New Features in FCmobilelife

We're continually improving FCmobilelife by streamlining its functionality and by adding new features. Here are some of the latest additions to FCmobilelife.

Recurring Meetings

FCmobilelife now supports the creation of recurring schedule actions. A wide variety of recurrence rules are supported such as daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and other more complex options. Any client can be used to create and specify a recurring meeting. Busy searches will show recurring meetings in addition to non-recurring meetings. See the client Quickstart Guides for some examples of how recurring meetings work. At this point recurrence is only supported for schedule actions (not tasks).

This screen shows the Recurring Meetings screen on a BlackBerry phone. Busy time slots for recipients are shown as colored bars in the display

Outlook Data Importing

FCmobilelife provides a feature for importing Tasks, Meetings and Contacts from Outlook. This feature works with CSV (Comma Separated Value) export files that you can create in Outlook. There is a button in the FCML web client that invokes the Outlook import process. The process reads your export file and allows you import some or all of the items contained in that file. After the import your Outlook Meetings will appear as FCmobilelife Schedule items and your Outlook Tasks will appear as FCmobilelife Tasks. Contacts are handled differently. Because FCmobilelife is a subscription service, the import process cannot register your contacts that do not have FCmobilelife accounts. Also, since FCmobilelife uses email addresses to identify users, the import process will only work for your Outlook contacts that have email address in your Outlook contact book. See the Outlook Import documentation for more details HERE.

The following image shows a table with the data from your import file (in this example it is a task import) using the FCmobilelife Web Client.

Usability Enhancements for Web Client

A number of improvements have been made to the user interface for the Web client. Perhaps the most notable one is the ability to select multiple actions from a list and then delete or archive those actions with one operation. The following screenshot shows the Multiple Delete function.

Some of the lists have also been reorganized to group actions within the list. For example, the task list below the calendar now groups tasks into four categories: Priority Assigned, No Priority, Completed and Canceled/Withdrawn. In addition, entries in this list are color coded with blue for due today, red for overdue and black otherwise. There are also new controls at the top of each list for creating a new action, deleting and archiving. Other improvements have been made to the calendar and detail views of the actions.

Unified Attachment Viewing

A single attachment retrieval icon is now used on all clients. This allows the simultaneous viewing of a photo attachment and listening to a voice attachment. Attachments are still created with separate processes, and you can still send just one type of attachment if you wish.

This screen, from a BlackBerry client, shows a blue Camera icon, indicating that a photo is attached to a task.

Offline Mode for Phone Clients

If you create a new action and your phone is not connected to your network (or loses its connection while you are working), the new actions will be saved and sent to the server as soon as your connection is restored.

New Group Licensing

FCmobilelife supports a range of mobile device and Web browser clients. You can register for a free Community Edition trial license that is valid for one month. Paid license plans are all annual plans for collaborating groups of users.

Each group license plan requires a primary user to pay for a group of licenses. The primary user's account is registered in the license purchase process. The primary user also receives prepaid license keys for the other users in their group. The primary user forwards one key to each of the other group members, who use their individual key to register their own account. Each key can be used only once. All plans support the same mobile devices and Web clients.