on a timely and spacial basis. One of the most famous exponents of the groupware application is the Microsoft exchange server.
The Microsoft exchange server offers a wide spectrum of functions which allow a various number of operators to use different systems to work in cooperation together.
The most often used features of exchange servers are:
-E-Mails
-Appointments and calendars
-Tasks
-Contacts and addresses
-Notes
-Documents
All of the above mentioned elements are stored on a central server and are made available to a user-defined number of operators. Therefore the information’s are always without redundancy and up to date.
The benefit of this architecture is obvious.
Let’s assume, that you have a support section in your company and use for the contact address support@yourcompany.com an exchange inbox. Now all of your associates can see, which E-Mails have already been answered, what cases still wait for a reply and they can even see the proposal for solutions that have been made.
But the working day has changed a lot in the past years. May it be that projects are realized at the customer’s location, companies use more and more outwork or that companies have structures reaching around the entire world.
Security: Encryption with VPN
Users from outside the company network can offer their knowledge and participate through the so called VPN (Virtual Private Network). This ensures that the participants of projects always are provided with information’s up to date and without redundancy.
Using the online mode you work within the infrastructure of your company and adjust information’s in real time with your system. If the connection to the company network is disabled, you just turn your exchange server into the offline mode. This creates a copy of your inbox, which in turn allows you to still have fast access to your data.
This copy of your inbox is regularly updated by the mail server when you are online. Once the connection is enabled again, Microsoft Outlook will switch back into the online mode. Changes made by you, while there was no connection to the server, are automatically adjusted as soon as the connection is enabled again.
Of course the synchronization of the worldwide data is a challenge for the exchange server. For example, if an operator uses a cell phone and has an UMTS connection, an adjustment of large files would take way to long.
Therefore Microsoft uses the so called “cached mode” since the exchange server 2003. In the cached mode, the exchange application possesses an automatic online/offline-management, which is running in the background. This equilibrates the encumbrance of the connection to the exchange server because some of the contents aren’t aligned despite the connection to the exchange server is established.
Bulletin boards and product reviews that are dealing with search tools, often complain about the fact that most tools aren’t able to search and index all exchange inboxes in all modes.
Especially for this case of application, and for a professional environment in general, Lookeen was developed.
We at Axonic Informationsdienste GmbH are aware of the fact, that the base principle of development for Lookeen is the compatibility to exchange servers.
After the release of Lookeen the feedback is thoroughly positive and a huge amount of encouragement reached us. All involved in this dialogue profited of it.
Companies used the smooth support of exchange servers as the reason for choosing Lookeen over other search tools.
Archives or inboxes that are on the exchange servers are simply added in the Lookeen options and because of the Lookeen terms of references, we spoke about in a previous article, all particulars of the handling of the exchange servers and their clients can be individually configured.
Lookeen supports the exchange server indication in all modes, no matter if you are online or offline, if you are using the cached or the uncached mode. With Lookeen you search through all of your data in a few seconds, even on your exchange servers.
The new Lookeen 2010 is available now
We would like to invite you to see for yourself the quality as well as the performance of the new Lookeen 2010.
Get your free trial version* here:
http://www.lookeen.net/downloads/
By creating Lookeen 2010, we developed the search tool of the next generation. Your advantage: Due to the new features of Lookeen 2010, you will be able to find information even quicker, easier and in a more efficient way.
*For users who have Lookeen licences of the versions 1.x and 2.x, the upgrade will be available for an attractive price amounting to 19.90 €. Simply use our upgrade-centre to download the upgrade:
http://www.lookeen.net/download/UpgradeCenter_en.php
The purchase price of the full version is still 34.90 €.
The new Lookeen 2010 is available now!
We would like to invite you to see for yourself the quality as well as the performance of the new Lookeen 2010. Get your free trial version* here.
By creating Lookeen 2010, we developed the search tool of the next generation. Your advantage: Due to the new features of Lookeen 2010, you will be able to find information even quicker, easier and in a more efficient way:
- Preview of mails, attachments or files in the familiar Outlook format
- Highlighting of the located search words (multicolour)
- Intelligent analysis of your inbox with “Lookeen Analytics“
- Quicker loading of Outlook
- Network Detection: Intelligent indexing of the network resources
- Automatic detection of newly added Outlook archives
- Configurable search favourites with quick access
- Search history management
- New feature “display more results”
- Select all action (STRG-A) possible
- Indexing of different data in recurring appointments
- Automatic indexing of attached mails
- Many new Outlook data arrays now searchable (e.g. location in appointments)
- Now available: one Lookeen configuration file for all Outlook profiles
- 20 new GPO commands for enterprise usage
- Improved drag&drop features
- Image preview (for .jpg, .png, .bmp, .tif, etc.)
- And many other new features…
*For users who have Lookeen licences of the versions 1.x and 2.x, the upgrade will be available for an attractive price amounting to 19.90 €. Simply use our upgrade-centre to download the upgrade.
The purchase price of the full version is still 34.90 €.
Lookeen 2.3 is available – free update!
After an exhausting but fruitful stage of development, last week it was finally so far – the new version Lookeen 2.3 has been released.
In the development, our attention was this time focused, to meet customer requirements and to implement some new features. The participants in the beta phase were impressed by the performance and the speed of the new Lookeen 2.3.
As always, we’ve fixed some bugs and added new features.
Here are the most important facts:
- Improving the search with the *- operator
- Improved search results
- Index now faster
- A simplified and more stable handling with Group Policies
- Improved stability and performance on Windows 7
- Additional Feature: Lookeen remembers the last opened tab
- Additional Feature: Lookeen starts the index delayed to the start of Outlook (performance gain)
- Additional Feature: Search without a local index is possible now
Overall, the new 2.3.1.1242 Lookeen offers a variety of enhancements and improvements. Make yourself a picture and try Lookeen 14 days for free.
As also announced in the previously Newsletter of Lookeen, the version 2.3.1.1242 will be a prerequisite for future updates. Therefore the update remains free for customers of Lookeen 1.x and 2.x versions.
We would like to take this opportunity to address ourselves to the selected group of customers, our friends and acquaintances who have supported us during the beta phase. Thank you for your engaged assistance and your suggestions that help us to improve Lookeen steadily and purposefully.
We set a high value on making the installation of Lookeen as easy and flexible as possible. This is no problem for single-user-installations: You run the setup.exe, choose a path and after that Lookeen will already be installed.
When you run Outlook after that, the Lookeen-Wizard will help you to add the desired mailboxes to the index and then you will already be able to use Lookeen on your workstation.
Above that Lookeen helps your company to fight the constantly increasing flood of emails.
For the installation within a company’s environment (regardless whether it concerns 20 or 20,000 workstations), flexibility is a decisive factor. In this case, the introduction of a fundamental tool like Lookeen naturally has to be planned well and in a structured way.
The system administrator has to find out which network resources are required for that and which settings or rather restrictions have to be made for the individual users.
The administrator regulates these settings and restrictions with the help of the so-called “Group Policies” (“GPOs” in short).
These group policies are totally indispensable for the integration in a company’s environment.
Sadly not all programmes and tools support group policies. This is why the most successful website in the field of group policies (www.gruppenrichtlinien.de) introduced the TROST-prize („Tja, Rein Optisch Schönes Tool“-prize; which means a prize for a tool which only seems to be good but it is not if you look at it more closely): A “prize” for programmes, which do not function with restricted user authorisations and do not support GPOs.
Therefore we have known from the beginning: In order to make it possible to “roll-out” Lookeen companywide, Lookeen group policies have to be developed. This amount of work should not be underestimated.
The required efforts and especially the error sources caused in a company without group policies are simply unacceptable.
The installation itself is only a part of the integration (of the roll-out) in a company. Afterwards the workstations have to be set up in a personnel-suitable way.
Assuming that you have just installed the software on 500 workstations, hopefully without any problems, the software is not just yet ready to be used only because the installation has been completed. To be honest: Do you want to make sure afterwards that the new software works properly and can be used efficiently when 500 employees with completely different backgrounds and expertise use it?
The administrator is able to control for example the following points with the help of GPOs:
- The including of shared index sources
- The periods of times during which Lookeen indexes the data stock
- The adding of outlook archives, local folders and network folders
- The handling of automatic updates
We, the Lookeen-team, have been engaged in the development of GPOs for a long time and in an extensive way. However, it was worth the time and efforts. Thus this precisely makes Lookeen today so desirable and comfortable for a lot of companies and their system administrators, regarding the central controlling.
At this point we would like to thank our customers very much! We have been actively supported by you with ideas and technical implementations since the initial stage of the GPOs.
Eventually it was one of our long-time partners, who provided us with an administrative template (ADM-File).
Down to the present day, the Lookeen GPOs have proved themselves in a multitude of companies and have been continuously enhanced.
Lookeen has been supporting the feature group policies since version 1.3 – whereas by now altogether more than 50 GPOs setting options exist, like e.g. suppression of the wizard, explicit control regarding the different exchange modes, options adjustable ON/OFF, shared index path and many more…
If you also plan to use Lookeen in your company or if you have questions regarding group policies or ADM-files, please send us an email to info@lookeen.com.
Lookeen is a Desktop Search!
On a daily basis, we, the Lookeen-team, receive calls and emails from customers all over the world, who tell us how convinced they are by Lookeen and how much they would like to have a similar tool for their folder structure in Windows.
A lot of Windows users have already noticed the benefits of a desktop search and took advantage of it. However, you do not need additional tools to browse your desktop – because the function of a complete desktop search is already included in Lookeen.
You just have to add the desired folder by using the Lookeen options. After you have done that, Lookeen will also index all folders in Windows and provide a full text search for the most common file types, like for instance:
- Microsoft Office Word (.doc, .docx)
- Microsoft Office Excel (.xls, .xlsx)
- Microsoft Office PowerPoint (.ppt, .pptx)
- Adobe Portable (.pdf)
- Websites (.htm, .html)
- PHP-files (.php)
- Extensible Markup Language (.xml)
- Richtext files (.txt, .rtf)
Have you already been wondering a lot of times where the individual information is exactly stored? On which server you can find the desired document? Was this file shared in the network by Mr. Meier – or by Mr. Schmidt?
This is no problem for Lookeen. You can also add an unlimited number of network resources or complete servers in order to access the required information quickly and easily.
Whatever you need – Lookeen will find it for you!
Everyone protects the Environment: Lookeen even protects your Network: Central Indexing made easy!
Just imagine that your Customer Care Center keeps records on all support cases. These records are stored in a central place, a document is allocated to each support case and the corresponding email is linked with it.
Now you can decide in which way you want to make this information accessible for all employees of the CCC. After you have done that, everyone can browse for the corresponding information in a network folder. With the help of Lookeen, you can also index every user of the network drive in order to ensure in this way that everything which is searched for will be found immediately.
But why should 20 users index the same data 20 times? This burdens your network and requires extra time and resources.
Based on this question, we, the Lookeen-team, developed the “shared index”. The concept of the shared index sources includes a central index, which is accessible for all users. The advantages are obvious:
- Every user has the same data status
- The index only has to be created and renewed at one place
Here is another scenario which customers often tell us about:
A multitude of email-archives exists. In order to preserve Outlook’s high performance and user friendliness, naturally those archives shall not be included into the work profile.
This is no problem when using Lookeen:
Simply create a new outlook profile. Afterwards you can add any number of archives to this profile. Lookeen will index the archives in this profile from that moment on. Now you can add this created index as shared index source to your work profile. After you have done that, each query will also include the indexed archives and each indexed object can also be opened and relocated easily by using Lookeen.
Lookeen 2.0 download available!
Central Indexing of jointly used Outlook data within the company – this is the new Lookeen Shared Index. The advantages: It reduces the degree of capacity utilisation and traffic on exchange-servers and in networks, preserves the user’s processor- and storage resources and last but not least it saves precious working time.
Do you have a lot of Outlook-archives, which are not opened in Outlook? With the help of the Shared Index you will have all information under control.
The Shared Index performs the following:
- Central Indexing saves Exchange-Server Traffic
- External PST archives can be browsed easier.
Normally each user has a personal index for his data. However, it can really be very useful to not only have a personal index but also to search additionally in several external Lookeen-Indexes. Assuming that there exist a lot of public documents in the network of a company or a lot of big public files, which are to be browsed by many users, on an exchange-server, normally each user would have to bear the responsibility to index these data himself.
However, this increases the network traffic in an undesired way and at the same time it burdens the user’s computer and costs precious working time.
By using the Shared Index you generate a central index and you make this index available for all desired users. This can be done in a very comfortable way by delivering the index path. Now the individual users are able to browse through personal indexes and external indexes at the same time.
You have a lot of Outlook-archives in the form of PST-files, but you do not want to always use all of them in your current profile? With the help of the Shared Index you will have all information under control. For this you only have to generate an external index for your PST-archives.
Get to know the latest Lookeen-feature – this version is available for download here.
The waiting is over: Lookeen 2.0 will be released at March 11th 2009. The update for customers who had already bought Lookeen 1.x licenses is for free.
New customers: Although there are amazing new features in Lookeen 2.0 – the price will stay the same!
Lookeen customers are able to use the build in updater feature. Or just go online (at March 11th) to: www.lookeen.com and download the version and reinstall it.
Lookeen 2.0 provides the best solution for dealing with different
PST-files: Search as many PST files (e.g. archives) as you want and have access to the content, although the files are not concurrently opened in Outlook.
You could save the PST files at any folder in your network – therefore you do not have to waste central memory or hard disk space.
Only your main PST has to be opened which accelerates a lot the program start as well as the work with Outlook.
As Axonic Informationssysteme GmbH has announced yesterday, the version 2.0 will be presumably released at the beginning of march 2009.
Do you have a sales question? Contact us at 315-352-0745 US/CA
For technical support please use the support form